Declining birth rate in Japan is a pressing issue that has garnered a significant amount of scholarly attention.Many couples express barriers to having a third child, citing financial concerns as the main reason. In addition, mental factors are the primary drivers for the decision to have children. Developing supportive relationships with others may provide reliable support in childbirth and child-rearing.

Undergraduate nursing students are required to acquire practical skills, and many of them may experience learning difficulties. However, the relationship between learning difficulties and motivation for pursuing nursing or vocational views remains unclear. In this study, a questionnaire was administered to 92 undergraduate nursing students to determine the influences of their motivation for pursuing nursing and vocational views on learning difficulties. Our results showed that students whose motivation for applying was “because someone recommended me” had difficulty understanding the lecture content. Those who answered “yes” to the item “a career in nursing would help me become my ideal self” found it difficult to acquire practical skills because of fewer opportunities but did not have difficulty balancing their academic and personal lives. Our findings suggest the need to consider measures to support nursing students’ learning by focusing on the motivation for applying for nursing and the vocational views on their learning difficulties.

The use of the Internet and digital devices may encourage social interactions among the elderly. However, the utilization rate of smartphones and other digital devices is not very high among the elderly. A questionnaire was administered to 119 elderly people aged 65 years or older to determine the association between smartphone usage frequency and the frequency of social interactions among them. Our results discovered that 83.2% of the elderly respondents used smartphones. Those who reported using their smartphones more frequently had fewer instances of social isolation and greater numbers of social interactions with others. Our findings also revealed a significant association between the frequency of using social networking services (SNS) on smartphones and the number of social interactions among the elderly. Our findings indicated that the use of smartphones as a means of communication may lead to more social interactions among elderly people.

This paper is the result of a GIS-based analysis of the characteristics of the ancient Ouchi Basin. In the first half of the paper, we began with the characteristics of settlements and burial mounds, and examined the role of flood control works, etc. In the second half of the paper, based on the results of the first half, the actual conditions of the early activities of the Tatara clan (Ouchi clan), which expanded its power based in this area in the early medieval period, were elucidated based on various historical documents.

Based on the results of theoretical and empirical studies, interviews were conducted with one affiliate and one subsidiary of Japanese ICT firms in Shandong Province. Although the productivity of affiliate and that of subsidiary were dependent on the headquarter, the affiliate made efforts to increase productivity by shifting from labor-intensive to more knowledge-intensive work, while the subsidiary was able to increase productivity even in labor-intensive activity as long as the parent company's management was doing well. Yet, in China, where human capital is growing considerably, the subsidiary was facing increasingly difficulty in recruiting workers for labor-intensive work. This indicates the need to investigate affiliated companies and subsidiaries separately, which has rarely been clarified in previous studies, many of which have been written from the parent company's perspective.

The rapid expansion of telework during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan brought a delightful opportunity for telework migration to Japanese rural areas that had not seen significant progress before the Pandemic. However, as the infection of COVID-19 began to subside, telework migration has shown some new aspects, such as an extension of commuting limits and simply relocating and moving to the edge suburbs. Considering that, this study takes the position that the area around JR Shin-Yamaguchi Station in Yamaguchi City is a marginal edge suburb for commuting to Hiroshima and Fukuoka cities, and examines the latent needs of telework migration targeting the hybrid workers who work in both cities. Also, considering migration as a kind of aggregation of real estate transactions and migrants as its target customers, the authors of this paper have tried to conduct a questionnaire survey of experienced teleworkers in Hiroshima and Fukuoka prefectures in July 2022. We attempted to understand their primary push and pull factors of the telework migration, and the size of the potential demand for the telework migration to the area around JR Shin-Yamaguchi Station. As a result, those who either themselves or their spouses are from or have lived in Yamaguchi Prefecture, plus those who have family and household reasons, such as nursing care for their parents, are the most likely to carry out telework migration. In addition, the size of the potential demand would be for approximately 3,400 people in the case where the telework implementation rate returns to the level at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This research was initiated by the Planning and Design Laboratory of Yamaguchi Prefectural University in 2011 as part of a project to revitalize a mountainous area in the Tokuji region of Yamaguchi City The Tokuji area is blessed with rich nature (forests), and the culture of papermaking has been passed down from generation to generation in the upper reaches of the pure "Saba River. Focusing on this precious regional resource, the company created clothing using knit art works that fuse plant material with natural knit materials, and presented them at fashion shows and exhibitions with the message of "Return to Nature," thereby exploring new possibilities for Tokuji handmade paper In 2021, the compilation of this series of exhibitions was held at the Suo Kokubunji Temple in Hofu City, downstream from the Saba River, where the Knit Art Exhibition was held This report describes the process and the results of the creation of cultural exchange between Yamaguchi City and Hofu City through an exhibition whose method is Installation, that fuses the regional resources between the two cities.

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This article introduced the historical background of “MURA NO SAIGO” written by Nakamura Seiko in July 1909.

TAT stories that were used to judge the presence of uncertainty motivation were analyzed by text mining. The stories following lead sentence number 2 were analyzed for this study. The results show that: (1) Words and phrases such as “search,” “depressed,” “future,” and “what should I do” were included in the stories with uncertainty motivation; (2) Stories without uncertainty motivation were characterized by the words “friend,” “alone,” and “man.”; (3) These Stories following lead sentence number 2 were shown to have a framing of the negative event and, a coping response.

The purpose of this study is to examine the social background to the boom in school ghost stories in Japan in the 1990s, in the light of the latest psychological research on the paradox of fear. Until now, the reason for children to seek out scary stories has been explained as them overcoming the crisis of adolescence. However, recent psychological research has proposed a coactivation-based model of fear and enjoyment. In the light of this, this study indicates that in contemporary society children are not allowed to enjoy experiencing fear. The study concludes that the school ghost story boom was a result of children being deprived of opportunities to experience fear in their lives.

“Introduction to Lifelong Learning” is a common and compulsory subject required by librarians, curators, and social education directors for certification in Japanese higher education. However, no research has been conducted on the contents of this subject. Thus, this study aims to clarify the knowledge acquired in the subject based on an analysis of index terms in textbooks. The primary results are as follows: (1) this subject is connected to adult and community education; (2) the subject contents depend on the type of certificate; (3) there are few common terms in the indices; (4) indices contain many terms specified in law as well as the names of foreign people; and (5) there are fewer words related to educational administration or learning support than to lifelong education or educational facilities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the famine foods listed in the “KYUKI TEIYO.” It was compiled by Fuse Mikaki, a local magistrate in Ogori in 1850, under the order of the lord of the Hagi domain, Mori Yoshichika, whose name later changed to Mori Takachika. In addition, the documented items contained in it will be compared with the standard Japanese names. The “KYUKI TEIYO” includes a mixture of words unique to the Yamaguchi dialect of the time and words of the same form as the standard language. In this paper, they are summarized to give a complete picture. This examination will lead to a better understanding of the plant and marine products that the Japanese people used to overcome repeated disasters, and will also help to pass on a sustainable food culture in an era of uncertainty.

The purpose of this paper is to present the concept of the curriculum design for the General Education Curriculum that started in 2022, and to present the concept of the instructional design for the “Project to Design the Future of Yamaguchi,” which is a comprehensive assessment subject. Up until now this university had designed its curriculum using the so-called “theme-based” method. However, in a new era of unpredictability, the nature of the qualities and abilities demanded of university education by society and university establishers is changing. Therefore, the decision was made to design the new General Education Curriculum using a competency-based method of backward design with the required qualities and abilities set as educational targets. While combining the diverse knowledge they acquired in the first semester, students for mixed teams from all departments in the second semester and based on the design thinking process, generated ideas oriented toward solving problems in the local community. A rubric-type evaluation forms was used to visualize the students’ academic achievements.

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The egg period, egg size, and daily changes in egg size were investigated in the field cricket, Teleogryllus emma. T. emma inhabits the slope of the Oishi Dam (OD) (38.03°N, 139.57°E) and Arakawa riverside (AR) (38.09°N, 139.57°E) in Sekikawa Village, Niigata Prefecture, Japan. We studied OD, AR, and the F1 hybrids, viz, OdAr (OD females × AR males), and ArOd (AR females × OD males) and determined whether daily changes in egg size are related to shortening of the egg period of T. emma on the dam slope. The egg periods in OD, AR, OdAr, and ArOd were shorter at higher temperatures (p ≤ 0.05). Furthermore, the egg period in OD was shorter than that in AR and OdAr (p ≤ 0.05). After oviposition, the eggs enlarged due to water absorption and entered diapause at the embryonic stage of the array. The major axes of eggs in OD, AR, OdAr, and ArOd expanded daily and were influenced by temperature whereby a higher temperature resulted in an increase in the major axes. At 15ºC, the major axis gradually increased after oviposition, reaching its maximum at 130 days. The eggs grew rapidly at temperatures ≥ 20ºC and reached their maximum size at 10−14 days, 5−7 days, and 4−6 days after oviposition at 20, 25, and 30ºC, respectively. The expansion of the major axis up to 7 days after oviposition showed that the egg size in AR increased faster than that in OD at 15ºC, while that in OD increased faster than AR at 20, 25, and 30ºC, indicating that the expansion rate in OD and AR eggs differed with temperatures. Temperature-dependent changes in the expansion rates in OD and AR up to 7 days after oviposition suggest that they may be associated with shortened egg period.

The mechanisms involved in triggering hatching behavior in the katydid Eobiana engelhardti subtropica (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) remain largely unknown. Therefore, in this study, I aimed to clarify the mechanism of hatching behavior triggered by a light-on (L-on) signal. Hatching under transition from continuous darkness to continuous light (i.e., L-on step, dark pulses, and photoperiods) was concentrated within 2 h after the L-on, indicating that it was triggered by the L-on signal. Furthermore, hatching was directly triggered by a single L-on signal. However, the time from L-on to hatching under dark pulses and photoperiods was affected by the duration of the dark period. This dependency on the dark period’s duration before L-on indicates that it differs from the hatching trigger under the L-on step. The time from L-on to the earliest hatching time and the mean hatching time were similar under dark pulses and photoperiods. Those times were also similar at 15 and 20°C. This suggests that the time from L-on to hatching under dark pulses and photoperiods exhibits temperature compensatory properties, a characteristic of biological clocks. The time ranges from a few minutes to several tens of minutes; however, it is suggested that it is controlled by a time-measuring mechanism involving dark periods. Although it is well known that the L-on signal is involved in the time-measuring mechanism, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first study to report that the time-measuring mechanism is involved in the triggering of hatching behavior based on the L-on signal.

Purpose : The purpose of this study was to prepare two types of fruit wine with 10% and 20% peel using three types of citrus from Kagoshima Prefecture (Beni-amatsu, Kawachi-bankan, and Fukiage-konatsu), and to explore changes over time after preparation. Methods：Fruit wine was prepared using fruit, fruit peel, glacial sugar, and white liquor. The peels and fruit were removed from the fruit wine at 4 weeks after pickling, and the color difference, acidity, sugar content, and pH were measured thereafter until the 20th week. Fruits and peels removed from fruit wine were freeze-dried and extracted with 35% and 70% ethanol, and the total polyphenol content and DPPH radical scavenging capacity were determined along with the fruit wine. Results：The fruit wine with 20% fruit peel showed higher L*, a*, and b* values than the wine with 10% fruit peel, but the acidity, sugar content, and pH showed little difference due to the amount of fruit peel. L*, a*, and b* values and acidity increased and sugar content decreased until the fourth week after pickling, but remained almost unchanged after the fruit and peel were removed at the fourth week. The total polyphenol concentration in the fruit wine was higher in fruit wine with 20% fruit peel than in fruit wine with 10% fruit peel for all citrus, and remained unchanged after the fourth week. The DPPH radical scavenging capacity of fruit wine with 20% fruit peel was higher than that of wine with 10% fruit peel and remained flat or decreased after the 4th week.

本研究は、新型コロナ感染症禍で小児看護学実習を行った学生の学びを明らかにすることを研究目的とした。 2021年度に小児看護学実習を実施した学生のうち本研究への協力を同意した49名の実習終了時に提出する「小児看護学実習評価表」の自由記載欄に記載された内容を研究対象とし分析を行った結果、5カテゴリー、10サブカテゴリ―が抽出された。 学生は臨地実習を通して、新生児期から思春期までの様々な発達段階の子ども達と接することによって【発達段階に応じた関わり方】を学んでいた。また、子どもという対象の特性を理解し、【観察することの重要性】やケア時には『家族の協力が必要不可欠』であり【小児看護における家族】という大切な視点を学び取っていた。そして、実際に小児へのケアを通して『正確に安全で素早いケアの実施』や『恐怖や不安を軽減させる関わり』という【処置/ケア時の援助】に必要な関わり方や『測定技術の難しさ』を学んでいた。また、自宅に帰ってからも家族がしっかり子どもの看護が出来るように看護師には【継続看護への支援】の役割があることを学んでいた。 今回の結果から、新型コロナ感染症禍で制限がある小児看護学実習でも臨地実習で習得すべき要素は学べていることが分かった。