2774 items found.
The Nikkei Communities in Latin America and Japan
In this course we will explore the Nikkei communities in Latin America from a historical and cultural perspective. Students will analyze the historical background of the Japanese migration to Latin America, the settlement and community development. The analysis of the historical processes will enable the students to understand the contemporary features of Nikkei communities in different Latin American societies. In the second part of the course, we will examine the so-called “return migration” to Japan. This analysis aims to understand these ethnic minorities, whose temporary migration has gradually turned into a permanent stay.
Along the course we aim to consider the main causes and effects of migration, the cultural characteristics of the migrants and their families, and the effects of their settlement on their children education. Additionally, we will discuss the migrants’ identity and the maintenance (or non) of their heritage language.
This course is to discuss the nature of international business by referring to case study materials. The students read the case before the class, write a short report, and participate an active discussion facilitated by the course instructor.
The case is selected to cover all the important issues around international business, as well as major industries and regions. Topics covers: supply chain, distribution chain, organisation and strategy, new entrant, M&A, competition with local firms, collaboration with local firms, low cost distribution, low cost business model, and Japanese business overseas. Most of the case are less than 10 years old and will constantly be updated.
The students read the case study, which typically is 10-15 pages in English, and write a A4-1page report to answer the questions given by the instructor. Depending on the class size, one group may give a presentation of the overview of the case, and then the class moves to an active discussion session facilitated by the instructor.
This course is for investigating the Contract law and the Tort law in the Civil Code of Japan.
(This course will be a GIGA-English course for AY2022, and in AY2023 will be offered in Japanese.) This lecture will combine the teaching of Aynu language to gain basic communicative competence, which enables us to delve into the rich world of Aynu culture manifested in its oral literature, with reflection on socio-political issues surrounding Aynu peoples and Aynu language revitalization in contemporary Japanese society.
How and why did music evolve? Why is it found in all human cultures, but in such different forms? This course will review the state-of-the-art in scientific research about the biological and cultural evolution of music and musicality in both human and non-human animals. Students will take turns leading discussions of each textbook chapter including a 15-minute presentation. Evaluations will include short weekly reports about the week’s reading, in-class presentations, and a final report proposing an original research project that extends the ideas developed in the class.
Reform and Innovation
In order to utilize full potential of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for promoting economic growth and addressing various social issues, we need to take various steps such as expansion of infrastructure and building capacity of human and society to be ready to use ICTs, in addition to research and development of technologies. Policy intervention is necessary as these goals are hard to accomplish, if solely relying on market competition. Understanding such policies required to support technology will be helpful to predict and take advantage of social dynamics related to new digital products and services that are emerging now and will emerge in the coming future.
In the first stage of this course, explanation will be provided on importance of social expansion of ICTs, mainly focusing on network technologies such as the Internet. Basic knowledge required to understand relevant policies will be also introduced.
Then the course will pick up specific case studies for each sort of ICT policy practices, to discuss how that policy making was triggered and what impacts the policy brought about, with viewpoints of international comparison. In addition, students will be invited to participate in more active discussion on certain topic on future policy direction, which will be shown later in the course.
This course surveys approaches to second language (L2) learning and factors that influence its rate (and possible route) such as cross-linguistic influence, age and individual differences. Students will discover how humans learn language(s) after they acquire their first language (L1). Students are expected to actively participate in discussions as well as taking turns in leading the discussion on various topics covered in class.
There is common difficulties and challenge in design of artifact today.Product design, Architecture design and Environmental design have to be situated in a context logicaly with both intuitive sense and rational methodology to creat it . By investigationg and about relationship between design and information technologies from many aspects, this subject will become more scientific and promising.
Espacially, when a media to connect reality and design is sifting towards data repreesentation, it became possible to be computationally processed, shared, and simulated. We start taking advantages of very compricated status of geometry with an algorithmto adapt functional requirements of different environmental factors such as structure, sound, heat, light energy etc .
Furthermore it will became more comprehensive issue for us when it is connected to the technology of manufacture and construction, and continuous autonimity of atifact such as Io. Students of this class will learn hulistic idea of cognitive, philosophical, tectonic, socio-cultural factor of influence in current information technologies to human attitude of creation.
Energy issues are now a global challenge through issues of energy security and climate change. In order to present solutions that are truly useful to society, it is necessary to understand how energy use works, as well as the connections between energy, economic and climate systems. In this course, students will learn the scientific view and methods of integrating multiple systems, and then acquire the ability to identify and analyse energy and climate change issues in a country or region and present solutions.
Ecology is the scientific study of the relation of living organisms to each other and their surroundings. Landscape ecology integrates biophysical and analytical approaches with humanistic and holistic perspectives across the natural sciences and social sciences. Landscapes are spatially heterogeneous geographic areas characterized by various interacting patches or ecosystems, ranging from relatively natural terrestrial and aquatic systems such as forests, grasslands, and lakes to human-dominated environments including agricultural and urban settings. You will learn the fundamental theories and methods of landscape ecology, and the application to nature conservation and restoration.
Learn remote sensing of satellites and how to use a software for GIS, QGIS.
This lecture will focus on disaster risk as the key element of environmental risk, and will elaborate with case studies on different innovation examples in the field of housing, health, water, education and disaster recovery.
“The Limits to Growth” (by The Club of Rome), published in 1972, noted that "the global system of nature in which we all live – probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth much beyond the year 2100." However, the Ecological Footprint*, an indicator of the impact of human activities on the global environment, has doubled since the 1970s, reaching 1.7 times the global supply of ecosystem services (biocapacity) that the Earth can produce and absorb. In particular, in our country, the production and consumption are separated, and the cost of cleaning up the resulting pollution and harm are not sufficiently taken into account (the environmental burden is passed on to other regions and future generations). As a result, environmental problems in developing countries are becoming more serious, and the effects of climate change are gradually becoming a reality in the world.
In this course, through group works, we will try to set the boundaries of the environment and manage natural resources. After defining the scale of the environment to be managed, students will belong to a community that uses the environment, and each student will play a role within the community and try to "design" a way to make the limited natural resources sustainable.
Since the class requires a lot of basic information as a basis for discussion, the tasks assigned in preparation for the class are mainly to collect materials and organize data.
*Ecological Footprint: The amount of demand for ecosystem services needed to produce the resources we consume and to absorb the CO2 generated by socioeconomic activities, expressed in terms of the area of the earth.
Natural environment as a composition of ecosystems provides a variety of ecosystem services to human beings. however, Its capacity to accommodate human need is limited. When the pressure exceed the capacity, ecosystems may change irreversibly and enter to a unstable and unsustainable state. This sounds self-evident to every one but on paper only, no real experience. This course interpret high resolution images and calculate the land price, agricultural products, and CO2 absorptions through simple exercise. Through the processes we will learn the procedure of ecosystem assessment, the knowledge to understand the status and functions, and services of environment. By putting the results on the frame of stock and flow we will rethink the role of land capital, industrial capital and natural capital in modern society, and clarify the precondition of sustainability.
There are many classes about environment at SFC, but there is no class about nature except this class. In this class we deeply discuss about nature, environment and natural environment. Students should consider a future society based on natural environment through the discussion. Students have to read documents or books and watch movies which are shown in this syllabus before a class. In a class students discuss about a theme.
It is true that the products of science and its applications are of significance to our lives, but at the same time there are still many social problems which cannot be solved by current science and technology, or they themselves even generate new risks to the society. This lecture course provides you an opportunity to consider how to face these problems.
Design of public space for highway diversion on the Ginza KK line
The subject site is located in and around Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo.
There is a plan to rehabilitate the Tokyo Expressway (KK line) that runs around Ginza, and a study of how to convert the transportation infrastructure into a public space and its design is urgently needed. Therefore, this studio will design a landscape and architecture for public use, including the future use of the current KK line.
The studio will conduct a fieldwork-based study of the network, boundaries, programs, and forms of public space with an eye toward the freeway and its adjacent spaces, as well as the unnecessary freeway structures and their linkage to the surrounding redevelopment plan. landscape and architectural design proposals will be considered.
In this class, students experiences basic methods of experiments in cognitive psychology. Students first participates several experiments and learn how to analyze the data. Through a group work, students then design an experiment, collect data, analyze them, and give a presentation.
- How do we see the size, color, and depth of objects?
- How do we acquire experiences and learning?
- How do we feel Kansei (aisthesis) and Shitsukan (material perception)?
These questions are contained in the question of how do we perceive and cognize the inside and outside of the body. This lecture approaches the laws of perception and cognition.
Students can know some aspects of formulating the mysteries represented by concepts and formulas and predicting the phenomenon of perception and cognition by using the model to take the lecture.
If objectivity and universality is too much imposed on studies of intelligence, cognitive processes will be sort of a black-box and the studies will stumble. Cognitive science and artificial intelligence actually begin to experience difficulty of that sort, because of the conventional methodology of natural science.
This lecture will clarify what the deficiency of that methodology is and how the studies on intelligence can cope with it.
In the "Impression Management" course, we will examine what impressions we make of ourselves and others, and what role impressions can play in facilitating the communication processes. Specifically, we will explore the exchange of impressions by paying attention to subtle behaviors, focusing on small gestures and occasions in our day-to-day activities.
This course covers basic topics in cognitive psychology, including memory, perception and attention, conceptual representation, reasoning and decision making, language learning and processing, and relation between language and cognition.
The benefits of learning cognitive science and related academic fields are not only to be able to understand human mental processes and behaviors scientifically, but to help create effective solutions to various problems in modern society and industry.
This course aims to learn the essential literacy to apply such knowledge effectively and creatively to solve real-world problems that you will face in the future.
In this year’s course, we will focus on four topics from numerous studies related to cognitive science:
(1) Visual Perception,
(2) Affordances and Signifiers, and
(3) Decision-Making and Cognitive Biases.
I will explain the theoretical foundations of each topic, and then we will review and discuss the usefulness and the issues of their practical applications, especially in the fields of design and marketing, with the help of case studies.
We will review and discuss dark patterns, behavioral addiction, and their potential problems from the viewpoint of cognitive science
This course particularly welcomes students who have a strong interest and passion for practical applications of academic knowledge.
Evolution of Life and Intelligence: Life is thought to have originated around four billion years ago, but what form did it take? And what are the driving forces and mechanisms behind the evolution of life, just through mutation and natural selection, from unicellular to multicellular organisms, from water to land, and eventually to the human species? We will also look at the origins and evolution of the brain, the ultimate organ. Emotions such as anxiety, anger, and joy are caused by fluctuations of substances within the brain, and genes are deeply involved in such personality traits as curiosity and optimism. We will also touch on depression, schizophrenia, memory impairment, hallucinations, and other disorders of brain function. We will finish with a look at life from the even grander perspective of the origin and evolution of the universe, and consider the possibilities of extraterrestrial life forms and the future of life on Earth.