Tagged / Japan

Dr Svetla Stoyanova-Bozhkova participates in UNWTO.TedQual event in Japan

Dr Svetla Stoyanova-Bozhkova recently participated in the Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific event organised with the UNWTO.TedQual programme in Beppu, Japan, 14-17 December 2023.

A group of people in kimonos in a restaurantThe theme of the three-day event was “Conservation and Value Addition of Regional and Touristic Resources through Collaboration with the Community”.

Svetla contributed to the Open Panel Discussion: “What is Currently Needed for Sustainable Tourism in the Oita Region” and delivered a keynote talk on UNWTO.TedQual and HE commitment to excellence in education and practice, showcasing the good practice of BU in addressing the SDGs and the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism.

Participants in the event included over 200 guests from national and local authorities, businesses, local community, academics from UNWTO.TedQual certified universities and APU students.

The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) TedQual programme aims to improve the quality of tourism education, training and research programmes.

Conversation article: How centuries of self-isolation turned Japan into one of the most sustainable societies on Earth

Dr Hiroko Oe writes for The Conversation about Japan’s Edo period and how it led to the development of sustainable lifestyle practices…

How centuries of self-isolation turned Japan into one of the most sustainable societies on Earth

‘Lower Meguro (Shimo Meguro)’, artist: Katsushika Hokusai, c1830–32.
The Met Museum

Hiroko Oe, Bournemouth University

At the start of the 1600s, Japan’s rulers feared that Christianity – which had recently been introduced to the southern parts of the country by European missionaries – would spread. In response, they effectively sealed the islands off from the outside world in 1603, with Japanese people not allowed to leave and very few foreigners allowed in. This became known as Japan’s Edo period, and the borders remained closed for almost three centuries until 1868.

This allowed the country’s unique culture, customs and ways of life to flourish in isolation, much of which was recorded in art forms that remain alive today such as haiku poetry or kabuki theatre. It also meant that Japanese people, living under a system of heavy trade restrictions, had to rely totally on the materials already present within the country which created a thriving economy of reuse and recycling). In fact, Japan was self-sufficient in resources, energy and food and sustained a population of up to 30 million, all without the use of fossil fuels or chemical fertilisers.

The people of the Edo period lived according to what is now known as the “slow life”, a sustainable set of lifestyle practices based around wasting as little as possible. Even light didn’t go to waste – daily activities started at sunrise and ended at sunset.

Clothes were mended and reused many times until they ended up as tattered rags. Human ashes and excrement were reused as fertiliser, leading to a thriving business for traders who went door to door collecting these precious substances to sell on to farmers. We could call this an early circular economy.

Painting of people washing in a river
Washing in a river – Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)
katsushikahokusai.org

Another characteristic of the slow life was its use of seasonal time, meaning that ways of measuring time shifted along with the seasons. In pre-modern China and Japan, the 12 zodiac signs (known in Japanese as juni-shiki) were used to divide the day into 12 sections of about two hours each. The length of these sections varied depending on changing sunrise and sunset times.

During the Edo period, a similar system was used to divide the time between sunrise and sunset into six parts. As a result, an “hour” differed hugely depending on whether it was measured during summer, winter, night or day. The idea of regulating life by unchanging time units like minutes and seconds simply didn’t exist.

Instead, Edo people – who wouldn’t have owned clocks – judged time by the sound of bells installed in castles and temples. Allowing the natural world to dictate life in this way gave rise to a sensitivity to the seasons and their abundant natural riches, helping to develop an environmentally friendly set of cultural values.

Working with nature

From the mid-Edo period onwards, rural industries – including cotton cloth and oil production, silkworm farming, paper-making and sake and miso paste production – began to flourish. People held seasonal festivals with a rich and diverse range of local foods, wishing for fertility during cherry blossom season and commemorating the harvests of the autumn.

This unique, eco-friendly social system came about partly due to necessity, but also due to the profound cultural experience of living in close harmony with nature. This needs to be recaptured in the modern age in order to achieve a more sustainable culture – and there are some modern-day activities that can help.

For instance zazen, or “sitting meditation”, is a practice from Buddhism that can help people carve out a space of peace and quiet to experience the sensations of nature. These days, a number of urban temples offer zazen sessions.

Lady meditates in forest
You don’t need water to go forest bathing.
Palatinate Stock / shutterstock

The second example is “forest bathing”, a term coined by the director general of Japan’s forestry agency in 1982. There are many different styles of forest bathing, but the most popular form involves spending screen-free time immersed in the peace of a forest environment. Activities like these can help develop an appreciation for the rhythms of nature that can in turn lead us towards a more sustainable lifestyle – one which residents of Edo Japan might appreciate.

In an age when the need for more sustainable lifestyles has become a global issue, we should respect the wisdom of the Edo people who lived with time as it changed with the seasons, who cherished materials and used the wisdom of reuse as a matter of course, and who realised a recycling-oriented lifestyle for many years. Learning from their way of life could provide us with effective guidelines for the future.The Conversation

Hiroko Oe, Principal Academic, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Research seminar is on the Way! 😇Detox with nature: Communicating with the great outdoors, urban greenery and its history – 25th May 2021 From 10:00 –11:30 (ZOOM)

We will have a seminar session with a guest lecturer, Professor Hiroko Ochiai (National Hospital Organization Tokyo Medical Center, Japan). This research seminar is conducted via ZOOM.
Professor Ochiai and Dr Oe will present the recent research outcome ‘Detox with nature: Communicating with the great outdoors, urban greenery and its history’.  Professor Ochiai is a Chief of Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, National Tokyo Medical Center and also a Certified physician of Forest Medicine.

Our research focuses on the the well-beings with forest bathing with medical evidence in the community context. This seminar is held in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as ‘Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being’and ‘Goal 17: Partnership for Goals’. This session also aligns with BU2025 strategic investment areas (SIAs), Medical Science.

The BU ECRs, PhD researchers, and MSc students are welcome to this session.
*For more details, please email to Hiroko Oe :hoe@brounemouth.ac.uk

New CMMPH publication on health promotion in post-earthquake Nepal

Today saw the publication of a new paper from an international research team from the UK, Japan and Nepal.  Our research article ‘Assessing knowledge and behavioural changes on maternal and newborn health among mothers following post-earthquake health promotion in Nepal’ has been published in the Open Access journal PLoS ONE [1]. 

The paper reminds us that natural disasters often disrupt health systems affecting the whole population, but especially vulnerable people such as pregnant women, new mothers and their babies. Despite the global progress in maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) programmes over the years, emergency responses after a disaster are often poor. Post-disaster health promotion could play an important role in improving MNCH outcomes. However, evidence remains limited on the effect of post disaster health promotion activities in low-income countries such as Nepal.

The paper reports on an post-disaster intervention study aimed at women in Nepal following the 2015 earthquake. In total, 364 mothers were recruited in the pre-intervention group and 377 in the post-intervention group. The post-intervention group was more likely to have knowledge of at least three danger signs in pregnancy (AOR [Adjusted Odds Ratio] = 2.96, P<0.001), at least three danger signs in childbirth (AOR = 3.8, P<0.001), and at least five danger signs in newborns (AOR = 1.56, P<0.001) compared to the pre-intervention group. The mothers in the post-intervention group were also more likely to ever attend ANC (AOR = 7.18, P<0.001), attend a minimum of four ANC sessions (AOR = 5.09, P<0.001), and have institutional deliveries (AOR = 2.56, P<0.001).

Religious minority groups were less likely to have knowledge of all danger signs compared to the majority Hindu group. Mothers from poorer households were also less likely to attend four ANC sessions. Mothers with higher education were more likely to have knowledge of all the danger signs. Mothers whose husbands had achieved higher education were also more likely to have knowledge of danger signs and have institutional deliveries.  The paper concludes that the health promotion intervention helped the disaster-affected mothers in improving the knowledge and behaviours related to MNCH. However, the authors also comment that vulnerable populations need more support to benefit from such intervention.

 

Reference:

Dhital R, Silwal RC, Simkhada P, van Teijlingen E, Jimba M (2019) Assessing knowledge and behavioural changes on maternal and newborn health among mothers following post-earthquake health promotion in Nepal. PLoS ONE 14(7): e0220191. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220191

New Sociology book by BU’s Dr. Hyun-Joo Lim

Congratulations to Dr. Hyun-Joo Lim, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, on the publication of her book East Asian Mothers in Britain: An Intersectional Exploration of Motherhood and Employment.   This book focus on how Chinese, Japanese and Korean mothers in the UK make sense of their motherhood and employment. It addresses questions such as: “What are the intersecting factors that shape these women’s identities, experiences and stories?”

Contributing further to the continuing discourse and development of intersectionality, this book examines East Asian migrant women’s stories of motherhood, employment and gender relations by deploying interlocking categories that go beyond the meta axes of race, gender and class, including factors such as husbands’ ethnicities and the locality of their settlement. Through this, Dr. Lim argues for more detailed and context specific analytical categories of intersectionality, enabling a more nuanced understanding of migrant women’s stories and identities.

The book is published by Palgrave Macmillan (hardcover ISBN978-3-319-75634-9), see website: https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783319756349

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

Funder Visit – Japan Society for the Promotion of Science on 21st November 2017

BU’s Research & Knowledge Exchange Office is delighted to be hosting the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science visit on Tuesday, 21st November 2017.

The schedule for the event is:

13:00           Welcoming Address

13:05            JSPS – Overview, Institutional and Group Programmes

 Ms Chika Itoi, Deputy Director, JSPS London

13:25            JSPS Fellowship Programmes

 Ms Shiho Hayashida, International Programme Associate, JSPS London

13:45            Experiences of Doing Research in Japan

 Professor Chang Hong Liu (BU’s Department of Psychology)

13:55            Questions and Answers

14:00           Close

This event is open to BU academics and those from other regional universities. To book your place, please email RKEDevFramework@bournemouth.ac.uk, putting JSPS in the subject line. The event will take place on BU’s Talbot Campus, with the room confirmed to you after booking.

Please also see the post concerning JSPS’ Fellowship scheme which is open until 1st December 2017.

 

BU Academic holds Women’s Career Development Workshop in Tokyo

Dr Sachiko Takeda, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Sheffield and Women and Work Research Center (Japan), has been carrying out a research project ‘Developing Women’s Careers in Japan’, funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme. As part of the research finding dissemination, Sachiko and the team recently hosted a workshop at J.P. Morgan’s head office in Tokyo; welcoming 40 attendees from industry, mainly representatives of large organisations’ CSR and diversity related activities. The venue was provided through Ms Tsui, Head of Global Philantropy, Asia Pacific at J.P. Morgan Chase, who supported the project’s purport.

Photo courtesy of Kanae Tomiyama

The project corresponds to a recent call for emergency measures to create a better work environment for women’s career development. Despite that, Japan has one of the most educated female populations in the world, women are often reported to face substantial difficulties in advancing careers at Japanese firms. Nevertheless, some women do manage to progress to senior levels, and it is the aim of the project to understand their career experience, particularly the problems they had faced and how they overcame those barriers. To achieve this aim, Sachiko conducted 25 face-to-face interviews with Japanese women who held managerial and professional roles in large enterprises.

At the workshop, the project team presented the summary of findings and made the following three suggestions to Japanese organisations: 1) organise workshops to raise awareness of male managers; 2) establish practices of women-to-women mentoring; and 3) improve work-life balance for both men and women. In the panel discussion that followed the presentation, the panellists encouraged women to propose, create and implement new systems themselves at organisations for women’s career development. At the same time, the importance of including small and medium sized organisations, which are the majority in Japan, in the movement and extinguishing prejudice against single and/or childless women was also claimed.

Photos courtesy of Kanae Tomiyama

For more information, please contact Dr Sachiko Takeda at stakeda@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Science and Innovation Network Japan

Academics in the UK have co-authored over 15,000 journal papers with academics in Japan between 2010-2014.  Could your research lead to the next co-authored paper with researchers inetworkingn Japan?  In order to facilitate this, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, through the jointly funded UK Science and Innovation Network (SIN), have compiled a list of 40 funds here where academics in the UK can submit proposals to foster research networks with academics in Japan.

If you are considering working with an international partner in your bid, please contact Emily Cieciura, RKEO’s Research Facilitator: EU & International or the relevant Funding Development Officer for you Faculty.

JSPS Summer Programme opportunity for Researchers

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) is the leading research funding agency in Japan, established by the Japanese Government for the purpose of contributing to the advancement of science. Our Summer Programme provides the opportunity pre and post-doctoral researchers to receive an orientation on Japanese culture and research systems and to conduct collaborative research activities with leading research groups at Japanese Universities and research institutions over a period of 2 months during the summer.

Value of award: Return international airfare, maintanence allowance (534,000, JPY), domestic research trip allowance (58,500 JPY) and overseas travel and accident insurance policy are provided.

Eligibility: Applicants need to be a UK national or permanent resident and should be of graduate student status (Master or PhD) or be a recent PhD holder (within the last 6 years) and should be based at a UK university or research institution. Eligible research fields are not limited.

Applications should be sent to the British Council Tokyo. Application guidelines and form are available on their website here: http://www.britishcouncil.org/japan-science-research.htm.

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application. Please direct any enquiries to RKE Ops in the first instance.

Application Deadline: Tuesday, 15th January 2013.  Fellowship to take place during fixed period: 11 June to 21 August 2013