Research projects

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the daily newspaper "Evening Paper of Berlin (Berliner Abendblaetter)" (1810/11) by the Prussian writer and journalist, Heinrich von Kleist, in the historical and actual contexts of the public sphere. The news in the paper contains both truths and lies, which is clearly in conflict with the principles of the enlightened journalism that aims for a reasonable deliberation and for making a public opinion. On the other hand, it is also insisted by the publisher that what he reports is always "true" and indicated that his paper serves the public as a forum for various opinions. The "Evening Paper of Berlin" is very ambivalent about the idea of the "bourgeois public sphere" in the sense of Juergen Habermas, but at the same time it can be also a representative example of the modern journalism because its opposite tendencies to construct and destruct a normative order are corresponding to the two roles attributed to the modern newspapers.

In this research, we aimed to systematically and critically consider various trends of modern natural ethics through examination of F. G. Juenger's postwar thought. Progress on natural ethics research, such as publishing three papers on reproductive medical technology, was observed. On the other hand, We could not do enough consideration about the significance of Juenger's "cosmology" idea, and the comparison with various thoughts after the war. It is the greatest achievement that by repeatedly conducting research sessions, we have rolled up to the translation publication of "Perfektion der Technik" and attached a commentary equivalent to the research paper to this. In the future, after safely completing the translation publication, we would like to continue research on F. G. Juenger and deepen the research on natural ethics while seeing the reaction of readers to this translation.

The present study aimed at the comprehensive examination of F. G. Junger’s essay, "Die Perfektion der Technik" (written in 1939, published after the war, English; “The Failure of the Technology”) from each point of view of philosophy, German literature, ecology and history of science and technology. The focused topics of the book were the following: 1) entanglement of mechanistic view of nature and organic view of life, human and society, 2) paradoxical proccess of decreasing of wealth and leisure by technology, as well as infectiousness of masses to ideology and inevitable deployment of wars in the technological era to all-out wars and 3) the sprouting of ecological idea on ground of the theory of wealth (of existence and of ownership) and of time (of production and of leisure). From synthetic examinations of these viewpoints as following task, it will be possible to stimulate discussion about the public-philosophical significance of science and technology.

This research has illuminated some of the cultural-historical preconditions of the "public sphere" from the standpoints of "temporality" and "fictionality", by means of the case studies of the 18th- and 19th-century German literature. In the self-understanding of the writers of that time, one can first point out a kind of oscillation between two time-consciousnesses: the instantaneousness of publications consumed in ceaselessly changing modes and the eternity of the literary works read on by the following generations. Secondly, they correspond in part to the awareness of the mutability and immutability of a "truth", which suggests the writers' reflection on the fictional character of their own work, that is, of literature. Based on this observation, one could assume that the modern public sphere that emerged in the age of the Enlightenment, whose basic values were the truth and reason, has required paradoxically the literary mediations since its origin.

2019年に行われたスイス国立博物館の「ハイジ展」ならびに国際シンポジウムの成果検証を進めた。「ハイジ」は今日、スイスという国のイメージを強く規定し、ヨハンナ・シュピーリの原作小説から派生した数多くの映像化作品は、スイスに関するさまざまなステレオタイプを生んでいる。白い雪をかぶったアルプスの峰、緑の牧場、ミルクやチーズなどの乳製品、民族衣装の「アルプスの少女」などが代表的なものである。そのようなステレオタイプで構成されるスイス・イメージは、現実のスイスには必ずしも一致しないため、ステレオタイプの拡散は一方で不快感や怒りを呼ぶ。しかし他方では、ステレオタイプが喚起する憧れや欲望が観光産業やキャラクターグッズ産業を刺激し、地域経済の振興に資することもある。こうした点は、もちろんスイス像に関してだけ当てはまるのではなく、富士山や芸者、サムライや忍者の国といったステレオタイプな日本表象に関しても同様に当てはまる。上記のような問題圏について、シンポジウムに参加した世界各国の研究者と意見交換し、異文化理解におけるステレオタイプの功罪について考察を深めた。 それ以外では当初の計画通り、（A）「民衆文化」と「対抗公共圏」の概念、（B）スイスの国民神話としての「ハイジ」像、（C）領域横断的な『ハイジ』の《翻訳》過程という三つの柱で研究を進めている。また、2022年夏に浜松市美術館で開催予定の「ハイジ展」の準備に関連して、高畠華宵、蕗谷虹児、松本かつぢ、高橋真琴など大正～昭和期に活躍したイラストレーターの仕事を図像学的に分析し、1974年の高畑勲のアニメ『アルプスの少女ハイジ』に至る日本の「ハイジ」受容の歴史の流れの中に位置づける作業を行った。 ただし、新型コロナウィルス感染拡大の影響により、アジアの国と地域における「ハイジ」受容に関する研究はやや遅れている。