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This paper compares the effect of paper-based handwritten feedback (PBHF) and that of Tablet PC-based handwritten feedback (TBHF) in learning Japanese writing. The study contributes to the research on motivation, usability and presence when learners are given different media-based handwritten error feedback. The results indicated that there was little difference in the effect of the two media on motivation and usability factors. However, PBHF showed a positive effect on presence factor than TBHF. Also, there was little difference in proficiency improvement after the students reviewed different media based handwritten feedback. The results of this study suggest that language teachers should not use ICT with traditional strategies, but in an innovative way to improve their writing instruction and enhance learners' writing proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the Institute of Conservation is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As a super-aging society, health promotion activities in local Japanese communities are increasingly essential. Developing the health-promotion programs must include the perspective of older people residing in these communities and what they believe to be their regional strengths. This study aimed to clarify the elements of regional strengths perceived by older people living in local Japanese communities from the literature review. Using the internet edition of the Japan Medical Abstracts Society (Ichu-shi), the authors examined papers on Japanese regional residents using relevant keywords. Of 342 considered papers, 14 papers were extracted in this study. As a result, the contents related to the regional strengths perceived by the older people living in the local Japanese community were extracted, classified based on the similarity of the meanings and contents, and then summarized into the elements of the strengths. As the regional strengths, three categories were cited for individual elements: "Actions or behaviors underpinned by experience," "Continuing to live with positivity and vigor," and "Extensive support for the subject and their family." Three categories were cited for environmental elements: "A comfortable environment," "Maintaining intimate and friendly interpersonal relations," and "Support that meets the regional characteristics." Along with individual and environmental elements, support from experts in the region was cited. Hence, it was concluded that the active participation of experts is essential for promoting activities in local communities, and that deepening relationship with older people has the potential to improve their quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Previous studies of aspiration and VOT in Japanese have led to /p/, /t/, and /k/ being inconsistently described as either unaspirated or moderately aspirated. The purpose of this paper is to resolve this issue. Assessing the productions of 13 monolingual Japanese talkers living in Japan, we repeated part of a VOT study that was based on 6 Japanese bilinguals living in the UK. For each talker we assessed the VOT in 44 voiceless stops, including 12 for /p/, 12 for /t/, and 20 for /k/. We found that Japanese VOT for /p/, /t/, and /k/ was 30.0, 28.5, and 56.7ms, respectively, and longer than the VOT of two short lag comparison groups and shorter than the VOT of two long lag comparison groups. We conclude that Japanese voiceless stops have an intermediate degree of aspiration and constitute an exception to the short lag and long lag dichotomy of voiceless stops said to characterize many languages. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We propose a new Japanese text layout for increasing the reading rate. The proposed layout aligns characters in a stepwise manner using the smallest Japanese linguistic unit (bunsetsu) with an incremental indentation. The reading rate obtained using the proposed layout is approximately 1.6‐times faster compared to a conventional Japanese layout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of soft power has engendered lively discourse within the international community. The development of a nation's soft power frequently hinges on cultural communication and the promotion of language. This manuscript concentrates on Japan as a case study and undertakes an investigation of the methods it has employed to cultivate its soft power. To accomplish this objective, Japan's strategies for cultural communication and the promotion of the Japanese language are comprehensively examined. From the perspective of language planning, prestige planning of language and culture constitutes a crucial mode of cultural communication, whereas language education planning (or acquisition planning) is the primary method of language promotion. Japan has adeptly disseminated its culture overseas through cultural communication and language promotion. On one hand, it fashions a "cool culture" embodied by anime and manga to augment cultural appeal and amplify national image. On the other hand, it advances the Japanese language abroad by establishing supportive institutions, dispatching experts and volunteers, and creating online teaching materials. Building on Japan, this paper establishes a theoretical framework for the construction of soft power, employing the aforementioned two approaches as valuable guides for research on soft power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst study abroad (SA) periods hold much promise for foreign language development, increasing research suggests sojourners' experiences are unique, and language development does not always follow a linear trajectory. For some learners, SA has little impact on their language performance despite the affordances of L2 immersion (the Survivors). Other learners maximise the potential of SA, and this has a positive impact on their language development (the Thrivers). This paper examines the selected cases of four Japanese learners of English and their request language performance during a 10-month SA in the UK. Changes in pragmatic knowledge (based on appropriateness ratings) were documented at three equidistant time points. Language contact profile data also provided quantitative insights into the learners' extracurricular language use and qualitative personal reflections. The selected cases illustrate two learners surviving the SA experience, showing minimal change in their request performance. The other two learners thrived during SA, showing accelerated performance in terms of lexical variation at the production level. This paper reports on the case histories of these learners to better understand these unique experiences and pragmatic discrepancies. Suggestions for how learners might be more pragmatically successful during SA are also offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the Institute of Conservation is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the ways in which the indexical meanings that attach to enregistered speaking styles are debated and contested in interaction by younger Japanese adults. Contested meanings include discourses of so-called hyoojungo 'Standard Japanese' and the speaking styles that are collectively described as 'Okinawan dialect', which are associated with the islands of Okinawa Prefecture in Japan. This paper uses data from casual conversations between younger male adults who were all born and raised in Okinawa Prefecture but moved to the main island of Honshu for university. Discourse analysis of these conversations demonstrates how these younger adults negotiate the social meanings attached to Okinawan speaking styles, linking them to broader ideologies of so-called hyoojungo as well as gendered styles, and reproducing normative ideologies of 'good' and 'bad' speech. Homing in on moments in which these speech styles are negotiated, the results of this paper emphasize the persistence of normative linguistic ideologies even as the meaning and content of linguistic styles are being re-imagined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a longitudinal ethnography at a Japanese junior high school, this paper explores how ideologies of Japanese women's language are subverted through girls' everyday linguistic ideological work of breaking presumed linkages between female gender and language. Girls at Sakura Junior High School employed masculine and non-traditional first-person pronouns and created new sets of indexicalities. The ethnography tracks how the girls did this in three important ways: 1) They used the most masculine pronoun, ore, and attached positive metapragmatic meanings (such as "cool," "powerful," "independent," and "assertive") to their use of this pronoun. In doing so, they established a powerful ore register and persona for girl users. 2) They also interpreted their use of boku, a plain masculine pronoun, as gender-appropriate for girls, whereas they negatively regarded boy users of boku as weak mama's boys. 3) They attached strongly negative metapragmatic meanings to feminine pronouns and created an unfavorable feminine register and persona for these pronouns from which they disaligned themselves. The girls' persistence in aligning masculine and non-traditional registers did not point to any evidence of their desire to take on a male identity, but rather to their creation of positive indexicalities about masculine pronouns and to their engagement in the social capital of maleness that accompanies male speech. Consequently, girls' ideological work contextually constructed new indexical fields where girls established their own space in which they severed the naturalized relationships between language, identities, and social categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studies in Conservation is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper is concerned with tomoesen, a special method of three-way playoffs in the Japanese sumo world. In the tomoesen, only two wrestlers fight each other, with the third man resting for a while. Then, the winner of the first fight has to fight against the resting man. The former may be either a winner or a loser. This kind of fight will continue until there appears some one who bravely wins the two successive fights. Since the Pacific War ended, while more than 450 fights have been carried out, we have witnessed special tomoesen merely seven times. From a theoretical viewpoint, we can show that each of the men who come up to the ring has the victory probability of 5/14, and the third man, the probability of 4/14. The difference between those two numbers is 1/14 or 7.14286,,, . Although tomoesen is not a fair game in a strict sense, it has nevertheless been accepted by the public as an exciting sport game. It seems that there exists a reasonable balance between fairness and excitement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late night TV programs are currently common among several Japanese broadcasting corporations, and some stations continuously broadcast 24 h a day. An epidemiological study was conducted on the effects of watching late night TV on morningness-eveningness preference and sleep habits of Japanese students aged 18–22 years attending university, a physical therapist or a nurse training school. Students who watched late night TV were more evening-typed (Mann–Whitney U-test, P = 0.011) and went to bed later (Chi-squared test, P < 0.001) than those who did not. There was a significant negative correlation between the frequency with which students watched late night TV and morningness after a Morningness-Eveningness questionnaire was conducted (Kruskal–Wallis test, P < 0.001). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kotowaza were created by gaining experience and through recurring events over the years of existence of the Japanese people. The purpose of this study is to conduct a qualitative analysis of Japanese kotowaza in cognitive-linguistic discourse to divide idioms into categories and groups with specific sociocultural features. The paper focuses in detail on the semantic features of 20 kotowaza that use animal symbols as an idiomatic metaphor. In this paper, 10 proverbs with the central animal visualization, neko, were analyzed. Visionary metaphors are developed based on the comparison of cat's body parts and behavior with human qualities or characteristics of objects and phenomena. The analysis of the remaining 10 kotowaza showed that the meaning of imagery could originate from Chinese tradition and then change under the influence of Japanese style. Hence, it follows that the meanings of some kotowaza, or the animals they use, can be interpreted differently depending on context. However, the key meanings of proverbs are engrained in the national consciousness of native speakers. It was also observed that kotowaza used oxymoron. It is possible to gain a correct understanding of what kotowaza means through analyzing literal and idiomatic relations in the proverb. Each proverb has an animal symbol, the meaning of which is engrained and originates from the cultural and historical development of the Japanese nation. The practical application of the study lies in the fact that these findings can be used for further study of the special aspects of manifestation of sociocultural heritage at the linguistic level within the phraseology of the Japanese language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taliesin is the home and working facility that Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) began for himself in 1911 and which remained a work in progress for the rest of his life. Integral to its esthetic is the display of the Japanese and Chinese paintings of which Wright was a discriminating collector; these were mounted specifically to fit locations in the important public rooms. Their conservation was framed by the restoration of the building to address inherent compromises, later unsympathetic changes, and mitigation of internal environmental extremes. It considered the decision to display the original works rather than seasonal removal or replacement with photo-reproductions. Importance was attached to the conservation objectives, procedures, materials, techniques, and sensibilities inherent in the treatment of large format Asian paintings, with particular emphases on the variations from traditional practices that have proved valuable for treatment of works displayed in Western contexts. Attention was given to how the paintings could be reintegrated into their original locations with protective glazing and framing that are sympathetic to the original decorative schemes. The place of specialization within the conservation profession is considered, the rationales that substantiate it, and what value it has in the cross-pollination of technical developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Papers in Regional Science is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the placement and function of the discipline of geography in the expansion of the Japanese empire, doing so through the prism of the work and field research of Tada Fumio, a leading geographer in Japan both before and after 1945. This examination of this aspect of Tada Fumio's career and its interweaving with the construction and consolidation of Japan's empire will broaden recent studies of imperial Japan's simultaneous encounter with geopolitics and fascism while engaging with Japan's developing ideas about geography as a political and cultural discipline. This paper demonstrates the importance of the entwined histories of Japanese and German geographers in the Japanese empire, as well as documenting Tada Fumio's activities in Manchuria (northeast China) and on the Korean peninsula. Finally, the paper reveals fissures in the historical record of Japanese geographers in continental Asia and, until such time as more subaltern voices can be found, seeks to lay down the foundation for further research on the study of geography in the Japanese empire. • Connections between German, Japanese and Korean Geographers prior to 1945. • Teaching and research in academic geography in the Japanese Empire. • Tada Fumio's connections with Keijo Imperial University, colonial Korea and Japanese Empire. • Field work expeditions including Tada Fumio to Manchuria and Mengjiang. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Regorafenib is an oral diphenylurea multikinase inhibitor and currently approved for use following third-line therapy for metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Only one case has previously been reported of metastatic CRC showing a complete response (CR) to regorafenib. Case presentation: A 68-year-old Japanese man underwent laparoscopy-assisted ileocecal resection and D3 lymphadenectomy due to his ascending colon cancer. Eighteen months after surgery, a laparoscopic hepatic left lateral segmentectomy was performed due to a liver tumor, and a pathological diagnosis of colorectal liver metastasis was made. Three months after the second surgery, contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) revealed multiple lung metastases. The patient had undergone 18 courses of the FOLFOX + bevacizumab chemotherapy regimen as their first-line therapy and 11 courses of the FOLFIRI + ramucirumab chemotherapy regimen as their second-line therapy. As their third-line therapy, the patient was administered the regorafenib chemotherapy regimen. We evaluated the chemotherapy treatment's effect on the lung tumors by CT after 3, 7, 11, and 17 courses of the regorafenib chemotherapy regimen, finding that the lung tumors had shrunk with time; thus, each tumor was considered a partial response (PR) based on the RECIST guidelines. After 21 courses of the regorafenib chemotherapy regimen, the chemotherapy was discontinued in response to the patient's wishes. Even at 1 and 3 months after the discontinuation of the chemotherapy, CT revealed that the lung tumors had shrunk, with each considered a PR. Furthermore, 9 months after the discontinuation of the chemotherapy, CT revealed scarring of the lung tumors. This was considered a CR, rather than a PR. The patient remains disease-free 18 months after the discontinuation of chemotherapy. Conclusions: In this paper, we present the second case of radiological CR with regorafenib for multiple lung metastases of ascending colon cancer. Currently, there is no consensus on a treatment strategy for patients with radiological CR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gdansk Journal of East Asian Studies / Gdanskie Studia Azji Wschodniej is the property of Jagiellonian University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Physical Education Journal is the property of National Society of Physical Education of the Republic of China and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While freedom has traditionally been discussed in philosophy and political theory, this paper proposes an anthropological approach to the study of freedom. The focus is on the Japanese word amae, which Takeo Doi calls the 'key' to Japanese culture and contrasts with the 'Western' concept of freedom. After discussing Doi's influential work, meanings are reconstructed from interviews and group discussions with Japanese people about amae. The interviewees define amae literally in terms of social 'non-independence' and, unlike Doi, understand it in a complex intertwining with freedom on the one hand and autonomy on the other. Overall, the paper argues that amae can hardly serve as a 'key' to understanding the Japanese, but can stimulate fruitful anthropological reflections not only on Japanese culture, but also on the concept of freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies is the property of National Taiwan Normal University, College of International Studies & Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

What are the institutional features that incentivize established powers to join rising powers' new institutions? Going beyond alliance versus rivalry, this paper develops a novel theory in answering this question. We argue that the established power must address two primary design issues: 1. how to navigate the control and burden-sharing trade-off and 2. how to limit the potential diffusion of power by rendering the new institution "complementary" to the existing order. To the extent that these issues are resolved in line with the established power's (EP's) preferences, the EP is more likely to join the rising powers' institutions. We support our theory with an in-depth case analysis of the Japanese-led Asian Development Bank, utilizing primarily archival materials. The relatively under-theorized core question has both historical and contemporary relevance. The paper also advances the history of US multilateral economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document shows the layout for manuscripts to be submitted to the journal of the Japan research association for textile end-uses written in Japanese. Since final images will be made based on the manuscripts prepared by Microsoft Word, authors must follow this document in detail. Authors also must be prepare manuscripts according to the instruction for the preparation of the journal. Final images might be different from the layout produced by the authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the paper version of the grayscale task, this study examines the impact of aging and gender on horizontal and vertical pseudoneglect in healthy right-handed Japanese people. Participants included 168 (84 women and 84 men) healthy right-handed participants between the ages of 18 and 85, which were divided into three age cohorts (i.e., young, middle, and older). When administering the task, in the horizontal condition, the stimulus set of the grayscale task was positioned at the center of the desk. In the vertical condition, the stimulus set was placed at the participants' eye level on the front screen. A reliable left bias was observed across all age groups in the horizontal task, although individual differences in the young group were significant. Moreover, gender differences and age-gender interactions were not confirmed. Similarly, in the vertical task, an upward bias was identified in both women and men across all age groups. Furthermore, there was a weak correlation between the horizontal and vertical bias index. These results were inconsistent with those of a previous study and other research using manual line bisection and landmark tasks. Further, we comprehensively deliberated on the cognitive/neural basis of horizontal and vertical pseudoneglect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a sociological and historical investigation of the transnational alliances in the Japanese sixties movement. From the mid-1960s to 1970s, some Japanese New Left movements had prevailed by taking part in transnational activism. Yet, these movements had then bifurcated into two directions; those that were linked primarily with the western First World on the one hand and movements that were connected to the Third World revolutionary movements on the other hand. This paper explores the reasons for such bridging and division of transnational ties. By looking specifically at the civic anti-Vietnam War movement of Beheiren and the clandestine movement of the Japanese Red Army, the paper argues that it was the culture that had both bridged and created holes between the network clusters. Through investigation of the culture (ideology, beliefs, taste, etc.) and biographical backgrounds (class consciousness, generation, and memory) of each group member, the paper suggests that the activists' culture and imaginative linkage with the outside world was the crucial factor in bridging the structural hole between movements that were remotely apart and embedded in different national settings. Yet, it also shows that different cultural and biographical backgrounds of the members of these two movements had created a cultural hole between the transnational networks that they have developed. Thus, in general, the paper shows how the duality of culture -- bridging and diverging aspects -- operates in the process of transnational network building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main research question addressed in this paper is the following: What are the consequences of the purge of the communists and their sympathizers for the development of postwar Japanese society during the Allied Occupation (known as the Red Purge)? According to conventional wisdom, the Red Purge was an illegal and unfair suppression regarding the freedom of speech and a threat to the very survival of democracy in Japan. Surveying previous works on the Red Purge demonstrates that not a single work discusses any constructive aspect of the Red Purge. Criticizing this trend in the historiography, Thomas French correctly pointed out that these previous works tended to neglect or undervalue violent and aggressive behaviors of the Japanese Communist Party and its militant policy after mid-1949. This paper goes a little further, trying to find, if any, constructive aspects of the Red Purge. My hypothesis is that the Red Purge had many destructive and biased measures, but it was paradoxically a necessary evil to help establish a law-abiding Japanese society. The architects of the Red Purge, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, the Japanese government, and corporate executives, were careful not to violate the constitution or labor laws when they executed the Red Purge. They established an important precedent that they had to act in accordance with the constitution and laws. In a paradoxical way, going through the Red Purge actually made Japan a law-abiding country in the long run. This paper tests the validity of this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acceptance of ethical literary criticism in Japan has gone through three stages: initial period, high period and falling period. The main reason for its decline lies in the prevalent misunderstanding in Japanese academia, simply equating ethical literary criticism with Chinese traditional ethical criticism or moral criticism. To dispel misunderstandings and deepen Japanese scholars' understanding of ethical literary criticism, it is necessary to emphasize the interdisciplinary characteristic of ethical literary criticism within the academic community in Japan. Taking into account the characteristics of Japanese literature and the research tradition of Japanese academia, this paper suggests three interdisciplinary approaches: 1) the interdisciplinary path of literature and psychology, which enjoys a broad research base in Japan; 2) the interdisciplinary path of literature and brain science, an area that has not gained substantial research in Japan; 3) the interdisciplinary path of literature and science and technology with significant development prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Suleyman Demirel University Institute of Social Sciences is the property of Suleyman Demirel University, Institute of Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Japan's low fertility rate has been a concern for over thirty years. Despite a vast literature on the topic, numerous policies and measures to boost the country's fertility rate, and the will of Japanese people to have a family, Japan seems powerless to remedy the problem commonly called shôshika in Japanese. Yet, Southern parts of Japan show that it does not equally affect the archipelago. Remote islands in Japan have an exceptionally high fertility rate compared to other developed countries. The paper aims to understand the reasons for their high fertility rate by focusing on late and lifelong singlehood (bankonka and mikonka) as a critical factor of the shôshika. It will particularly pay attention to the perception of love and romance in one of those remote islands: Tokunoshima. It will argue that the absence of commodification in romantic intercourse facilitates matchmaking that would result in the creation of a family. People are more likely to meet someone with whom they will have a family when the dating process is not embedded with commodified gestures. On another note, although their view of dating is similar to individuals in other developed countries, the practice of dating takes alternative forms that force them not to rely on the commodification of romance, which increases their chances of matchmaking. As a result, inhabitants of Tokunoshima quickly find a marriage partner, which contributes to the absence of late and lifelong singlehood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lawyer regulatory system will usually include a mechanism to discipline lawyers who have committed misconduct. Such mechanism may have different objective(s) and function(s), which may vary from jurisdictions to jurisdictions. The Japanese system seemingly has, inter alia, deterrent and educational purposes: discouraging further misconduct and/or educating lawyers to reduce recurrence of similar misconduct. This paper focuses on the deterrent function on Japanese lawyers who have been disciplined. Through an empirical analysis of the cases of lawyers who have been disciplined more than once, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of the lawyer disciplinary system in Japan in discouraging the disciplined lawyers from committing misconduct again. It also hypothesises on some of the possible contributory factor(s) for the multiple violations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defining radioiodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer: efficacy and safety of lenvatinib by radioiodine-refractory criteria in the SELECT trial. What's more, Nair's paper, published in 2015, was a summary of the FDA's approval of lenvatinib for radioiodine-resistant thyroid cancer treatment, and the data here were identical to those in the SELECT study. Keywords: lenvatinib; meta-analysis; radioiodine-refractory thyroid carcinoma; systematic review EN lenvatinib meta-analysis radioiodine-refractory thyroid carcinoma systematic review 275 276 2 01/03/23 20230201 NES 230201 We read with great interest the paper by Yan et al., sharing the perspective that lenvatinib is beneficial for the treatment of radioiodine-refractory thyroid cancer in terms of the extension of progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS).[1] We greatly appreciated the authors' contributions in studying the treatment of thyroid cancer refractory to radioactive iodine, however, it seems to be some critical problems when the authors drew to this conclusion. [Extracted from the article]

This paper analyzes intercultural issues in marriages between Japanese men and women from former Soviet Union countries. Focusing on the differences in meanings and assumptions that guide couples in their marriages and the historical-cultural roots of these differences, the paper argues that spouses adapt, negotiate, and change their expectations to each other in response to the cultural encounters that deviate from their familiar cultural patterns. The data for the research was collected by the author between 2006 and 2014 in urban areas of Japan. It consists in-depth interviews with Russian-speaking women (48) and Japanese men (20), participant observation in couples' homes, women's gatherings, and communication in an online Russian-language community. The analysis reveals the effects of cultural differences on relationships between spouses in international marriages in Japan, discusses the fluidity and change of cultural notions over time, and explains how spouses justify these changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public space will be studied regarding history, use, and the evolution of urban space. Through culture, architecture, and behavior, this paper investigates how Japanese and foreigners use public space. Foreigners use open spaces such as neighborhood parks more frequently than Japanese people, who consider space sacred and private. Because of this study, urban space will be analyzed from the perspective of Japanese culture and customs as well as foreign culture to qualify the precise meaning of space, urban space, and cultural space, within the context of diverse conditions and ethnicities. Residents who frequently use neighborhood parks recognize that foreigners are more welcome and that spatial accessibility contributes to the creation of a unifying space in their neighborhoods. Understanding cultural views and ethnic behavior is critical to the design and implementation of effective and creative urban spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a host of research on the structure of working memory (WM) and its relationship with intelligence in adults, but only a few studies have involved children. In this paper, several different WM models were tested on 170 Japanese school children (from 7 years and 5 months to 11 years and 6 months). Results showed that a model distinguishing between modalities (i.e., verbal and spatial WM) fitted the data well and was therefore selected. Notably, a bi-factor model distinguishing between modalities, but also including a common WM factor, presented with a very good fit, but was less parsimonious. Subsequently, we tested the predictive power of the verbal and spatial WM factors on fluid and crystallized intelligence. Results indicated that the shared contribution of WM explained the largest portion of variance of fluid intelligence, with verbal and spatial WM independently explaining a residual portion of the variance. Concerning crystallized intelligence, however, verbal WM explained the largest portion of the variance, with the joint contribution of verbal and spatial WM explaining the residual part. The distinction between verbal and spatial WM could be important in clinical settings (e.g., children with atypical development might struggle selectively on some WM components) and in school settings (e.g., verbal and spatial WM might be differently implicated in mathematical achievement). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of the Internet has enabled us to enjoy the music created in various countries. But still, it is often difficult to understand the lyrics written in foreign languages. Professional translators have published many international songs with lyrics that fit the melody so that the ordinary people can enjoy the lyrics of such international songs. This paper discusses lyrics transcreation into the Japanese language. Also, the paper presents an interactive visual lyrics transcreation system and describes the details of its implementation. This system allows users to select temporary lyrics from a set of tentative translations and then freely modify the lyrics with a real-time visualization mechanism. We also propose a lyrics translation algorithm that solves an essential problem of lyrics translation into Japanese. In this study, we interviewed two experts regarding problems with lyrics translation and received reviews of our presented system. We also conducted preliminary experiments with 19 participants to determine the best combination of user interface components for our system. We performed additional user experiments inviting 12 participants to compare lyrics transcreation using the presented system to manual lyrics transcreation. Lyrics transcreation by the presented system brought better results against those of manual transcreation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies that introduced country musicians outside the US have expanded our views on the creators of American country music. They have, however, reinforced our notion that non-US country musicians merely imitate the American "original." More recent studies have advanced the field by asking how non-US actors use country music to manipulate the borders between their countries and the US by playing country music. Yet they emphasize that non-US actors exclusively encounter US culture through country music. This paper pushes the field forward to mapping country music onto post-war Japan, locating it within a Japanese domestic context, and showing how non-US actors used country to control the ideological context created there. By doing so, it rejects the common perception that the Japanese merely imitated the "authentic" American country music. Japanese men enjoyed American country music not simply because it was American, but precisely because they could make it their own. This paper examines why certain male musicians played country music as they recovered from defeat in World War II between 1945 and the mid-1950s. To do so, it illustrates how men--country musicians and their critics alike--performed and discussed country music during this period. Ultimately, this paper argues that country musicians played country to embody an alternative masculinity that could serve as both a deviation and critique of the expectations and direction of mainstream Japanese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide, companies in the automotive sector are constantly trying to improve and optimize their business processes and the way the components that define their business ecosystem are integrated, in order to reach global supremacy, often expressed through revenues, profits or number of employees. It seems that a constant clash between Japanese and German companies is happening on this huge stage. The aim of the paper is to portray the existing, intense competition between Japanese and German automotive companies using criteria such as revenues, profits, number of employees backed by 2019 data and highlighting notable differences in their production systems. The methodology used is quantitative and based on the research of secondary sources such as articles and reports (ranks). The findings show an intense competition between companies in the automotive sector and a concentration of power from the two main power poles that are subject to this paper: Japan and Germany; the supremacy is yet to be decided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the privileged position Japanese citizens held during the era of the White Australia Policy. The Immigration Restriction Act (IRA) was introduced in December 1901. As the major piece of legislation in the now-infamous White Australia Policy, the Act made it virtually impossible for non-Europeans to migrate to Australia and closed Australia to further settlement by the Japanese. However, Japanese people enjoyed a special position among non-Europeans under the White Australia Policy thanks to Japan's rising international status, as well as its sustained diplomatic pressure on Australia. Although the Commonwealth government was determined to exclude Japanese permanent settlers, it sought in many ways to render the policy of exclusion less offensive to the Japanese. In the early 1900s, two minor modifications to the IRA were implemented in order to relax the restrictions imposed on Japanese citizens. Moreover, in the administration of Commonwealth immigration laws, Japanese people received far more lenient treatment than other non-Europeans and were treated with respect and extra courtesies by Australian officials. By examining these privileges afforded to Japanese citizens, this paper aims to shed new light on the issue of Japanese exclusion under the White Australia Policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on essays about ethnic discrimination and immigrant mobility in the United States. Wage discrimination in the case of Japanese immigrants; Impact of community characteristics on occupational mobility of immigrants; Mobility of Jewish immigrants.

Wearable devices offer a wealth of data for ubiquitous computing researchers. For instance, sleep data from a wearable could be used to identify an individual's harmful habits. Recently, devices which are unobtrusive in size, setup, and maintenance are becoming commercially available. However, most data validation for these devices come from brief, short-term laboratory studies or experiments which have unrepresentative samples that are also inaccessible to most researchers. For wearables research conducted in-the-wild, the prospect of running a study has the risk of financial costs and failure. Thus, when researchers conduct in-the-wild studies, the majority of participants tend to be university students. In this paper, we present a month-long in-the-wild study with 31 Japanese adults who wore a sleep tracking device called the Oura ring. The high device usage results found in this study can be used to inform the design and deployment of longer-term mid-size in-the-wild studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether a forced displacement of an ethnic group can lead to long-run changes to their spatial distribution and whether this shock can also lead to changes in where new migrants settle. I use the Canadian government's internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II, as well as their post-war forced resettlement, as a natural experiment. I find that the policy led to dramatic resettlement patterns; areas where Japanese Canadians were removed from had far fewer Japanese Canadians after World War II, with this effect persisting for decades. Despite these displacement patterns, I find that both the pre-war and post-war settlement patterns drive where new Japanese migrants settle within Canada, suggesting that the disruption of the connections and networks formed by Japanese migrants before World War II were not fully dismantled by the Canadian government's wartime policies. Reinforcing this mechanism, I show using Facebook's social connectedness data that Japanese population shares from both 1931 and 1951 predict whether a Canadian Census Division is more socially connected with Japan today. The results from this paper show that, despite Canada's forced dispersal of its Japanese population across the country, networks and forces that connect Census Divisions to Japan and draw in new migrants continued to persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public administration and governance must adapt to the changing socio-economic environment, improving quality, process efficiency, and collaboration. Hence, public administration and public governance models have been significantly modified multiple times, resulting in differences in public governance practices. This paper examines different public governance models' principles in Slovene and Japanese public administration. It quantifies elements based on the models' principles and applies them to an empirical case using a survey of 55 Slovene and 135 Japanese public managers. The independent samples t-test examines the differences in characteristics of public governance practices between state administration and local government in Slovenia and Japan. The results show that state administration institutions in both countries are strongly characterised by the (Neo)Weberian model's principles, while Slovenia's local government leans towards Digital-era governance (DEG) and good governance (GG) principles. Japan's state and local administrations show equal presence of New public management (NPM), DEG, and GG models. The study aims to bridge a research gap by providing new findings on how different public governance models can be found at various Slovene and Japanese public administration levels and offers insights for public managers and policymakers for future public administration reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]