Seminar Series 2013

The Search for Contentment: Shifting Values in the UK and Japan

13/14 Cornwall Terrace, Outer Circle (entrance facing Regent's Park), London NW1 4QP

Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

As developed economies with ageing populations, neither the UK nor Japan can expect rapid economic growth in coming years. In any case, the pressure placed by rapid growth on resources and natural environments is leading to an increasing focus among richer countries on enjoying the blessings they already have, rather than amassing more.

In economics there is rising interest in how to maximise happiness rather than just GDP. Religion and philosophy have always had plenty to say on this topic, and it raises questions across a broad range of areas. Should we seek contentment primarily through work, hobbies, or family life? Should education be mainly about equipping young people for work and creating good (or global) citizens? Is manufacturing (“monozukuri”) vital to a successful economy, or does the future lie in services, given that consumers have so many material possessions already? And what does “successful” actually mean?

Post-industrial societies seem to have reached a new phase in which they are focussing on issues such as community and sustainability, especially in post-disaster Japan. Our 2013 seminar series will consider the “search for contentment” in the UK and Japan.

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Other seminars in this series:

28 March 2013

Annual Seminar Series Seminar

Shifting Values in Higher Education

In both Japan and the UK, university graduates face intense difficulties finding high-quality employment. In Japan, increasing numbers of young people are classified as ‘freeters’ (people who move frequently between low-paid casual jobs), NEETs (“Not in Education, Employment, or Training”), or hikikomori (young people who have withdrawn from society altogether). In the UK, the trebling of university tuition fees and the associated rise in student indebtedness has added to the pressure for higher education to provide clear routes to employment. But shouldn’t universities also have a broader mission? In difficult economic times, the balance may be shifting.

28 June 2013

Annual Seminar Series Seminar

Shifting Values: What is the role of religion in the internet age?

Interest in formal religion is low in both the UK and Japan. Most people’s involvement is confined to the marking of major rites of passage or celebrating certain long-standing festivals Certainly the role of the church, shrine or temple as the focal point of a local community has been on the wane for some time, particularly in large cities. Has this role now been transferred to other community gatherings, such as football matches, or even to virtual internet communities in which people with similar interests can gather? And if people no longer take their ethical guidance from religion, what – if anything – have they replaced it with?

10 July 2013

Annual Seminar Series Seminar

Shifting Values: Nationalism and Identity

For the third seminar in our series ‘The Search for Contentment: Shifting Values in the UK and Japan’, we have invited two speakers from the social sciences, Dr Toshihito Kayano, a Philosopher and Associate Professor of Tsuda College and Professor Eric Kaufmann of Birkbeck, University of London, to talk about identity and nationalism in the UK and Japan. Post-industrial societies seem to have reached a new phase in which they are focussing on issues such as community coherence and cosmopolitanism but nationalism is also on the rise in both Japan and the UK.

17 October 2013

Annual Seminar Series Seminar

Youth Entrepreneurship in Japan and the UK: New hope for ‘desperate societies’?

Amid gloomy news about deepening youth unemployment and increasingly precarious labour conditions, entrepreneurship has been highlighted as an alternative career path for today’s young adults in both Japan and the United Kingdom. There seems to be a general consensus — or at least a widely shared hope — that more entrepreneurial activity by the young will lead not only to more jobs and greater opportunity, but also to more economic growth. The speakers Noritoshi Furuichi, Japan’s leading young public sociologist. and Stephen Miller of UnLtd – the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, discussed whether youth entrepreneurship can truly serve as a source of hope and vitality for our affluent but ‘desperate’ modern societies, or whether we are we mistaken to place high expectations on young entrepreneurs without supporting their activity at a level commensurate with these expectations.

6 November 2013

Annual Seminar Series Seminar

Shifting Values: How should we care for older people in society?

Despite persistent economic weakness, Japan, as the country with the world’s oldest population, set out in 2000 to establish an entirely new approach to social care. Part-social insurance model, part-general taxation model, the Japanese system has grappled with a series of questions which we are facing in the social care sector here in the UK: what should the state offer; who should be eligible; and how should it be funded? The speakers and chair, Holly Holder, discussed the Japanese experience of health care reform, care for frail and/or vulnerable older people, and the latest thinking on the progress towards funding reform and integration in England.

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