How did Japan became modern? Japan was barely able to maintain its independence around middle of the 19th century, but only 50 years later, it gained the a position and reputation as one of the great powers of the world. After a bitter defeat in WW2, it rose to the top of the world economy after only a 30-year effort.

This “success story” impresses people who have been interested in Japan’s way of development, and sometimes those with an interest in Japanese culture. It is hard for both Japanese and others to answer the question “What’s Japan?” ,. We should take the opportunity to ruminate on the past, the present, and the future of “Japan”.

The course focuses on the analysis of choice from the two perspectives: “freedom to choose” and “freedom from choosing.” Rationalists argue that bad choices are the result of bad decision-making and the individuals are the ones to blame. How people make or do not make choices are, in fact, influenced not only by who they are, but also by the social environment where the decision-making takes place. Poor/good choice-making are the consequences of the following conditions which can be attributed to the individuals and/or the social environment: 1.Income constraints (environment/individual); and/or 2. Lack of knowledge (environment/individual); and/or 3. Lack of information (environment/individual); and/or 4. Lack of [good] choices (environment); and/or 5. Limited access to choices (environment/individual); and/or 6. Lack of freedom or Too much Freedom (environment); and/or 7. Laziness/ Decision [making] Fatigue (environment/ individual)

Analysis of choice behaviors and how people make choices by considering these conditions above would help uncover where the problems may lie, thus improving the solution matters.

The course draws on some arguments from the works of Daniel Kahneman, Cass R. Sunstein, Richard Thaler, Peter L. Berger and T. Luckmann, Niklas Luhm

This course aims to introduce the fundamental theories of administration for local governance. It also follows the latest local government studies not only in Japan but also around the world. The instructor will discuss the contemporary issues of local governance with students, including the role of administration, the differences between public organizations and private firms, decentralization, local government performance, the role of citizens, and digital-era governance.

The progress of a networked society has brought about not only daily electronic commerce but also an accompanying industrial structure, as well as great change in our social lives. On the other hand, new problems have arisen in our current network society and various legislation has been enacted in order to address these issues. In this class, I will explain some legal structures related to cyber law using current IT-related legislation and I will give lectures on how to deal with these legal issues in our network society based on some related examples. Some legal issues of our network society such as the invasion of privacy, defamation, the infringement of personal rights and interests, the problems related to infringement of intellectual property rights such as copyright infringement, cybercrime such as unauthorised access, illegal and harmful content issues will be described in detail.

Furthermore, this GIGA class will focus on the structure of Japanese Law and will comprehensively convey knowledge of the Japanese legal system. In democratic societies, society functions effectively on the basis of laws and regulations. In Japan, these laws and regulations are constituted from several sources.

This course is designed to assist students to explore various topics underlying international development from both theoretical and methodological perspectives. We particularly focus on the human capital accumulation which is regarded as a driving force of economic development.

Asia Workshop is the dynamic working space where students and instructors work together to discuss emerging issues in Asia. Topics for discussion changes every year to keep up with changes at both regional and global scales.

For this year, the workshop focuses the discussion on “What is Asia?” Is Asia just a group of countries with different culture, histories and economies? What is so unique about Asia? What, in addition to its geographical location, makes Asia Asian and remain Asian in the context of globalization? To answer the question, we will provide a series of guest-speaker lectures on Asia and its member countries to generate understanding in width and in depth about Asia and how it has adapted to globalization.

We also design activities of fieldwork simulation to engage students in intensive observation of what is around in their living environment. We will introduce Immersive technologies to facilitate the students’ first-hand observations.

This class aims for enhancing the understanding of contemporary international political economy, security and society mainly in East Asia through examining theories, policy frameworks and practices. All sessions are conducted in English.

”Region” could be defined in various terms. In international relations, it generally indicates the multilateral groupings of neighboring nations. However, when it comes to the term regionalism, it suggests a functional relation that bundles multiple nations with their political, economic and cultural inheritance, often based on the geographical advantages. Region could be formed either inherently or arbitrary. Thus, the “Region/Regionalism” is a dynamic concept of geopolitics/economics, which rests between the global governance, the bilateral rational choice of the government, and people’s perceptions.

This course specifically focuses on following agendas: 1)theory and practices of regionalism in East Asia, 2)security in Asia-Pacific region, 3)Japan’s foreign policy on regionalism.

This course aims at introducing students to the contemporary Indonesia. It will cover the recent changes in Indonesian society, popular culture and sub-cultures, and business to some extent. A guest lecture will be organized to provide students with current information.

This course will explore conceptual, theoretical, and accumulated knowledge of international security and conflict studies. Security studies in 21st century face with complex and uncertain international trends: 1) rise of emerging powers (how do emerging powers change the international security order?), 2) asymmetrical threats (terrorism and insurgency activities), 3) proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and conventional weapons, 4) emerging importance of new domains (space and cyberspace). Throughout this semester, this course will conduct in-depth lectures and discussion dealing with these emerging trends of international security.

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.

No one is irrelevant to gender. In this course, starting with the viewpoints of ‘gender’, students firstly look into various discomfortable feelings in daily lives and our society, and then, try to reconsider gender issues in work. The goal of this course is to learn the ways to figure out concrete and feasible proposals to diminish gender gaps.

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.

Irrespective of device and software, foundation of novel fabrications is to enhance the completion degree of a product by utilizing the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) cycle. This class deals with basic technologies and measurement techniques required for novel fabrication from both the analog and digital aspects. To experience practical fabrication processes and to learn more advanced technical and consideration skills, this course consists of three exercise rounds each of which has a different hands-on theme.

The Internet becomes a social infrastructure in the last 20 years. On the other hand, only specialists know the details of the Internet technology. The goal of this class is that you learn the concept of Internet, how to work using the Internet. The architecture of the Internet is very simple. The simplicity is the most important point to be base of various system.

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.

Quantum computers and quantum networks (including quantum satellites!) are all the rage in the news these days. Are you curious how they work, and how they are built? Come try using a quantum computer yourself!

Quantum information processing (QIP) is a fast-growing, interdisciplinary field spanning both classical computer science and quantum physics. QIP is addressing fundamental questions about computability, and the technologies being developed in QIP-related research will have a powerful impact on classical computing as the evolution of IT dictated by Moore’s Law brings us to the level of building computers out of individual atoms. Over the coming decades, the principles of QIP will be critical to understanding and developing information technologies. Thus, studying QIP is valuable even for students who are not planning research careers in the field.

Through the Keio Quantum Computing Center, we will be using IBM’s best quantum computers. This opportunity is unique to SFC — very few universities anywhere in the world have access to these machines. Come join us so you can brag to your friends!

Music is ubiquitous in our environment. A question in this course is how music is processed in our brain and how we can design the environment and change our brain functions with music. Recently, an emerging research field of Music and Neuroscience (“Neuromusic”) has been elucidating the neural correlates of music perception, cognition, and performance. In this course, I will overview what has been known so far in the Neuromusic research from the integrated point of view of Neuroscience, Evolutional Biology, Developmental Brain Science, Human Movement Science, and Cognitive Science.

In this lecture, we will discuss computing systems that deal with Behavior and Affective (human internal states such as emotion and mood). We will discuss the background, concepts, technologies, construction methods, application examples, utilization, social implementation, and challenges of advanced research in this field. Students will learn practically through assignments to actually create such programs, and at the end of the semester, two or three students will work on a mini-project.

Whether you are going to do some kind of business or go into the company, data-driven analytical problem-solving skills and hands-on understanding of data utilization are essential in the days ahead.

This course aims to develop minimum data literacy to survive in this data-driven age for the students with at least 10th-11th grade mathematics skill and basic familiarity of Excel, on the assumption that they do not have much experience in data analysis and utilization.

Classes will be conducted interactively as much as possible. We will invest a considerable amount of time for each homework review and answers to the questions received in a weekly questionnaire.

In this course, we share the idea of “pattern language”, which is a language describing practical knowledge in a certain domain of creative practice, and how to create it.

The original idea of pattern languages was proposed by architect Christopher Alexander. The late 1970’s book he wrote with his colleagues contained 253 patterns on practical architectural design. In the context of architecture, the pattern language was developed in order to serve a lingua franca for designing buildings between architects and residents. Alexander anticipated that people could get involved in the designing process of their homes and towns. Ten years after the book was published, Alexander’s idea of pattern languages was adopted in the field of software design. Since the 2000’s, the fields in which pattern languages are applied have shown even more expansion to cover creative human actions such as education, learning, presentation, collaboration, social innovation, policy making, disaster prevention, life design and even beauty in daily life. Pattern languages are now used to connect all kinds of people with all kinds of different experiences. The patterns help bring light to the less noticeable parts of a person’s experience, so the person can reconsider the experience to talk about it and share it with others. In the classes, you will learn the concept and cases of pattern language