| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,700,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 2003: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
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| Research Abstract |
This research have tried to consider the relationship between the advanced medicine and the Japanese traditional views of death in perspective of religious studies. Then, I treated the problem of brain death and organ transplants as an example in the advanced medicine, and considered the Japanese traditional views of death by examing the shedlike structure on grave, called "Suya" at Oki islands and so forth. My interim conclusions are as follows : 1)In Japanese society, since the first heart transplant by Dr.Wada in 1968, the concept of death gradually has become ambiguous. Especially since the later 1980s, the concept of "death of the second person" appeared and was applied to the situation of brain death in ICU, and this ambiguous tendency was more clear, as the Organ Transplant Law that was passed in 1997, and included the concept of self-determination of death, shows. 2)The idea that donors "live on" in the bodies of recipients has been found in so many donor families in Japan, and sometimes there is religious consciousness related to salvation for their loss and grief. After all, this idea is based on the concept of heart death, not of brain death, and there may be an influence of Japanese traditional views of death. 3)My investigation at Oki-Dozen, Tsushima, and Iki islands shows the various aspects of the shedlike structure on grave, "Suya" that remains in these areas, although changing its functions and significances. In spite of rapid development of new biotechnology and advanced medicine, such traditional views of death as we find in these areas seem to influence the donor families unconsciously.
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