Hideo Kojima, born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1937. Ph.D. from Kyoto University. Professor of Developmental Psychology at Nagoya University.
Fellow (1 September 1997 – 30 June 1998)
As a member of the nucleus “Historical Developmental Psychology”, I analysed Japanese documents and other materials from the seventeenth century onwards that are related to ideas on human development and life-course concepts, especially childhood and youth. A new analytical framework was proposed, and an article to be included in a volume, edited by Willem Koops and Michael Zuckerman, has been written. A part of this work was presented at a symposium held in Bern in July 1998.
The problems of comparison across times and cultures were the key issue in four articles and two lectures I prepared during my stay at NIAS. In order to deal with the comparison that involves historical change and continuity in plural cultural settings, both methodological and theoretical-conceptual problems should be solved. With regard to the latter issues, the concept that I formerly proposed and refined through our discussions in the nucleus is promising. I elaborated on the issue in my articles.
Empirical research on present-day Japanese children was continued at NIAS by re-analysing a set of longitudinal data that I had collected in Japan. The results were also presented in Bern.
With regard to the life-course concepts, I had plenty of opportunity to inspect a series of Dutch-commissioned Japanese drawings on the human life course in the early nineteenth century at the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden. I was also able to find a few European prints that I had not seen before from the collection of the Atlas van Stolk in Rotterdam and a few published books in Europe. I will continue to analyse these drawings and prints, incorporating other relevant information, in order to understand the life-course concepts and human development in their cultural-historical settings.