Conversations With My Childhood Self A Japanese Girl S Life

Would you like to go back in time and talk to your childhood self ? What events would you discuss? What advice would you give? This is the true story of Terri Yamaguchi, a Japanese girl growing up in a poor family during the 1970s and '80s. Each childhood episode is then followed by fictional discussions between the girl and her adult self, talking about the painful events of that day. The adult enters a meditational state in order to contact the girl while she is dreaming, and by using her adult perspective and spiritual beliefs, is able to console, encourage, and provide explanations for her childhood self in an effort to help her through painful times. This not only creates a healing effect for the girl, but the healing of the child also transcends time, reaching into the future to simultaneously heal the adult. The book begins with an introduction to Terri and her family and the ircumstances of their lives. The dominant role of her father; the subservient role of her mother; the embarrassment of being poor; the controlling influence of their church; and how these forces combined with the nature of Japanese society to condition Terri to think and feel the way she did - as passive, powerless, and always obedient.

But as she grows older she finds important ways to overcome this conditioning, that eventually rescue her from what she thought would be a predetermined life of drudgery and control, and the simply awful fate of repeating her mother's life.

The stories are told in chronological order, beginning with memories of events that occurred as an infant, through to events that occurred at 24 years of age.

An alternative title for the book was 'Things I Wish I'd Known as a Child', and this is because the conversations that occur between Terri as an adult and Terri as a child, provide the girl with explanations that she never received from the adults around her at the time, and also provide her with spiritual philosophies that enable her to see the painful events of her life in a completely different light. Not just the wisdom that an adult could provide to a child, but wisdom that was virtually unknown in the 1970s, but is now helping thousands of people to find deeper meaning, renewed purpose, and greater ease in their lives.

***Excerpt***
Let's say you had two lives to choose from. One is a life where people make you feel bad, and you have to then either 'fix' them or put up with feeling bad. And 'fixing' someone means you have a discussion, or an argument, or a fight to convince, coerce, or cause them to change. But these people will not stay 'fixed'. They'll eventually do the same thing again and you'll have to fix them all over again. And this goes on for maybe 80 years. How does that sound?

Sounds like hell. What's the other life I have to choose from?

gThe other life is one where people still make you feel bad, but to make sure that doesn't happen again, you only ever have to 'fix' one person. And that one person is infinitely cooperative. They will agree with everything you think, and be willing to do whatever you decide, and they will always like you, no matter what. And each time you fix that one person, it will make it less likely that you will need to fix them in the future. So, how does that life sound?

Sounds like heaven. And it sounds incredibly easier than the other life.

Since the late nineteenth century, religious ideas and practices in Japan have become increasingly intertwined with those associated with mental health and healing. This relationship developed against the backdrop of a far broader, and deeply consequential meeting: between Japan’s long-standing, Chinese-influenced intellectual and institutional forms, and the politics, science, philosophy, and religion of the post-Enlightenment West. In striving to craft a modern society and culture that could exist on terms with – rather than be subsumed by – western power and influence, Japan became home to a religion--psy dialogue informed by pressing political priorities and rapidly shifting cultural concerns. This book provides a historically contextualized introduction to the dialogue between religion and psychotherapy in modern Japan. In doing so, it draws out connections between developments in medicine, government policy, Japanese religion and spirituality, social and cultural criticism, regional dynamics, and gender relations. The chapters all focus on the meeting and intermingling of religious with psychotherapeutic ideas and draw on a wide range of case studies including: how temple and shrine ‘cures’ of early modern Japan fared in the light of German neuropsychiatry; how Japanese Buddhist theories of mind, body, and self-cultivation negotiated with the findings of western medicine; how Buddhists, Christians, and other organizations and groups drew and redrew the lines between religious praxis and psychological healing; how major European therapies such as Freud’s fed into self-consciously Japanese analyses of and treatments for the ills of the age; and how distress, suffering, and individuality came to be reinterpreted across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, from the southern islands of Okinawa to the devastated northern neighbourhoods of the Tohoku region after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters of March 2011. Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan will be welcomed by students and scholars working across a broad range of subjects, including Japanese culture and society, religious studies, psychology and psychotherapy, mental health, and international history.

Yoshida addresses the common misconceptions of single, never-married women and aims to uncover the major social and cultural factors contributing to this phenomenon in Japan. Based on interviews with married and never-married women aged 25-46, she argues that the increasing rate of female singlehood is largely due to structural barriers and a culture that has failed to keep up with economic changes. Here is an academic book that is also reader-friendly to the general audience, it presents evidence from the interview transcripts in rich detail as well as insightful analysis. Important sociological concepts and theories are also briefly explained to guide student readers in making connections. Thus, this book not only serves to enlighten readers on current issues in Japan – it also provides sociological perspectives on contemporary gender inequality.

This Open Access Brief analyzes the dynamics in which children’s selves emerge through their everyday activities of meaning construction, both in their relationships with family and within school education. It begins with a discussion of new psychological inquiries into children's selves and builds upon the innovative theoretical notion of the Presentational Self, developed by the author over the last decade. The book illustrates how the observation of children’s meaning construction in their everyday lives becomes a starting point for theoretical and empirical inquiries into child development and gives a framework that promotes new inquiries in this area. The book describes the Presentational Self Theory as a sense of how the notion of the Self is being worked upon in everyday life encounters. Chapters feature in-depth analyses of exchanges between adults and children in the Japanese cultural context. Meaning-Making for Living will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in the fields of cognitive, social, developmental, educational, and cultural psychology.

This edited volume gives explicit attention to the influence of gender, feminism, and queer theory in self-study of teacher education practices. It builds on the self-study community’s interest in social justice that has mostly been focused on race, ethnicity, gender, disability, and power, as well as broad conceptions that include multiculturalism and ways of knowing. This is the time to examine gender both because our community is growing and because of the reconceptualization of issues of gender, feminism, and queer theory in teacher education. This collection of papers provides a space for members of the self-study field, from founders to welcomed new members, along with the general community of teacher educators to problematize these issues through a variety of theoretical lenses. As always with self-study the impetus of the research is on the improvement of individual practice. Readers will find innovative approaches and insights into their own work as teacher educators.

The third edition of Life Span Human Development helps students gain a deeper understanding of the many interacting forces affecting development from infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood. It includes local, multicultural and indigenous issues and perspectives, local research in development, regionally relevant statistical information, and National guidelines on health. Taking a unique integrated topical and chronological approach, each chapter focuses on a domain of development such as physical growth, cognition, or personality, and traces developmental trends and influences in that domain from infancy to old age. Within each chapter, you will find sections on four life stages: infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood. This distinctive organisation enables students to comprehend the processes of transformation that occur in key areas of human development. This text also includes a MindTap course offering, with a strong suite of resources, including videos and the chronological sections within the text can be easily customised to suit academic and student needs.