著者

森口 眞衣

出版者

北海道生命倫理研究会

雑誌

北海道生命倫理研究 (ISSN:2187834X)

巻号頁・発行日

pp.15-28, 2015-10

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At the center of the academic discipline known as thanatology (death-and-life studies) is the major current of the foundation of Western thought. However, the views on life and death of the Japanese have been deeply affected by Eastern thought, religion, and culture, such as Buddhism. Therefore, it has been noted that in Japanese thanatology, there is a samsara (the cycle of reincarnation) in ancient Indian society as providing one perspective from the area of religious studies on dealing with "death." Two different perspectives for the positioning of death have been established. The first is the perspective of "the inserted death," and the second is the perspective of "death that continues to support life." The former is a Christian attitude toward death and is a philosophy that can be described as the foundation of Western thanatology. The latter is a philosophy from ancient Indian society, of the notion of completing samsara after passing through several stages, and it also formed the background to the formation of Buddhism that has had an enormous impact on Japanese culture. In this paper, along with the flow of how were death and life respectively positioned in the establishment stage of the notion of samsara, the structure and characteristics of "death that continues to support life" are considered.