This is the English website of the Laboratory of Michio Miyasaka, who is the professor of health care ethics (bioethics, biomedical ethics) and humanities at School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Niigata University in Japan.
Biography
Michio Miyasaka, Ph.D. is the professor of health care ethics at School of Health Sciences, Niigata University. He received Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 1998. He has published three books in Japanese, which include “The records of Hansen's disease Prison” (in Japanese, Tokyo, 2006) and “Methods in Health Care Ethics: Principles, Procedures, and Narratives]”(in Japanese, Tokyo, 2011). He has published more than 60 journal articles and book chapters in both Japanese and English. They include “Punishing Paternalism: An Ethical Analysis of Japan's Leprosy Control Policy,” Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics, 19 (4), 103-107, 2009; “Resourcifying Human Bodies - Kant and Bioethics,” Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 8:19-27, 2005; and “An International Survey of Medical Ethics Curricula in Asia,” Journal of Medical Ethics 25(6): 514-521, 1999.
Research interests and English publications
Here provided are some of English publication by MM and coauthors, currently available from original Japanese site. The list of English papers published in journals or presented in conferences are listed here.
I and colleagues are working on various topics, which are categorized in either (or borth) of the following two major themes:
- Methodological analysis of bioethics
- Philosophical works on methods in bioethics (or, medical, nursing, clinica ethics). The biggest question of mine is communicational (or, relational) ethics in the context of comparative moral philosophies, especially between East and West. I published a paper in English on Resourcifying Human Beings. Most of my works are done in Japanese.
- Some landmark cases in Japanese history of medicine have been interrogated specifically - such as leprosy control policy, Minamata disease, and the recent disaster in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Some were (and will be) published as English papers.
- Narrative and related research on medical and nursing topics
- I am working with diverse experts and students in medicine and nursing to study a wide range of topics in health care. For the most projects of my study in this regard have been done using narrative approaches. Our common interest is: how the issue is costructed among different agents with contesting views; how an agent's view is altered in the contact with other; and how it is represented in linguistic and/or non-linguistic ways. Most works have been published in Japanese, but some key findings were (and will be) published in English.
These issues are a bit complicated to be argued deeply in non-native languages. But we hope to exchange ideas with readers all over the world. Please contact us via e-mail:
Thank you !!