Ebook: Japanese and Western Bioethics: Studies in Moral Diversity

The editors of the Philosophy and Medicine series recognize with grat­ itude the foresight, understanding, hard labor, and patience of Prof. Kazumasa Hoshino. It is his perseverance that has made this volume a reality. It was his faith in ideas that brought together a cluster of scholars in Tokyo on September 2-4, 1994, at Sophia University for a U. S. -J apan Bioethics Congress. With the support of the Foundation for Advance­ ment of International Science, the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, the Foundation of Thanatology, the Japanese Center for Quality of Life Studies, and Sophia University, scholars from Canada, Germany, Japan, and the United States were able to explore the differ­ ences and similarities in their approaches to bioethics and health care policy. That conference first produced a volume through Shibunkaku Publishers of Kyoto that appeared in 1995 in J apanese: The Dignity of Death, edited by Kazumasa Hoshino. Selections from those materials have been reworked for an English audience and now appear, along with new essays, in this volume. The field of comparative bioethics is only in its infancy. We are deeply grateful to Prof. Kazumasa Hoshino, one of the fathers of J apanese bioethics, for having made this volume possible. H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. Stuart F. Spicker Vll ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This volume's editors and Kluwer Academic Publishers wish to thank Shibunkaku Press, Kyoto, Japan, for permission to publish, without charge, essays derived from the U. S.

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The essays in this volume, while exploring bioethical issues bearing on death and dying, the use of scarce resources, and genetic interventions, also implicitly compare approaches to bioethics in Japan versus Western countries. This volume provides a cross-cultural comparison of Japanese, American and European approaches to bioethics and health care policy. In a world of international bioethics, it explores the similarities and dissimilarities between bioethics in Japan and the Western world. The collection gives both a portrayal of current approaches as well as an analysis of the character and grounds for the similarities and dissimilarities.
The similarities reflect attempts to find morally justified bases for collaboration when individuals do not share taken-for-granted understandings of the proper use of health care, the meaning or form of a good death, and the correct ways to collaborate. Similarities also derive from Western bioethical reflections that have been exported to Japan, which, for better or worse, have entered and altered traditional Japanese understandings. Japan and the West have been exposed to the post-traditional character of the age. Many of the dissimilarities stem from the fact that Japan remains in large measure a traditional society with strong ties to family, culture and community. Japanese share many common understandings of values, while the West has long struggled with moral diversity.
These essays explore particular bioethics, which reflect particular moral commitments, as contributions to the emerging international dialogue concerning bioethics and health care policy.