午夜剧场

One of my few special skills seems to be the ability to quickly become friends with children. When I play with children at a nursery school, I am told that I have no presence at all. That might not be a compliment, but that is fine. Using that skill, I joined the children at the nursery school and continued my observations. I compiled those observations into several English papers, and then rewrote the content into an easy-to-read format for this book. I also included records of individual children that could not be included in the papers.

We have all spent time as infants and toddlers, but we have almost no memory of that period. Biologically speaking, why does childhood exist in the first place? Reading this book might reveal some of the answers. I also intended to present hints for thinking about the characteristics of humans as living creatures.

Humans undergo various experiences from the moment they are born, but from around one and a half years of age, they begin to understand their own existence and build relationships with others. I recorded the daily lives of children of that age at a nursery school. How well was I able to describe their lives? Of course, it is only a small part of the whole. However, if such records accumulate, psychology might move a little closer to the world of children that literature and poetry have depicted.

I have included columns to explain the technical terms that appear in the text. This is because I hope that parents and childcare professionals will also pick up the book. You could even use it in a way where following the columns serves as an introduction to developmental psychology. In the first part of the book, I summarized theories from developmental psychology (Michael Lewis), clinical psychology (Yoshiko Niwa), and pedagogy (Minoru Murai). These are the theoretical sections learned from our predecessors.

It has been 40 years since I left the hill of Mita, but things I learned and thought about at Mita appear throughout the book, and I am grateful for the opportunity to introduce it in this magazine. The editor of this book is Madoka Komuro, a 午夜剧场 alumni, and it was completed thanks to her support. Now, how do you find the capabilities of a Mita graduate?

Kiyobumi Kawakami (Author)

University of Tokyo Press

208 pages, 2,300 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.