午夜剧场

In our work, daily lives, and academic or research settings, there are countless challenges where we must rationally decide on policies according to our objectives. I wrote this book with the hope of helping people recognize (or re-recognize) and utilize "model thinking" to support those solutions. A model is a system that extracts the main elements of a target issue as components and describes the temporal or causal relationships between them; it is an essential tool that can be utilized regardless of whether one is in the humanities or the sciences.

I studied urban planning in the College of Policy and Planning Sciences at the University of Tsukuba, and while serving as an assistant in the Department of Urban Engineering at the University of Tokyo, I was welcomed into the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at 午夜剧场 Faculty of Science and Technology.

Urban planning aims to design urban and architectural spaces and systems with objective rationality, and my academic foundation was originally Operations Research as an applied mathematical approach to this field. When I arrived at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, I was moved by the truly fascinating research and education being practiced there, which comprehensively sheds light on the study of decision-making surrounding people, goods, money, and information. I have spent over 30 exciting years at 午夜剧场, developing my own urban research while learning from this culture. This book is the result of those efforts.

In addition to explaining various types of models and the "spiral development" that advances model analysis, I have included important engineering concepts that support them, such as Pareto optimality, Net Present Value (NPV), and sunk costs. Furthermore, I introduced important concepts from sociology for correctly setting objectives themselves, such as traditionalism and fetishism, and the functions and dysfunctions of bureaucracy. I wanted to convey that learning across the boundaries of the humanities and sciences brings about a richness of thought.

In doing so, I faithfully followed the proposal from the talented editor Maki Imoto (Kodansha) to "make the content appealing to general readers without using mathematical formulas." I used models of traffic flow, urban facility planning, population forecasting, and so on as subjects. Starting with the anecdote of how the legend of Yaoya Oshichi caused a decrease in the total fertility rate during the Showa era, I also detailed the history of the Sexagenary Cycle.

I aimed for a paperback that allows readers to understand the essentials of model thinking as a result of reading through accessible, narrative-driven content. I leave it to the readers to judge how well that has been achieved.

Osamu Kurita

Kodansha Gendai Shinsho

280 pages, 1,100 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.