[Development of Spiritual Care in Cancer Treatment in Japan].

Spiritual care started worldwide in the late 1960s with the development of the hospice movement and death studies. Why did spiritual care start duringthis time in history ? In some Christian societies, of that time,"pastoral care" evolved into an interfaith "spiritual care" where in the caretaker was the main agent instead of the caregiver. On the other hand, the importance of palliative care for cancer patients was gradually acknowledged. In addition, this progress was accompanied by the academic development of "death studies" which is called "death and life studies" in Japan. The Japanese hospice care and death studies movement started in the late 1970s. In the precedingperiod, the spiritual quest of cancer patients facingdeath was already gaining public attention. A scholar of religious studies, Hideo Kishimoto of the University of Tokyo, was diagnosed with cancer in 1954; he survived many operations until his death in 1964. Duringthose years, he wrote about his personal experience of acceptinghis approachingdeath. Although he did not believe in any specific faith, he had studied various religious teachings. It is important to understand his perception of his own death. His book, On Facing Death, was published immediately after his death. Therefore, it provided a prominent discourse on copingwith spiritual pain of approachingdeath even before the growth of spiritual care in Japan.

[Resilience and the Role of Spiritual Care].

One of the main goals of spiritual care is to elicit the patient's own power. Previously, religious professionals encouraged people to believe in God, Buddha, or spiritual beings and helped those who were suffering. The power to recover was believed to come from outside human beings. For example, the foremost role of hospital chaplains in the past was to pray to a transcendental being (s) with those who were suffering. When resilience was expected, the first thing to do was to rely on the transcendental being (s). In contrast, the priority in contemporary spiritual care is to trust the resilience of those with difficulties, even when the concerned believe in a transcendental power. The emphasis is on human beings and things which can be seen, rather than transcendental beings. Through this kind of expectation, resilience is to be expected and becomes a source of hope. However, there may be cases in which resilience does not grow. On caring for the dying or those with marked grief, just facing spiritual pain may be the prevalent situation. Care workers need to accept the reality that overcoming spiritual pain is not easy. Then, the paradox is that facing weakness itself can become a source of power. This may be experienced in spiritual care, and it helps elucidate an aspect of resilience. The author's position is that there are many cases in which power is elicited from weakness. Examples are found through the activities to provide aid following the Great East Japan Earthquake, in the spiritual care of dying persons at home, as well as in the care of psychiatric patients who are liberated from the obsession that they must be cured.

[Cancer treatment and death studies].

In the West, death studies has become a new academic area since around 1970. The driving force is the hospice movement. People now ask questions such as how to care for dying people and their relatives. Because the main clients in hospice and palliative care are cancer patients, cancer treatment and death studies are closely linked to each other. The rise of death studies is connected with the awareness of the limits of modern medicine. Medical staffs are forced to learn how to care for those patients facing death. But modern medicine has put exclusive emphasis on biomedical treatment to cure. Contemporary medicine is becoming more and more aware of the psychological and spiritual needs of the patient. Today medicine and medical education have to incorporate the perspectives from death studies, learning how human beings facing death can live a better life not only in physical terms but also in psychological, social and spiritual terms.