Since 2015, the Inamori Foundation has been supporting the Kyoto University Kokoro Research Center’s “Kyoto Kokoro Initiative.”
Background and Objectives
President Kazuo Inamori (left) and Kyoto University President Juichi Yamagiwa at the Signing Ceremony, 2015
The word kokoro has a range of meanings in the Japanese language, including “human mind,” “spirit,” “consciousness,” “heart,” and “soul.” The Kyoto Kokoro Initiative is an interdisciplinary research project that explores kokoro that is rich and fertile, and the kind of social environment that nurtures such kokoro. Among its proposed projects are workshops involving researchers, artists, and businesspersons from around the world, symposiums for the general public, and publication of the Initiative’s research findings.
Over the course of five years, starting in 2003, the Inamori Foundation, the Kyoto Prefectural Government, and Kyoto University jointly organized the Kyoto International Culture Forum to discuss and claim the importance of kokoro. The Kokoro Research Center was founded in 2007 in the spirit of the discussions held in the Forum, and its general activities are also supported by the Inamori Foundation. It is our sincere wish to help cultivate the spirituality of humankind by revisiting the importance of kokoro through these programs and by sending out to the world messages from Kyoto on good understanding and practice of age-old ethics and morality.
