Cultural anthropology is the systematic study of humankind everywhere, both in the past and the present. It focuses on the study of different ethnic and cultural groups throughout the world. With a meaning-centered approach, medical anthropologists have developed “explanatory models,” schemata for understanding illness representations by patients and families and by medical practitioners. This approach to illness representations has provided clinicians with broader perspectives on what illness means to people in their particular social and cultural settings. Cultural anthropology provides another approach that further broadens the view of human behavior by considering social and political contexts, such as the globalization of health-care systems and medical practice and the increased application of pharmacoeconomics. Culture is not just a set of rules influencing human behavior; it also includes local activities performed with practical knowledge, both creatively and improvisationally. We should study culture in situ, as these activities are performed in a particular social field.

  In the current Japanese education for medical and health professionals, experiential learning in communities is widely promoted. Students visit a community and participate in community life. This paper introduces the perspectives and methods of cultural anthropological fieldwork and examines how they can be applied to community-based experiential learning and what effects are produced. This paper is based on a case study in a Japanese medical school. What is significant in experiential learning through fieldwork is that students participate in community life firsthand and retain this firsthand experience as a sensory experience. This ingrained sense is then transformed into new findings, not through application of the students’ pre-existing knowledge but through subsequent reflective practices.

　With medical education in Japan now undergoing a radical reformation, so too is education for the humanities and social sciences in Japanese medical schools. As an anthropologist, I have long used fieldwork as a method of research and education. In the present study, I argue that fieldwork is not only effective in nurturing perspectives based on the humanities and social sciences in medical education, but that it also contributes to the development of basic qualities required of medical professionals. Specifically, these basic qualities refer to "common values" existing among a group of people living in the same locality who share similar cultural characteristics when dealing with the everyday affairs of life. I show how these values are nurtured in the field through students' actual sense of presence in the world they share with various living creatures.

The Consensus of this Committee is:

1) To change the name of the present committee from "Premedical Education Committee" to "Committee on Behavioral and Social Science" ; accordingly to discuss theoretical foundations, clinical application, learning objectives and outcomes of behavioral and social science in Japanese medical schools.

2) To collect actual case studies of teaching behavioral and social sciences in Japanese medical schools and create a database for such practices.

3) To develop behavioral and social science curriculum content in Japanese medical schools.

4) To organize training courses for teaching methods for behavioral and social science curricula and develop standardized teaching methods and materials.

Undergraduate medical education requires learning in both science and art. We have developed a learning model for use in first-year medical education that applies art-based research, which has been developed in sociology.　This is a method in which medical students themselves conduct research while creating works of art to solve local medical, health, and welfare problems, deepening their learning. They also share their artworks with other students.　The methodology consists of four steps: [I] groundwork, [II] collection of materials, [III] fieldwork and artwork, and [IV] appreciation of interactive artwork.　In the class, students take the initiative by creating works that are full of individuality and assertiveness. This learning model is a relatively new model for medical education through which students can deepen their understanding of the art of medicine.