（1990年度　本試験　英語　第５問 ） About fifteen hundred years ago the Japanese imported many aspects of Chinese culture: the writing system, political institutions, and perhaps most important, Buddhism. Buddhist priests were expected to eat only vegetables, and tofu, made from the soybean, was a very important food in their diet. When Buddhism was introduced from China, tofu was also brought to Japan. Tofu developed in different ways in China and Japan. While the Chinese often changed the taste of tofu by mixing it with strongly-flavored vegetables or meat, the Japanese preferred to eat it using only a simple sauce. Even now, traditional Japanese cooking preserves the original delicacy of tofu, though the way it is served may change from season to season. In summer, for example, it is simply served cold, while in winter it is often eaten as part of a hot dish. The soybean was introduced to the West in the eighteenth century, but little interest was taken in it; only scientists recognized its high food value. During the Second World War, when meat was in short supply, the U.S. government encouraged the American people to eat soybean products. However, they never became very popular and, after the war, interest in them dropped off as the supply of meat became plentiful again. In recent years, people in the West have become increasingly aware of the dangers of eating too much animal fat, and as a result, they have turned more and more to soybean products. This is mainly because the soybean provides almost the same food value as meat, and in addition is a lot more healthful. Much of the margarine, salad oil, and cooking oil in daily use is now produced from soybean oil. Tofu, a representative soybean product and originally one of the main foods in the diet of Chinese priests, is considered to be one of the healthiest foods available to man. (312 words) （1990年度　追試験　英語　第５問） Butterflies are insects as familiar to us as dragonflies. Many of us remember chasing them in the countryside or seeing them pinned neatly in boxes in museums. There are many people who collect butterflies because they are fascinated by their beauty and variety. Butterfly shapes have also been used for patterns on kimono for a long time. Nowadays butterflies are usually considered to be objects of beauty. In the early stages of Japanese history, however, butterflies were not as popular as they are today. For example, in the eighth-century Manyoshu, one of the oldest collections of Japanese poetry, the word ‘butterfly’ is mentioned only twice. On the other hand, insect names such as ‘cricket’ appear more frequently. This may be due to the ancient Japanese attitude toward butterflies. In those days butterflies were feared and respected because they were thought to be the souls of people who had just died. Later their fearful image grew as Buddhist priests taught people of death and life after death. As a result, the butterfly as a symbol of the human soul came to be associated with death in the minds of many people. Butterflies were, therefore, not just delicate, beautiful creatures. The image of butterflies gradually changed along with our ancestors’ views of life and nature. As time went on, butterflies began to draw the attention of artists and craftsmen, and the ancient Japanese fear of them was replaced by feelings of admiration as their beauty was more deeply appreciated. Butterflies are a good example of how people’s attitudes toward familiar things around us can change over time. (265 words) （1991年度　本試験　英語　第５問） When is a person old? There are many individuals who still seem ‘young’ at seventy or more, while others appear ‘old’ in their fifties. From another point of view, sumo wrestlers, for instance, are ‘old’ in their thirties, whereas artists’ best years may come in their sixties or even later. But in general, people are old when society considers them to be old, that is, when they retire from work at around the age of sixty or sixty-five. Nowadays, however, the demand for new work skills is making more and more individuals old before their time. Although older workers tend to be dependable, and have much to offer from their many years of experience, they are put at a disadvantage by rapid developments in technology. Older people usually find it more difficult to acquire the new skills required by technological changes, and they do not enjoy the same educational opportunities as young workers. When they finally leave work and retire, people face further problems. The majority receive little or no assistance in adjusting to their new situation in the community. Moreover, since society at present appears to have no clear picture of what place its older members should occupy, it is unable to offer them enough opportunities to have satisfying social roles after they retire. In the past, the old used to be looked upon as experts in solving various problems of life. Today, however, they are no longer regarded as such and are seldom expected to play significant roles in social, economic and community affairs. With the number of older people in the population rapidly increasing, we need greatly to increase and improve the opportunities provided for them so that they can participate in society with dignity and respect. (290 words) （1991年度　追試験　英語　第５問 ） Do animals play? Certainly, many animals, especially the young, engage in behavior that seems like play. But why do they play? This question is difficult to answer, even for experts. For one thing, there are considerable difficulties involved in observing animals at play when they are not in natural surroundings. Monkeys, for example, play a lot in the wild, but in cages it is hard to make them play when you want them to. You have to sit patiently, waiting for the right moments. And even when you do see them playing, it is still difficult to say why they are doing so. Scientists have noticed that when two monkeys are ‘play-fighting,’ they take turns winning. One will be on top, and it will look as if he is winning. Then suddenly he will give the other a chance to take control of the action. It is believed that this kind of play helps monkeys learn to take different roles when they are older. Like humans, animals sometimes need to take charge, and sometimes follow. Monkeys seem to learn this lesson by playing. Another likely purpose of play is to let animals learn how to get along with others of their own age. It has been found that while baby rats kept with their brothers and sisters engage in a lot of rough play, those raised alone with their mothers play just a little. However, when rats which have only been with their mothers are put with other young rats, they play a lot more than those brought up in a large family. It seems that they make up for lost time. Though much remains to be discovered about animal play, studies like these do seem to indicate that animals learn some very basic skills by taking part in play-like activities. (301 words) （1992年度　本試験　英語　第５問） Nowadays people spend more time away from their jobs than ever before. Technological developments have steadily shortened working hours for a large part of the population, and the fact that people are living longer has also increased the amount of time spent in non-work settings. As a result, a large number of people have had to adjust to more leisure than they had expected, and this new-found leisure has created difficulties. Historically, the emphasis has been on work, and current attitudes still reflect the impact of this earlier way of thinking. Even today, many people still believe that leisure should be used chiefly to restore one’s energy and strength for more and better work. Leisure, therefore, has been viewed as a means to an end. Along with greater production efficiency and higher standards of living, there is a new idea in which leisure is viewed as more than simply a restorative for work. Leisure is now regarded by an increasing number of people as an important part of contemporary life. They think that the use of leisure time should be a satisfying experience in and of itself. Attitudes toward both leisure and work are changing. Increasing mechanization of work has meant that more people are now looking beyond their jobs for satisfying life experiences. This has led to some change in emphasis from job-centered activities to leisure and home-centered activities, especially among the younger generation. However, because the new idea has not entirely replaced the traditional one, many people face the problem of what role leisure should play in their lives. Some feel guilty about additional hours of free time and seek more work to avoid leisure hours, while others eagerly pursue leisure activities that resemble work. As working hours are shortened, a more meaningful balance has to be found between work and play. (304 words) （1992年度　追試験　英語　第５問） Get on a train and it is likely that several people around you will be wearing earphones. There they are in the same space, but not talking or paying attention to one another. Though listening to a personal tape player this way has some virtue in that you don’t usually disturb others, it allows almost no human contact. You are alone with your machine. A similar situation occurs with many video games. A person concentrating on destroying spaceships, avoiding attackers, or shooting enemies needs no companion. True, some games do enable players to take turns, and then people might talk to each other, but in many cases the player is involved only with the machine and its program. In what ways are young people affected by instruments like these? Are they becoming less able to make contact with the surrounding world? This question is becoming increasingly important with the spread of personal computers. Computer technology is becoming more and more widely used in areas like communications, education, and banking. In one way or another, many people now spend a great deal of time in front of a computer screen. The fact that television frequently limits communication within families is already well known; these new developments will further lead people to live within themselves and not reach out to other people. At this moment in history, science seems likely to alter our society as never before. At the same time, the power of technology has become enormous. Perhaps technology itself is creating individuals who are only concerned with their own interests. Will they be satisfied simply to watch events passively, without becoming involved in social decisions which may change their own lives? Machines should not be allowed to ruin our sense of social responsibility. Whether we admit it or not, we are all here together, and share a common fate. (309 words) （1993年度　本試験　英語　第５問） In many parts of the world, the influence of television is a matter of increasing concern. For years, critics of television have concentrated on the issue of the program content ? particularly violence ? as it affects viewers. The problem seems especially serious with regard to younger children. There is evidence that TV does in fact lead people to accept more violence in everyday life. How could this not happen when it presents violent acts, often with guns and knives, as normal and common occurrences? In the last few years criticism of television has moved to a new stage by shifting the focus from the subject matter to the experience of the medium itself. The problem now with TV is not just what is seen but how it is seen. The way children watch it causes them to be passive, and some evidence suggests that such viewing might even affect the development of the brain in small children. However, the worst aspect of television is the way it can interfere with family life The “box” has too often become a substitute parent, taking over most of the work of introducing social and moral values to the child and developing them in him. Parents allow this to happen by using television like a drug for the purpose of keeping children quiet. Eventually the child comes to depend on the box and it becomes a necessary, lifelong habit. While many children go through the “television experience” and survive, many others are deeply affected by it. Much of the discussion of TV during the next few years will center on how to reduce the dangers which it presents, particularly to younger people. Already there are movements to try to ban TV advertising which is directed at children under a certain age. Perhaps this is just the beginning. In the end, some people may even go to the extreme of demanding the removal of such a powerful medium from the lives of young people. This might not be a practical solution, but we should not ignore the dangers of television. (344 words) （1993年度　追試験　英語　第５問） Humans, in trying to understand the world, tend to find what they expect to find. Moreover, through their actions, they may even cause their expectations to become fact without being aware of it, as the following example shows. In an experiment carried out at an elementary school, teachers were told that certain children would “bloom” in their school work, although they were not chosen according to ability. They were expected to perform better, and the results showed that they did. It seems that the teachers actively, though probably unconsciously, brought about the expected improvement in the students by the way they treated them. Although the teachers believed they had no effect, the improvement was, in fact, the result of their behavior based on the predictions. In the classroom, teachers form impressions of students from such things as appearance, behavior and previous test scores, and give them “labels.” When the expectations are high as in the experiment, the students may improve, but if the teachers have low expectations, the students may fail to make progress. Schools are certainly not the only places where people label others and then form expectations based on these possibly incorrect labels. For example, some criminals who have been released from prison return to crime because society does not expect them to change. Or, in some societies, people of a certain color or class are often found to be most successful at school and in their professions. This may be because they have always been positively labeled, whereas other groups are expected to fail. We must recognize that using a label is a dangerous way to judge a person: people’s personalities develop and their lives change. We should understand that another person’s behavior may result from our own prejudice towards that person. By being aware that expectations may produce their own outcome, we can avoid labeling and allow every person an equal chance in life. (318 words) （1994年度　本試験　英語　第５問） A current topic of debate is the amount of support and services we are willing to provide for handicapped people. Many people believe that society has become more caring over the ages. However, if we look back in time, this may not prove to be true. A good example can be found by looking at some remains of a prehistoric culture. Several skeletons were found in the Shanidar Cave in Iraq. It was the home of a tribe of Neanderthal who existed more than 40,000 years ago. One of these skeletons was of a man of about 40 years, an old age for that period. He is thought to have been killed by a falling stone. Careful study of the bones has shown that the man’s right arm had never fully developed and had been cut off below the elbow. The condition of the teeth was also unlike that of other Neanderthal men’s. They showed signs of excessive use, as if they had been employed to make up for the lack of a right arm. How could someone so handicapped from his earliest years have survived to become an adult, and even live on to old age? Societies in such early times faced severe conditions. People who could hunt for meat were few. A handicapped person must have needed to keep close to the cave and been provided with meat. This seems to indicate a far greater degree of concern for the individual than previously assumed. In fact, the level of care shown toward this tribesman is not always seen in present-day societies. Such concern indicates a sense of unity and cooperation that made possible the future achievements of humanity. With this in mind, are we doing enough for the handicapped? Rather than being too proud of the efforts that modern society has made, it would be wise to consider if we even equal the efforts of “precivilized” societies. (319 words) （1994年度　追試験　英語　第５問） Why is it that many people who have suffered a major shock, such as divorce or the death of a family member, seem to be weaker against a variety of major and minor illnesses? One common idea among psychologists has been that people could deal with suffering more effectively if they were able to understand and accept it. Indeed, many experts emphasize the value of expressing thoughts and feelings associated with upsetting events. Recently, a team of medical researchers investigated the links between describing psychologically painful events and long-term health. In one experiment healthy college students were asked to write about either personally disturbing experiences or ordinary topics over a period of four days. In the months afterwards, students who had chosen to reveal their inner thoughts and feelings in their writing visited the health center for illness much less often than those who had written about everyday topics. In an experiment that followed, another group of healthy students were given the four-day writing exercise. Some chose to write about highly personal and upsetting experiences (including loneliness, problems with family and friends, and death). When questioned immediately afterwards, they stated that they did not feel any better. However, their blood samples taken before and after the experiment showed evidence of an improved resistance to illness. The white cells that fight off bacteria and viruses had increased their reaction and sensitivity to these “invaders.” This trend continued over the following six weeks, when another blood sample was taken. Individuals who showed the best results were those who wrote about topics that they had actively refrained from telling others about. The researchers propose that failure to face up to painful experience can be a form of stress itself, and can increase the possibility of illness. It follows, then, that actively dealing with a major shock makes possible its understanding and acceptance. The answer is not to suffer in silence. It may not always be possible to talk about personal problems, but writing them down will help the body to fight disease in the long run. (343words) （1995年度　本試験　英語　第５問） We survive by controlling our environment, and control is made possible by information. If we lack this, we feel insecure and come to feel that any knowledge is better than none. In an experiment, white rats repeatedly had to choose path A or path B. They always had a 50% chance of finding food in a box at the end of each path. But on path B, just before the box, there was a signal indicating whether or not food was present. After some days of training, all the rats developed a preference for path B, the side where they obtained information. Humans show the same sort of preference for knowledge about an outcome which is uncertain but unavoidable. Our anxiety about the future can be so great that bad news is preferable to an absence of information. Regardless of the nature of the news, and in spite of the fact that we get no advantage from it, we would prefer to know and thus reduce our insecurity. There can hardly be a more inaccurate saying than “No news is good news.” And yet people do not always demand a state of complete certainty. Indeed much of our success as human beings is based on our ability to cope with environmental changes and our tendency to seek out new and challenging experiences. The popularity of pastimes such as mountaineering and motor racing is evidence of man’s need for some uncertainty and risk. Nevertheless, when these reach too high a level, we once more desire to have information about the future and a feeling of control over it. (267 words) （1995年度　追試験　英語　第５問） When people travel abroad they are immediately struck by the many different ways in which buildings, homes and cities are designed. A group of Americans staying in a South American country reacted emotionally to the unfamiliar architectural surroundings which they found there. The Latin-American house is often built around a small open area, a patio, which is next to the sidewalk but hidden from outsiders behind a wall. Such relatively small differences in the buildings can affect foreigners to a surprising degree. These Americans complained that they felt cut off from local people and their lives and kept wondering what was going on “behind those walls.” The division of space inside homes may also vary from one culture to another. Most American homes contain rooms such as bedrooms, a living room and a dining room whose layout reveals the separation and naming of space according to function. This system is in sharp contrast to other cultures where one room in a house may be used for several purposes. In Japan, homes have removable sliding doors so that two small rooms can be converted into one large room, and a living room can also serve as a bedroom. When a home or a city’s design is influenced by another culture, not only the native architecture but together with it the social pattern can be lost or affected. A French architect, for example, planned a new city in India with centralized shopping areas which required movement by public transportation away from the traditional village centers. The result was that the Indians stopped meeting each other socially in their own local communities. It has been said that “we shape our buildings and they shape us.” The Indian example seems to demonstrate this. (289 words) （1996年度　本試験　英語　第５問 ） Several years ago, certain scientists developed a way of investigating the nature of the atmosphere of the past by studying air caught in the ice around the North or South Pole. According to their theory, when snow falls, air is trapped between the snowflakes. The snow turns to ice with the air still inside. Over the years more snow falls on top, making new layers of ice. But the trapped air, these scientists believed, remains exactly as it was when the snow originally fell. To find what air was like three hundred years ago, you use a drill in the shape of a hollow tube to cut deep into the layers of ice. When you pull up the drill, an ice core made of many layers comes up inside it. Then, back at the laboratory, you count the layers in the core ? each layer represents one year ? to find ice formed from the snow that fell during the year to be studied. Using this method, these scientists suggested that the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the gases which may cause global warming, had increased greatly over the last two hundred years. A Norwegian scientist, however, pointed out that there might be a problem with this method. He claimed that air caught in ice does not stay the same. In particular, he said, the quantity of CO2 does not remain stable, since some of it is absorbed by ice crystals, some enters water, and some locks itself up in other chemicals. If this were true, then there could have been more CO2 in the past than we thought. Even so, measurements taken over the past thirty years show that CO2 has increased by over ten percent during this short period. (291 words) （1996年度　追試験　英語　第５問 ） “A good parent” can be a confusing phrase. It is almost impossible for one person to be “a good parent” at all stages of a child’s life. Some parents are at their best before their children begin to speak. Others are most successful before their children enter elementary school. Still others make their finest contribution to older children or teenagers. Every parent can understand one stage of a child’s development better than another. It is a rare person who possesses superior capacities throughout the entire period of a child’s growth. A mother might be “a good parent” from her baby’s birth until it is three; that is the period when it needs her protection and loving care. Then the start of her child’s independence might upset and alarm her, and she might then become less helpful for a few years. A father might be awkward and uncomfortable with a younger child, but could turn into a splendid parent when the child is old enough to be taught the skills of cycling, fishing and so on, or to be taken on trips. Some parents feel easier with boys, and others with girls ? and then only at certain ages or stages. It is important for parents to understand and accept their own limitations in these matters, just as they must accept the child’s faults of personality and limitations of talent. Otherwise, fathers and mothers will feel guilty and blame themselves for weaknesses that may not be their fault. Much of the guilt experienced by modern parents comes from the mistaken feeling that they ought to be all things at all times to the child, which is clearly absurd. In past ages, grandparents and uncles and aunts lived with the family, and provided different kinds of support; in our present “nuclear” family, too many roles are demanded of the two parents, which they cannot possibly fulfill. (313 words)