Ergonomics in Japan: Where have we been,Where are we going?

When we look at the course of development of world civilization, we can recognize that the speed of development has been becoming faster and faster. The author tries to mention the possible danger of this accelerated speed of change and to explain about Japan's high pitch development after the opening of her door to the western world about 100 years ago. He also explains about how human factors studies have been developing in Japan and its significance with regard to the social change. Concerning this rapidly changing world civilization, he discusses about the mission of human factors research in the future and about the ways to maintain humanity.