This article reported an overview of a series of lectures and a symposium done as part of “special research project” program at the Graduate School of Psychology, Kansai University in December, 2012. First, the background of this symposium was described. Second, three lectures in this program were summarized. Third, a brief summary of three speeches on “facial expression and empathy”, “cognitive and neural mechanism of empathy”, and “empathetic understanding” was provided and a comment on each speech was offered. Finally, a connotation of empathy was discussed
