As in the case of the English word "responsibility," the Japanese equivalent, "sekinin," is an over-used term with multiple meanings. There are at least two distinctive uses for the Japanese concept of responsibility: to describe duties or obligations that pertain to a person's role or position and to assigned blame or sanction to someone when an untoward occurrence is observed. In the two studies conducted by the author, Japanese college students were asked to assess the latter concept of responsibility by indicating an agent's degree of responsibility for harm done in 36 incidents that involved either a victim's death, injury, or financial loss. The studies determined that subjects' judgments of responsibility were largely determined by the following two factors: the causal relationship of the agent's act to the harm that ensued and the morality of the act itself, without regard to consequences. In the cases where these two aspects contradicted, especially where the blameworthy act was not directly connected to the harm, judgments about the agent's responsibility diverged among subjects. The studies also found that subjects most often referred to these aspects in explaining the reasons for attributing responsibility to or negating the responsibility of the agent. 4 tables, 25 references, and an article abstract in French