Concentrated Uranium and Constitution

Concentrated Uranium and Constitution

Amounts of concentrated uranium held by countries in the world as of 2012 are as follows:

COUNTRY......................Quantity of Production (ton-SWU/year)
========================================
Russia                    25,000

Germany
Netherlands
UK                        12,800

US                         7,000

France                    2,500

China                     1,500

JAPAN                  1,050

Brazil                      115

Iran                           7      
========================================

Companies that are engaged in processing uranium for enrichment are:
Rosatom (Russia)
Areva (France, EU)
Urenco (UK, Germany, Netherlands)
USEC (US)

CNNC (China)

Nihon Gen-nen (JAPAN)

However, only Japan has no possibility of producing nuclear weapons.  It is restricted by its Constitution.

ARTICLE 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. 

(2) To accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.


But there is a movement in some right-wing politicians in Japan aiming at abolition of this Article 9.  Current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made it clear that it is an important agenda for him to revise the Constitution so that Japan can be fully armed like other major countries.

Uranium is linked to the Constitution in Japan.

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A Shinto Shrine around Tokyo

Okakura Tenshin and his Works

Okakura Tenshin and his Works

There was a son of a samurai who was invited to the Museum of Fine Arts, Bostonin 1904 and became the first head of the Asian art division in 1910.

Tenshin Okakura (Kakuzo Okamura) (1862-1913) contributed to introducing Japanese traditional works of art to the world after the Meiji Restoration of Imperial Authority and the end of an isolation policy of samurai Japan of 1868.

In the samurai era, Buddhism was a kind of national religion of Japan.  Shinto shrines looked like being overwhelmed by Buddhist temples.  Every Japanese was requested to belong to a temple in his village or town which recorded birth, death, etc. of each individual.

But with the Meiji Restoration of the Imperial Authority and with collapse of the samurai regime having been led by shogun, shintoism came to regain its power base.  Since the emperor was the supreme priest of the imperial shinto, people came to make light of Buddhist temples and priests.  This social turmoil was called "anti-Buddhist movement at the beginning of the Meiji era" (Haibutsu Kisyaku in Japanese).  However along with this movement, many valuable and priceless works of Buddhism were destroyed, stolen, and sold by some Japanese who wanted to revenge themselves on Buddhist priests who once ruled and sometimes suppressed people in their daily and religious lives.       

But some Europeans and Americans, such as Ernest Fenollosa, who came to new Japan in the Meiji era found a need to save those Buddhist works of art, since they were so excellent and sophisticated.   They tried to save those works from being destroyed, while other Westerners were buying them at cheap prices to sell them at high prices in Europe and America.

Okakura cooperated with Fenollosa to protect those precious works of Buddhism and other traditional works of Japanese art.  In addition, as Okakura was fluent in English, he wrote some books in English about Japan to promote understanding of Japanese culture in foreign countries.  His book titled The Book of Tea identified tea ceremony as a kind of disguised practice of Taoism, though it had only 60 pages. 

The Book of Tea (Cha no Hon in Japanese) by Okakura Kakuzō[1] (1906), is a long essay linking the role of tea (teaism) to the aesthetic and cultural aspects of Japanese life. 

Addressed to a western audience, it was originally written in English and is one of the great English tea classics. Okakura had been taught at a young age to speak English and was proficient at communicating his thoughts to the Western mind. In his book, he discusses such topics as Zen and Taoism, but also the secular aspects of tea and Japanese life. The book emphasizes how Teaism taught the Japanese many things; most importantly, simplicity. Kakuzō argues that this tea-induced simplicity affected art and architecture, and he was a long-time student of the visual arts. He ends the book with a chapter on Tea Masters, and spends some time talking about Sen no Rikyū and his contribution to the Japanese Tea Ceremony. 

According to Tomonobu Imamichi, Heidegger’s concept of Dasein in Sein und Zeit was inspired — although Heidegger remained silent on this — by Okakura Kakuzō’s concept of das-in-der-Welt-sein (being-in-the-worldness) expressed in The Book of Tea to describe Zhuangzi’s philosophy, which Imamichi’s teacher had offered to Heidegger in 1919, after having followed lessons with him the year before.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Tea

And when the Empire of Japan started a war against the Russian Empire in 1904, Okakura left for the US.  On this occasion, he wrote a book titled The Awakening of Japan:

Okakura's departure date from Yokohama coincided with the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War: February 10th, 1904. An increase of interest in Japan brought their visit and activities to the attention of American journalists. An article in The New York Times reported on their exhibition and described with admiration that Japan was able to achieve artistic excellence in the ancient arts at the same time as it mastered the modern art and technology of war. The headline read: “New and Old Japan. She Has Victories in the Art as Well as Triumphs in War.” 

The Awakening of Japan was a book in which Okakura tried to show his interpretation of “the sudden development” 4 of modern Japan. He asserted the existence of an “inner” movement that had began in the late Edo period before the coming of the American black ships. This demonstrated Okakura’s reaction against the general tendency of Western people to consider the “development” of Japan as something owed exclusively to intensive adoption of Western civilization.

He emphasized that Japan's “innate virility” 5 was the source of Japan's awakening; more crucial than the adoption of foreign things was “the realization of the self within.” 6 The “spirit of Old Japan,” 7 he said, was alive in the core of the nation in spite of the new appearance of a modern constitutional state. Furthermore, he did not fail to state that while Japan owed much to the West, “we must still regard Asia as the true source of our inspirations.” 8 Okakura previously planned to publish this book in America before his departure. He brought notes from Japan and revised them in the summer of 1904 for publication in autumn.

http://www.princeton.edu/~collcutt/doc/Okamoto_English.pdf

Tenshin Okakura (Tenshin means heaven mind in Japanese) learnt English in Yokohama, a main port city near Tokyo, from some Western priest and scholar, when he was a small child.  He graduated from the Imperial University of Tokyo to work in the Imperial Government.  He also contributed to establishment of some art schools in Japan.  He even received an academic degree from Harvard University.

Finally Okakura loved to live in a village in Kitaibaraki, Ibaraki Prefecture northeast of Tokyo, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, building a hexagonal temple-like house, though the house was washed away by the 3/11 Great Tsunami of 2011.  It was however rebuilt in 2012.   

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%AD%E8%A7%92%E5%A0%82_(%E5%8C%97%E8%8C%A8%E5%9F%8E%E5%B8%82)



###

Haneda Airport, Tokyo

Japanese Eye Doctor in Vietnam

Japanese Eye Doctor in Vietnam

There is a Japanese eye doctor or an ophthalmologist who has saved 10,000 Vietnamese from losing their sight.

Tadashi Hattori (1964-), a graduate from a medical university in Kyoto, met a medical doctor from Vietnam in an academic conference held in Kyoto in 2002.  The Vietnamese doctor said that there were so many Vietnamese who lost sight due to poor medical environments of the developing country in Southeast Asia.  So, Hattori decided to go and help Vietnamese.

At the time Hattori had completed his professional training, having worked in various hospitals all over Japan.  So, he came to dream of expanding his medical activities beyond the sea.  Then he happened to meet the Vietnamese doctor.  Today he says that if he had met a medical doctor form India he would have visited India; if he had encountered a medical doctor from Thailand he would have traveled to Thailand.

At first Hattori planned to finish his work in Vietnam in three months in 2002.  But he eventually stayed there for three years.  Today he shuttles between Japan and Vietnam in every two weeks.  It is not for money at all.  Hattori has purchased various types of medical equipment at his own expenses to donate them to hospitals in Vietnam.  He even paid doctor's fees for some poor patients in Vietnam.

Hattori also tried to improve medical environment in Vietnam.  Even the national ophthalmic hospital of Vietnam performed operations only in the morning or till the noon.  Hattorti persuaded Vietnamese medical staff to change their practice which was not helpful for patients.

Anyway Hattori aroused the notice of Vietnamese so that a national TV station of Vietnam broadcast a program featuring Hattori.  Now his influence can be seen in many young medical doctors in Vietnam.  But Hattori thinks it still needs time to realize real improvement in the medical-services community of Vietnam.

In this way, Tadashi Hattori is providing medical practices for Vietnamese patients free of charge.  He is a great unpaid physician in Vietnam, though he earned money in Japan which has also gradually come to recognize his contribution to Vietnamese people.  Hattori has received some public prizes in Japan as well as in Vietnam.

Incidentally, the reason for Hattori to have entered a medical university in Kyoto decades ago was that he had once felt insulted and upset by an arrogant medical doctor who had attended his father; the doctor looked like having no respect for patients.  Hattori's father died of illness under care of the foolish doctor when Tadashi Hattori was a high-school student.  He wanted to be a better medical doctor so as to put such arrogant and stupid doctors to shame.



###

Tokyo Streets

Some of the Best Japanese Haiku

Some of the Best Japanese Haiku

One of the most famous historic haiku of Japan:

When Matsuo Basyo heard a sound a frog made when it jumped into an old pond surrounded by sheer quietness of a forest, he wrote:

At an old sleeeping pond
        an unforeseen frog made a sound
as suddenly for eternity it jumped.

(Furuike ya, Kawazu tobikomu, Mizu no oto)


Matsuo Basyo (1644-1694) was one of the most popular poets in the samurai era.

Matsuo Bashō was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku (at the time called hokku). His poetry is internationally renowned, and in Japan many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites. Although Bashō is justifiably famous in the west for his hokku, he himself believed his best work lay in leading and participating in renku. He is quoted as saying, "Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsuo_Bash%C5%8D


Other most famous historic haiku of Japan:

When Shiki Masaoka was eating Japanese persimmons in the precincts of historic Horyu-ji Temple, he suddenly heard a large bell of the temple starting to ring under the autumn blue sky.  (Shiki, traveling in an old Buddhist town, thought he had by now to write a letter to a friend, asking for money.)

A poor man is luckily eating temple fruit;
          then an overhung bell responds fully
to Horyu-ji autumn persimmons so awfully.

(Kaki kueba, Kane wa narunari, Horyu-ji

Note: "Kane wa narunai" literally means that a bell has rung, but it is similar to the sound of "Kane wa nakunari" meaning that I have lost money.)

Masaoka Shiki (1867 – 1902) was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry.[5] He also wrote on reform of tanka poetry.[6] 

Some consider Shiki to be one of the four great haiku masters, the others being Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaoka_Shiki






###

Taking off with controlled power
          at a certain specified hour
it never minds whose tour, at all.

A Chinese Homeless Died in Tokyo

A Chinese Homeless Died in Tokyo

In January 2004 a Chinese homeless man felt so sick and bad in a public park in Ikebukuro, Toshima ward of Tokyo.

(Ikebukuro is one of the most popular commercial districts in Tokyo, full of restaurants, bars, Japanese-style pubs, amusement facilities, etc. where many Chinese, Koreans, and probably gangsters work and live.)

He was in his 50s but looked like an old man at his 70s partly due to alcohol poisoning.  He could not walk due to fragile physical conditions.

So, the sick Chinese man asked a certain Japanese volunteer working for homeless people to take him to a hospital.  The kind young Japanese took him to public welfare office though he thought the fragile man was Japanese.  In the office, the Chinese man said that he was not Japanese but Chinese.  It surprised the Japanese helper.

An official in the pubic office asked the Chinese where he had filed foreign resident registration.  It was a certain ward in Tokyo but not Toshima.  So the official told the Japanese aid that the Chinese man could receive public aid in the ward he had registered his status as a foreigner.

But the Chinese sick man refused to go to the ward office where he could be officially identified.  He said that he might be arrested if he had made an appearance there.  So, the two persons went back to the public park in some gloomy mood.  As it was Friday the Chinese man asked the Japanese helper to give him time to decide what to do.  He said he would make a decision on Monday.  So, the Japanese man left him in the park.

When the Japanese volunteer came back to the public park on Monday, he found that the sick Chinese had collapsed night before to be taken to a hospital by an ambulance.  So, he hurried to the hospital to see the homeless Chinese lying in bed in a critical condition.  He was suffering sever pneumonia.

The Chinese homeless man was hospitalized, using a false name.   Staff of the hospital could not find his identification, so that they did not apply full treatment to him.  But as the Japanese visitor could tell the real name and status of the poor patient, the hospital found where to request medical costs.  They started to apply full treatment to the almost dying Chinese man.

In Japan, a foreigner can receive public aid and welfare if he or she meets certain conditions.  Public livelihood subsidies a Japanese poor man or homeless man could receive can be applied to a foreigner.  But it is no wonder that a homeless foreigner who is afraid of arrest by the police would not reveal his name like in this case.

Anyway, this Chinese man was accepted by the hospital in Tokyo.  But later he was sent to other hospital which could provide him with long-term care in Utsunomiya City, 100 km north of Tokyo.    
Then half a year passed.  It was August that the Japanese volunteer was informed that the Chinese sick man came back to the public park of Ikebukuro, again, but looked like dead.  The Japanese hurried to the park.   The familiar Chinese was in a wheelchair, looking dead.  Some people said that he had run away from the hospital in Utsunomiya night before, taking a bus while being in a wheelchair.   An ambulance was called soon, but it was confirmed that this unhappy Chinese homeless man died already.

So, the Japanese volunteer thought that this Chinese man wanted to die in a familiar place in Tokyo.

(http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~kg8h-stu/gaikou-homeless.htm)

It is very rare to see homeless foreigners in Japan.  Absolutely no European or American homeless men look like existing in Japan.  But it is difficult to judge if a homeless person is Japanese, Chinese, or Korean by appearance.

It is said that there are 30,000 homeless people in Japan.  And there are about 12,000 registered Chinese in Toshima ward, Tokyo.



###

Asakusa, Tokyo

Matsushita's Goodwill Betrayed by China

Matsushita's Goodwill Betrayed by China 

Japanese electronic giant Panasonic helped China build its won electronics industry.

Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997), a prominent politician and reformist leader of the Chinese Communist, visited Japan in 1978.  On Oct. 28, Deng met Konosuke Matsushita (1894-1989) at a plant of Panasonic in Ibaragi City, Osaka.

Deng, the then top Chinese leader, said to the founder of Panasonic then called Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., "You are called a god of management in Japan.  Would you please help China promote modernization of its industry?"  The notable Japanese entrepreneur Matsushita replied: "We, as Matsushita Electric Industrial, will corporate with you as much as possible."  Hearing this answer, Deng smiled so brightly.  

On this meeting, Konosuke Matsushita was 83 years old; he already half retired from management, with a title of an executive adviser.  However, his reputation and influential power in the Matsushita group were still overwhelming.  Konosuke Matsushita also made a special effort to realize this meeting with Deng Xiaoping.  Matsushita had a special interest in China like some other business leaders in Japan who had been familiar with China before WWII. 

Konosuke Matsushita flew to China next year and the year after, being accompanied by a doctor in charge.  He met with the de-facto head of China Deng.  They aimed at building a joint company which will be supported by the whole Japanese electronic industry.  However, finally they judged that it was too early to invite other Japanese businesses, so that it was planned that Matsushita Electric Industrial alone would build the joint corporation in China.

The Matsushita group had a factory in Shanghai during WWII.  So, Konosuke Matsushita must have had nostalgia in China.  This time they planned to produce cathode-ray tubes in the new plant but not complete TV sets.  In 1987, they founded a company called Beijing Matsushita Color CRT Co., Ltd. (BMCC) based on capital of 10 billion yen the Matsushita group provided.  It was one of the largest projects in China being promoted for earning foreign currency.   The first product rolled out in June 1987.  But Konosuke Matsushita died about one month before.

This legacy, BMCC, of Konosuke was praised by parties concerned as a representative and symbolic example of joint business by Japan and China.　This company ran in the black from the first year of its operation.  At its peak, it shipped 10 million TV tubes per year.  Through this joint business, it is thought,  a huge amount of technological items and know-hows the Matsushita Group had were formerly or informally flew into China.  Subsequently, China started to learn modern electronics and management skills from various Japanese makers who followed suit after Matsushita.

But business in China is always affected by the political climate in China.  When BMCC delivered its first product, the tragic crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square occurred in Beijing.  However, the BMCC management did not stop its production lines.  Accordingly this joint company was appreciated by the Chinese media.

Nonetheless, this good tradition of friendship between Japan and China has been tarnished in these years or decades after death of Deng Xiaoping.  Chinese anti-Japanese demonstrators attacked some plants Panasonic runs in China in the wake of rekindled disputes over the Senkaku Islands:

Panasonic closes China plants after violent protests
By Kevin Voigt, CNN
September 17, 2012 -- Updated 1635 GMT (0035 HKT)

Hong Kong (CNN) -- Panasonic halted operations at three factories in China after angry protesters ransacked Japanese businesses over the weekend amid rising tensions over disputed islands in the East China Sea.
Violence against Japanese companies was seen in Xi'an, Dongguan, Changsha and Guangzhou, according to local media reports. A Panasonic factory was set on fire and a Toyota dealership in Qingdao were damaged on Saturday, and a Jusco department store was ransacked. In Guangzhou, demonstrators broke into the Garden Hotel and attacked a Japanese restaurant on the second floor, according to the South China Morning Press.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/17/business/china-japan-panasonic/index.html

Anti-Japanese Protests Flare in China Over Disputed Islands
By Dexter Roberts September 17, 2012

"Never forget the national humiliation," and "Protect China's inseparable territory," read some. More disturbing: "Let’s kill all Japanese," and "Nuclear extermination for wild Japanese dogs." 

Those are some of the sentiments irate Chinese are displaying on protest banners across the country, as demonstrators in more than a dozen cities including Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Nanjing take to the streets, angry about Japanese control of the disputed Senkaku islands—known as Diaoyu in China—an uninhabited but possibly resource-rich atoll in the East China Sea. 

The protests have been sparked by the Japanese government’s announcement that it intends to nationalize the privately owned islands. China has sent six patrols boats to the waters near the islands in recent days. 

Fires broke out in a Panasonic (PC) electronics parts plant and a Toyota Motor (TM) dealership in the coastal city of Qingdao after protests there, the companies said on Sept. 16. To date, there has been no confirmation as to who set the blaze. Both have shut operations temporarily.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-17/anti-japanese-protests-flare-in-china-over-disputed-islands  

http://www.dw.de/japanese-firms-suspend-operations-in-china/a-16245774-1

Brief history of Panasonic:

1918 - Konosuke Matsushita establishes Matsushita Electric Appliances Company

1939 - Matsushita Batteries Company builds a factory in Shanghai.

1945 - WWII ends and the Empire of Japan falls.  Matsushita loses its interests in China.

1946 - Matsushita Group is subject to restriction of zaibatsu operation posed by the US.

1949 - The zaibatsu (family-run conglomerate) restriction is lifted from Matsushita.

1961 - Konosuke Matsushita stepps down from the president of Matsushita Electric Industrial to become chairman.

1973 - Konosuke Matsushita stepps down from the chairman of Matsushita Electric Industrial to become executive adviser.

1978 - Konosuke Matsushita meets with Deng Xiaoping in the Ibaragi factory, Osaka, Japan.

1979 - Konosuke Matsushita visits China.

1980 - Konosuke Matsushita visits China.

1987 - Beijing Matsushita Color CRT Co., Ltd. (BMCC) is founded in China.

1989 - Konosuke Matsushita dies in April at 94; the first product is completed in BMCC in June while the Tiananmen riot and crush occurred on the same day, drastically.
         

###

Tokyo

Great Fool Ryokan

Great Fool Ryokan

One of the most respected Buddhist priests in the Edo era or during the samurai period from the 17th century to the middle of the 19th century is Ryokan (1758-1831).

Japanese people traditionally respect Buddhist priests who do not try to be rich, famous, or promoted in religious communities.  They truly love humble and poor Buddhist priests who however master the essence of Buddhisms as much as any hierarchs.  Those priests are expected to avoid any quarrels, strife, luxury, status, special treatment, accumulation of money and assets, worldly honor, reputation, or enjoying position titles.

Japanese know that Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, lived as a kind of beggar without money and assets, though his life and his followers' living were supported by contribution from farmers, merchants, etc. who believed in Buddha's teaching but lived and worked in society outside a Buddhist community.

So, the less a Buddhist monk has desire, the more he is respected by the Japanese public.  But, since Buddhist temples and monks in Japan were fully protected by the samurai government and local samurai lords, ordinary monks had their living guaranteed no matter how immature they were in study of Buddhism.  Such monks often became so mean and rotten, enjoying a materially sinful life.  As Vatican priests degenerated and corrupted often in the past and even today due to too great authority and protection from the Pope, Japanese Buddhist monks in the samurai era also perished and lapsed due to too great support and protection from the shogun and samurai lords.

The more Japanese people saw such rotten Buddhist priests around them, the more they came to respect rare monks who were contented with honest poverty.  Ryokan was one of such rare and excellent Buddhist priests.

Ryokan did not try to be the head of a Buddhist temple or to establish strong connection with any samurai lord.  Born in the house of a rich headman of a village on the Sea of Japan, he set his face toward Buddhism.  He left his family trying to stop him, traveling to a certain temple in Western Japan where a notable priest presided.  But having fully learnt the religion there, he ventured into drifting and roaming as a freelance priest all over Japan, since his teacher in the temple died.  Ryokan sometimes traveled to Edo (presently Tokyo) and other local regions, but finally he settled in his home county to die at the age of 74.

Impressive words he left behind are:

"I often remember Gan-ko.  He was like a mad man while he was alive.  One day he happened to chase rough waves and gone into the stormy sea forever himself."

"When I came to a town, asking for alms, I met a familiar old man.  He questioned me as to why I, a priest, was living in deep mountains closed by white clouds.  So, I asked him why he was living in this dusty town.  Before I and he answered each question, I suddenly awoke from my dream.  Then a bell of the temple started to ring, telling the coming of morning."

"When I tired from walking around, I came to a simple farm house.  It was already at sunset.  While I was watching birds in the filed tweeting, an old master of the house returned from farm work.  Though we were strangers to each other, he welcomed me like an old friend.  He called his wife, telling her to serve alcoholic drink.  We talked, drinking and eating humbly.  His story was so interesting.  And finally we fell asleep.  I could not see anything good or bad honestly. "  

"At dust in autumn, I saw crows perching on sapless trees and a family of wild geese trying to hide in a far corner of the sky.  And a monk in black never showed an air of leaving a river bank while standing there for long stretches, looking over at chilly fields around a small village at sheer dust in autumn.  (Indeed it was like a black-and-white painting.)"

http://www.geocities.jp/fumimalu/ryokansamaaikai.html

Ryokan called himself Tai-gu.  Tai means large, and gu means foolishness in Japanese.  Probably he meant that all the other monks were super fools.



###

Pacific Ocean, Ibaraki, Northeast of Tokyo (which could withstand the 3/21 Tsunami of 2011)
     

Japanese Elites in Kissinger's Seminar

Japanese Elites in Kissinger's Seminar

In 1953 Henry Kissinger (1923-) held an international summer seminar in Harvard University.

Yasuhiro Nakasone, a then Japanese parliament member, joined it, though it was just eight years after the end of WWII.  Nakasone (1918-) later became prime minister of Japan, specifically, in 1982.　Importantly, in 1954, the next year of his joining the seminar, Nakasone contributed to passing a bill to allocate a National budget to building the first Japanese nuclear reactor.  Since then, lawmaker Nakasone acted as one of major politicians in Japan who willingly promoted development, building, and operation of nuclear power generation plants over decades.

Accordingly it is thought that Japanese conservative elite politician Nakasone was recruited or brainwashed by US governmental agencies and influential persons, such as Kissinger, so as to carry out their plan to introduce nuclear technology into post-war Japan.

However into Kissinger's seminar some other Japanese elites were also invited.  In those years the seminar was held every year, usually inviting 50 or so rising and young elite politicians, professors, authors, business leaders from all over the world.  It lasted for 50 days in summer.

And, in one time Kenzaburo Oe (1935-) joined this summer seminar in early 1960s.  Looking back to the episode from today, it is a little strange that pacifist Oe received invitation from Kissinger who is not pacifistic at all.  But, after WWII Japan fully adopted American democracy.  And Oe has been an enthusiastic believer in democracy.  He hated militarism and nationalistic ideology which were observed in the Empire of Japan during WWII.  Oe probably though that he could find peace activists even in Kissinger's seminar.  

Oe received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994.  However, Oe has been a well-known peace activist since he won a big literary award in Japan in 1958 while he was a student of the University of Tokyo.  Oe is also against operation of nuclear power plants in Japan.  So, it is interesting what Oe thought in Kissinger's summer seminar in early 1960s.

At the time, Oe had already published his nonfiction titled Hirsohima Notes.  Oe reported predicaments Hisrohima atomic-bomb victims were experiencing after WWII.  So, on one occasion during his stay in the US for the seminar, he talked about this work.  Then an American woman said to Oe that if the Imperial Navy of Japan had not attacked US naval bases in Pearl Harbor, there would not have been Hiroshima.

However, I don't think that author Oe replied that in Pearl Harbor only 60 US citizens were killed while more than 2,300 American soldiers died in action; but in Hiroshima 120,000 civilians were killed while 20,000 soldiers died due to the blast of an atomic bomb (in 4 months after the Hiroshima attack discharging high radioactive doses).    

Anyway, Kissinger won Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.  But, Yashuhiro Nakasone has not yet.  And, since a tremendous accident occurred in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011, nobody in Japan thinks that very old man Mr. Nakasone still holds a chance to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

###

Asakusa, Tokyo