Working at Kyoto University in Japan

Dear readers,

Here is a much-belated announcement of the changes in my workplace.

Professor at ILAS, Kyoto University

From April 1, 2019, I started working as a full-time professor at the International Academic Research and Resource Center for Language Education (i-ARRC) at the Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences (ILAS) at Kyoto University. I teach academic writing classes.

Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies

From April 1, 2020, I became an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies. (Field of Language Education Research and Development, Course of Foreign Language Acquisition and Education, Department of Human Coexistence). I'm responsible for teaching one course a year and supervising some graduate students.

The English Education Division Manager

From May 27, 2020, I became the manager of the English Education Division at i-ARRC in ILAS. Under the supervision of the English Department at ILAS, I coordinate the activities of the Division with those of the English Program, a unit for implementing English classes in the general education at Kyoto University.

I receive emails from outside the university at my personal email address: yosuke.yanase [AT] gmail.com.

Thank you.

Yosuke YANASE, Ph. D.

ILAS, Kyoto University,

Yoshida-Nihonmatsu, Sakyo-Ku, Kyoto

606-8501, Japan

Reconciling and finding harmony with the world through photography

Photography for me is a way of reconciling and finding harmony with the world.

My emotions and feelings, often mixed and sometimes suppressed, find their place in the worlds that I find, which I express through the camera.

This non-verbal art may perhaps be more helpful for me than the verbal art for its subtler and yet more powerful expression.

I started a Flickr site where I can share with you the worlds that I find that I love.

If you're interested, please come.

Flickr Yosuke Yanase

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127153383@N03/

Learning to learn: Slideshow at the beginning of a new semester

Below is my slideshow that I show at the beginning of the fall semester of 2013.

Welcome to my class!

Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley (with excerpts)

This video, a third one by Ken Robinson on education, describes misconceptions about current school education system and gives hope of recreating it. This is a message that all policy makers on education must listen to.

Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley

FILMED APR 2013, POSTED MAY 2013 TED Talks Education

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_education_s_death_valley.html

Below are some words from the video (all available from the video site; some words are colored and emphasized by me).

EXCERPTS

"There are three principles on which human life flourishes, and they are contradicted by the culture of education under which most teachers have to labor and most students have to endure."


"The first is this, that human beings are naturally different and diverse. ...

Education under No Child Left Behind is based on not diversity but conformity. What schools are encouraged to do is to find out what kids can do across a very narrow spectrum of achievement."


"The second principle that drives human life flourishing is curiosity. If you can light the spark of curiosity in a child, they will learn without any further assistance, very often. ...

Now the reason I say this is because one of the effects of the current culture here, if I can say so, has been to de-professionalize teachers. Teachers are the lifeblood of the success of schools. But teaching is a creative profession. Teaching, properly conceived, is not a delivery system. You know, you're not there just to pass on received information. Great teachers do that, but what great teachers also do is mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage. ...

The role of a teacher is to facilitate learning. That's it. And part of the problem is, I think, that the dominant culture of education has come to focus on not teaching and learning, but testing.

Now testing is important. Standardized tests have a place. But they should not be the dominant culture of education. They should be diagnostic. They should help. ...

But all that should support learning. It shouldn't obstruct it, which of course it often does. So in place of curiosity, what we have is a culture of compliance.  Our children and teachers are encouraged to follow routine algorithms rather than to excite that power of imagination and curiosity."


"And the third principle is this: that human life is inherently creative. It's why we all have different résumés. We create our lives, and we can recreate them as we go through them. It's the common currency of being a human being. It's why human culture is so interesting and diverse and dynamic. ...

We all create our own lives through this restless process of imagining alternatives and possibilities, and what one of the roles of education is to awaken and develop these powers of creativity. Instead, what we have is a culture of standardization. ...

But what all the high-performing systems in the world do is currently what is not evident, sadly, across the systems in America -- I mean, as a whole.

One is this: They individualize teaching and learning. They recognize that it's students who are learning and the system has to engage them, their curiosity, their individuality, and their creativity. That's how you get them to learn.

The second is that they attribute a very high status to the teaching profession. They recognize that you can't improve education if you don't pick great people to teach and if you don't keep giving them constant support and professional development. ...

And the third is, they devolve responsibility to the school level for getting the job done. You see, there's a big difference here between going into a mode of command of control in education -- That's what happens in some systems. You know, central governments decide or state governments decide they know best and they're going to tell you what to do. The trouble is that education doesn't go on in the committee rooms of our legislative buildings. It happens in classrooms and schools, and the people who do it are the teachers and the students, and if you remove their discretion, it stops working. You have to put it back to the people.

There is wonderful work happening in this country. But I have to say it's happening in spite of the dominant culture of education, not because of it. It's like people are sailing into a headwind all the time. And the reason I think it is this: that many of the current policies are based on mechanistic conceptions of education. It's like education is an industrial process that can be improved just by having better data, and somewhere in, I think, the back of the mind of some policy makers is this idea that if we fine-tune it well enough, if we just get it right, it will all hum along perfectly into the future. It won't, and it never did.

The point is that education is not a mechanical system. It's a human system. It's about people, people who either do want to learn or don't want to learn. Every student who drops out of school has a reason for it which is rooted in their own biography. They may find it boring. They may find it irrelevant. They may find that 't's at odds with the life they're living outside of school. There are trends, but the stories are always unique. ...

So I think we have to embrace a different metaphor. We have to recognize that it's a human system, and there are conditions under which people thrive, and conditions under which they don't. We are after all organic creatures, and the culture of the school is absolutely essential. Culture is an organic term, isn't it?"

"The real role of leadership in education -- and I think it's true at the national level, the state level, at the school level -- is not and should not be command and control. The real role of leadership is climate control, creating a climate of possibility. And if you do that, people will rise to it and achieve things that you completely did not anticipate and couldn't have expected."

"There's a wonderful quote from Benjamin Franklin. "There are three sorts of people in the world: Those who are immovable, people who don't get, they don't want to get it, they're not going to do anything about it. There are people who are movable, people who see the need for change and are prepared to listen to it. And there are people who move, people who make things happen." And if we can encourage more people, that will be a movement. And if the movement is strong enough, that's, in the best sense of the word, a revolution. And that's what we need.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much."

Slides for learning to write an academic paper

Below are slides I often use to explain how to write an academic paper.

(1) Three most important questions you should ask about your paper.

(2) Three components of INTRODUCTION

(3) For important key terms, you need these.

(4) WHAT-HOW-WHY (detailed)

(5) The structure of your argument

(6) Argument consists of a line of small claims.

(7) Do not pretend that your argument is perfect.

(8) Get a wide audience for your narrow topic, and let them feel relevance.

(9) Four stages of writing a thesis

(10) Balance between overview and detailed description.

(11) Expand your horizons gradually.

(12) Towards the end of writhing a thesis, you need ...

(13) General/Specific and Before/After in a paper

A veteran engineer calls for volunteers from other senior citizens for the repair of the Fukushima nuclear plants

Yastel Yamada, a retired engineer, has proposed a rational and pragmatic solution for the repair of the Fukushima nuclear plants: calling for volunteers from senior citizens (particularly retired engineers), who are biologically less susceptible to radiation and over the age of reproduction.

This rational choice poses an ethical question as well: should we support an act of self-sacrifice for society? -- a taboo topic in Japan after the World War II.



Together with other volunteers, Yamada opened an English web page, in addition to German one, Italian one, and needless to say a Japanese one.


Below is some excerpts from the site: Proposal for a Skilled Veterans Corps to install an alternative cooling system at the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

5
Repair or installation of the cooling system will unavoidably be conducted in an environment highly contaminated with radioactive elements with serious risk of future health complications. As such, young people with a long future should not have to be placed in a position of having to undertake such a task. Radiation exposure of a generation which may reproduce the next generation should be avoided, regardless of the amount

6
Our generation who has, consciously or unconsciously, approved the construction of the Fukushima nuclear power plants and enjoyed the benefits of the vast supply of electricity generated, in particular those of us who hailed the slogan that “Nuclear Power is Safe” should be the first to join the Skilled Veteran Corps to install or repair the cooling system. This is the duty of our generation to the next generation and the one thereafter.
http://park10.wakwak.com/~bouhatsusoshi/english.html

As an experienced engineer, Yamada believes that the repair of the Fukushima nuclear plants needs a lot of manual works and that radiation exposure beyond the reasonable limit may be necessary for the workers on site, for working in a short time (like 10 - 15 minutes) would not amount to a proper repair work.

According to the video below, Yamada says that more than 60 senior citizens have volunteered so far, and he asks for all kinds of support from younger generations in Japan and abroad.


Associating Yamada's proposal with Kamikaze-Banzai Attack is wrong because, as you can see in the video below, he and other volunteers are perfectly free from heroic self-indulgence. His purpose is to fix the problem, not to die heroically from desperation. Yamada calmly suggest that a cooperation from the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) is necessary.


Samurai may be a proper way of describing them for their pragmatism for a noble of cause of defending their fellow people. I'd argue that together with the example of Tokyo Fire Department's Hyper Rescue Squad (http://yosukeyanase.blogspot.com/2011/03/three-samurai-of-tokyo-fire-departments.html) Yamada demonstrates that Samurai is not dead in Japan.


For those of you who may have difficulties in following the Japanese in the interview video below, here is my summary of what they say.

Yastel Yamada (the organizer)

* From the experience as a veteran engineer, I can tell that the repair work of the Fukushima nuclear plants requires the manual work by experienced workers.

* Replacing workers at every 10-15 minute because of the radiation exposure limit is not effective for a proper repair.

* Young workers who may reproduce younger generation and are themselves more susceptible to radiation effect should not be engaged in such a work. This repair work is a call for senior citizens like me.

* I started this project (Skilled Veterans Corps) because if I act alone I wouldn't even be admitted to the site of the Fukushima nuclear plants.

* This project needs an official support from the national government for the budget and other resources. The cooling system of the plants must be restored completely and maintained for at least 10 years. Such a long term project needs a national support.

* Workers who are engaged in the repair work at the Fukushima nuclear plants must be recognized as individual persons. Workers in a highly demanding situation like this needs psychological support from the general public. [Note: The workers at the plants (Fukushima 50) are still anonymous and their words and faces have hardly been broadcasted in Japan so far.]

* I'm acting not out of desperation or heroism. I just want to do the right thing in a calm way.

* If I believe in one thing as a right thing and express it in words, my action must follow.

* People of different generations should respond differently. They have their right and duty to do so.

* I may feel scared when I actually step into the site. I must be well prepared. If some volunteers feel too scared at the site and quit, I won't blame them.

* We'd like to be equipped with the best means for the work. We need international supports as well.

* This project not like the Kamikaze suicide attack. Our mission is to fix the problem, not to die in vain.

* Personally, I don't regard this act as self-sacrifice. I do this because this is the most rational choice. This is how engineers think and act.

* This is not an attack in war against people of other nations. In this sense, I feel no hesitation to be engaged in this 'fight.'

* However, I'll never forget that this nuclear accident is not a natural disaster, but a man-made disaster.

* Payment should not be the issue. If you do a job like this for money, the motivation of workers will be lost. Workers in a situation like this need psychological support from ordinary people.

* I need cooperation from the government and TEPCO. I won't be engaged in the debate concerning the nuclear power issues for now. We want to fix the problem now.



Yoshio Hirai (Ex-translator, a long-time friend of Yamada's. Instructor of Aikido, a Japanese martial art (Budo))

* I don't have technical knowledge or skills. I'd like to help the volunteers at the site for the routine works.

* Personally, I don't think I'm a nationalist. Rather I do this because this is the right thing. Gikyo-shin (義侠心), a spirit of of samurai, is something I always keep in mind. I am a man of Budo.

* At my age, I feel less scared about my death.

* If people like us do not go, the government may send the young members of the Self Defence Force of Japan. I don't want to send young people to this kind of mission.




Sasaki (Wife of Hirai, ex-translator)

* (Asked if the gender is an issue here). The gender is not an issue. I just don't want to see young people ruin their lives for this kind of work.

* Even if our generation may not be directly responsible for the World War II (we were too young at the time of the war), we are absolutely responsible for the nuclear power in the post war Japan. I have enjoyed my life so far. The current life of mine is like a extra-present.


From my Japanese blog article, which is based on the video below.
http://yanaseyosuke.blogspot.com/2011/05/blog-post_07.html

Here is the video offered by an independent journalist, Yasumi Iwakami (@iwakamiyasumi ) and his staff (@iwakami_staff ). (Incidentally, the cozy relationship of Kisha club (the the press club of Japanese newspapers and TV stations that excludes journalists working independently or for Japanese magazines or foreign media) has emerged as a very important issue to, I'd say, 'normalize' this country. No country can be sound without good journalism.)

Interview with Yastel Yamada and his colleagues



Video streaming by Ustream

You may want to follow Yamada on Twitter,

（@officeyam ）

or send him email.

veteran_corp@aa.wakwak.com

Get more information from his web page.

Skilled Veterans Corps at the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power
http://park10.wakwak.com/~bouhatsusoshi/english.html

As I said at the beginning of this blog article, I believe this is an ethical question for ourselves as well as a practical problem for the Fukushima nuclear plants.


I've blogged and tweeted about this issue a number of times so far, but I have only received one feedback. Considering the number of response that I usually receive for my blogging and tweeting, I find this rather odd.

If my friends and the general public in Japan are too afraid, I hope I'm mistaken, to even think about this issue, I believe they are betraying their ancestors of samurai, who established the ethical and moral code of this nation. That, I'd argue, is unpatriotic.





P.S. (May 8, 2011)

I've received a lot of feedback now. I particularly thank Mr. Yamada and Mr. Iwakami for their retweets.

Some corrections were made for grammar in the above article.



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Japanese citizens should not betray the trust in Japan by NOT acting

The Japanese Government and TEPCO cannot and must not betray the trust in Japan from the world.

Citizens of Japan hold moral responsibility for the international community to rectify and improve their own government and TEPCO that have only been showing insufficent measures for the nuclear disaster.


See the video taken in New York immediately after the earthquake on March 11.

Watch and see how you feel in your heart.

Can you honestly accept the goodwill now, after you've seen the insufficiency of your government and TEPCO? The Japanese government is not someone else. It is what represents YOU!


Do we, people of Japan, betray the goodwill to and trust in Japan by NOT acting?

If you don't act in Japan, I'd say you're no different from the executives of TEPCO (with due respect to the workers at the plants that are risking their lives).





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N7Jb5ssgmM&feature=player_embedded


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Three Samurai of Tokyo Fire Department's Hyper Rescue Squad

As the title of the movie "The Last Samurai suggests, Samurai are thought to be extinct. Indeed among Japanese people, SAIGHO Takamori or YAMAOKA Tesshu has often been described as the last Samurai. Rickson Gracie, a legendary martial artist, admires Samurai but declares unequivocally that he has seen no Samurai in contemporary Japan (Gracie, 2010).

Moral fiber of Japanese people has been considered in decline. The burst of the economic bubble crashed their (over)confidence of their economy. The Great Hanshin earthquake revealed the incapacity of politicians and bureaucrats evidently. Terrorism in Tokyo was committed by no other than Japanese people, Aum Shinrikyo, whose executive members were mostly graduates from prestigious universities in Japan. Most Japanese people forgot the word Samurai except when the Japanese team in World Baseball Classic used the nickname Samurai Japan. Samurai has become just a symbolic and empty word.

But maybe not necessarily so from now on, after Japan and the rest of the world witnessed the heroic actions to prevent the meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.

Among the heros were the three at the press conference at midnight on March 19, 2010: Tokyo Fire Department's Hyper Rescue Squad captain SATO Yasuo, the squad' sixth troop leader TOMIOKA Toyohiko, and squad's eighth troop leader TAKAYAMA Yukio. (See the picture and a news article.)

These three firefighters, who represent other heros at the Fukushima Operation, reminded Japanese people of what Samurai were like. They were confident but humble, calm but warm, and most important of all, effective in action.

At the press conference, Sato explained the process of the operation plainly and calmly with a polite language. Without prior knowledge, you might guess that it is a report of a drill operation. His explanation was very factual and clear, which invites our reasonable guess that he is a man of responsibility and very aware of the details of what his men do. His explanation made a sharp contrast with other clumsy and often evasive explanations by government officials (with the exceptions of EDANO Yukio, whom some foreign press compared to Jack Bauer).


When Sato's 10 minutes explanation was over, the press, that has always been petty and noisy since the earthquake, was silent. Journalists were just overwhelmed by the serene dignity of the three.

"Mass-Gomi" ("Massive Garbage") is a slang to refer to and disrespect the "Mass-Com(i)" ("mass communication media") which was regarded as lacking knowledge, wisdom, vision, courage, compassion, discretion and whatever virtues journalists are required of. Many Japanese people, including me, has now begun to use the slang with little hesitation. For the past one week, too many TV stations, newspapers, and magazines were really "Massive Garbage" to the Japanese public, just agitating uneducated guesses and profiting from the human tragedies.

After a while, Tomioka was asked for a comment. Just as calm as Sato, with no appearance of triumph, he just said that it was a very tough and difficult mission, but he believes his team has reasonably accomplished what the nation expected of them. His body language, as well as his words, was telling that he and his men just did what they had to do.

After that Takayama took the microphone and added a short comment. Sato followed and added what he failed to report in the main explanation: safety of his men. He confirmed that he made sure of the safety of the operation before it was initiated.

With words like "Kamikaze" and "Seppuku", Samurai are often mistaken as irrational being, but they are not. (Kamikaze has no relation to Samurai, and Seppuku is one consequence of Bushido but right now I have to omit a long explanation about this).

If you have seen Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (and if not, please do), I can skip the explanation. Seven Samurai were depicted as very rational warriors with great compassion. Or if you argue that the movie is only a fiction, you may want to read Nitobe Inazo's Bushido: The Soul of Japan or UCHIMURA Kanzo's Representative Men of Japan. With the movie or the books, it won't take much time to realize that Samurai were gentlemen fighting for peace.

The microphone is back to Tomioka, who explained that his own mission was risk assessment and judge appropriately whether his men have been trained enough to deal with the situation. "The situation was worse than what we expected in the drill, but I was sure that my men could do it," Tomioka said again quite calmly.

But his composure was temporally disturbed by the next question: what was the toughest part?

"The toughest was carried out ... by my men." He barely spoke, and silence of about 10 seconds followed, during which he tried to stop himself from sobbing. "My men", he continued, "are high in morale and they did their best."

Still trying hard to calm himself down, he added. "But for their family, I feel truly sorry and I'd like to take this opportunity to send my apology and gratitude to them."

As if to avoid the press conference getting too emotional, Takayama took the microphone and added some technical explanation and thanked the background unit that measured the level of radiation to secure the safety of the men at the front.

The last question was asked: "How did you leave your home, and what would you like to do when you come home?"

Takayama said that he was in a different operation when he took the order and was only able to send his wife email: "I have to go and I'll be back." to which his wife sent a short reply "I have no doubt".

"When I come home, I just like to sleep." he said with a smile.

Tomioka said he was at home when he received the order. To his wife and son, he promised that he'd never initiate the operation without confirming safety. He left home with that promise.

About what he'd like to do when he comes home, he spoke with stoic understatement: "Because it is midnight now, my family may be sleeping." And he added, "I like sake, so I'd like to drink alone, reflecting what could have been done better and what can be done for the future".

Sato was also only able to send email to his wife, telling that he had to go. His wife also sent a short reply: "Save the nation".

"When I come home," he added quickly, "I just want to sleep." with a big smile, but it seemed to me that he needed that simile to conceal his tears in his eyes.



So, I wish to conclude that Samurai are not extinct.

Of course, I don't want to monopolize Samurai only in Japan. Readers of this passage must have your own Samurai in your country.

Like it or not, we occasionally have to fight, either against invaders or natuaral disasters. It is when Samurai show up and fight for you. Their plan is careful but they're decicive in action. They don't ask for praise. They just want to do what they're trained for. When the fight is over, they leave. As ordinary citizens begin their lives, Samurai quietly begin training again.

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Wisdom

Quotation on wisdom from "The loss of wisdom" by John A. Meacham 　found in "The Wise Men (and Women!)" By Jessa Crispin

To be wise is not to know particular facts but to know without excessive confidence or excessive cautiousness. Wisdom is thus not a belief, a value, a set of facts, a corpus of knowledge or information in some specialized area, or a set of special abilities or skills. Wisdom is an attitude taken by persons toward the beliefs, values, knowledge, information, abilities, and skills that are held, a tendency to doubt that these are necessarily true or valid and to doubt that they are an exhaustive set of those things that could be known.

See also Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience by Stephen S. Hall.

Go to Questia Online Library

Violence of "Mahatma" Gandhi

"Mahatma" Gandhi is my hero. When I saw Richard Attenborough's film in 1982 in a movie theater, it was more than inspirational. I have a picture of Gandhi in my office. I keep seeing it every day for many years.

Gandhi can arguably be deemed to one of the pioneers of postcolonialism. He at least started a counter movement to Westernization in industrial, cultural and spiritual terms. He succeeded in it in a very non-modern way of non-violence. Or he may just be an anticolonialist. But it doesn't really matter here. He's my hero in either way.

So imagine my surprise when I learned about Gandhi's tragic episode with his son, Harilal. The movie "Gandhi, My Father" in 2007 depicts, I would say, "psychological violence" of Gandhi to his own son. (I only saw a fragment of the movie in the Japanese National Television (NHK), though).



The Independent explains the episode briefly.

Certainly, in India at least, some details of the difficult relationship between Gandhi and the eldest of his four sons are already known. Born in 1888, Harilal was refused permission by Gandhi to study law as he himself had done. To the London-educated Gandhi, preventing his son from following in his academic footsteps was an act of honourable defiance against the Western education system he had come to reject and he did not believe his son required such preparation for a life he presumed would be devoted to the struggle for freedom.

Yet Harilal rebelled against his father's influence and, perhaps, his exaltation by others as a man who could do no wrong. Later he converted to Islam and took the name Abdullah Gandhi in a move that many have seen as an act of rebellion against his father rather than a genuine religious conversion. He also sought to remarry after his wife's death, something of which his father did not approve.

In one bitter letter to his father, Harilal wrote: "In your laboratory of experiments, unfortunately, I am the one truth that has gone wrong ... Yours Harilal." Elsewhere, he wrote of the man whom Indians knew as "Bapu" or father: "He is the greatest father you have... but he is the one father I wish I did not have."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/gandhi-amp-son-a-family-tragedy-459315.html

Shocking as it was, the episode was somewhat strangely understandable to me. Perhaps I knew this kind of dark side is what it takes to be "Mahatma." 

Part of me was even glad to know this episode. It's not that I enjoy the perverted joy of depreciating what I once worshiped. Rather, I want to see him as a human. As somebody I love and loathe.

The movie is available in DVD.

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An example of task management

Here is an example of task management or project scheduling made by one of my students. With his kind permission, I put the PDF file on my server so that you can download if you wish. When you write a master thesis, you should probably analyze your tasks in a form like this.

CLICK HERE FOR DOWNLOADING

(Incidentally, I'd personally use Excel for task management for its flexibility and adaptability.)

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Justice Vs. Power - Chomsky Vs. Foucault

The video of the two great minds talking about justice and power is available on YouTube.

Justice Vs. Power - Chomsky Vs. Foucault, Part 1



Justice Vs. Power - Chomsky Vs. Foucault, Part 2

Googley design

Design is one of my keywords. I'm attracted to it because I define it as "the science and art of reducing complexity for comfortable human interface." Design is pervasive from a mobile phone to an academic paper. It helps us to deal with reality that in itself is too complex for our bounded rationality. Through the science of design, we discover structures in reality. Through the art of it, beauty in experience. Design crystallizes our our being.


Together with technology, design is between science and art. In the sequence of science, technology, design and art, we find gradually shifted human activities to manage our life on earth (or in the universe). By the rationality science reveals, the efficiency technology acquires, the pleasure design affords and the joy art declares, human beings ceases to be a miserable being that must bear with harsh reality of the earth and the universe.

And here we meet, most likely thanks to the Google technology. Google is one of our icons of technology and design.

The official Google blog recently announced the Googley Design Principles:

1. Focus on people―their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today's and tomorrow's business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people's trust.
10. Add a human touch.

The principles are extensions of Google's philosophy and you can read the detail of the principles here.



Gee, I'd like to be a little Google in my work and life!

iTunes U

Of course, you knew it; it's only someone like me who's dumb enough not to know that a series of university lectures, Philosophy 185: Heidegger by Hubert Dreyfus in U.C. Berkeley, for example, is available on iTunes U completely for free.

You're not as stupid as me to be informed by a kind friend that all you have to do is to click the icon on a site. I know iTunes U is as new to you as a fridge. It's already embedded in your daily life.

No, I'm not even thinking that you haven't used iTunes; No human being can afford to be so brainless, even if the concept of human being includes a Windows user like me, who is not even sure whether iTunes is freely downloadable on a PC.

Sorry to have bothered you.

Quasi-Luhmannian world view (clumsily expressed)

Where is the world?

Is it beyond your country?

Is it where “they” live, who are different from “us”?

No.

The world is not beyond your country.

In the world, there are only “us,” who are all different.

The world is where differences are.

Differences cause communication, and communication produces more differences.

If there’s no difference, there’s no communication and the world stops.

All differences are connected through communication.

The world is where communication is.

The world never ends here or there.

It has no end, for communication has no end.

So it is not a matter of where, but of what.

What is the world?

The world is communication.

(inspired by Niklas Luhmann and originally written during a brief stay in the legendary city of diversity)

An optimist

Despite the conventional advice that it works to be an optimist, I don’t simply enjoy being optimistic, at least being solely so. It comforts me to ask the following questions myself when a trouble happens: What would be the worst scenario? ; What would be the effect of it?; How can I avoid it?

I sometimes feel even annoyed by a single-hearted person who is too complacent with his or her optimistic view of the world. Limiting imagination to a single perspective alone upsets me, even if it is someone else’s imagination.

George W. Bush might be a case in point. Here is his response to then-Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar one month before the Iraq War in 2003 (The New York Review of Books. November 8, 2007. p. 60).

Aznar: The only thing that worries me about you is your optimism.

Bush: I am an optimist, because I believe that I’m right. I’m at peace with myself.

An interesting view. However, I’d like to be at peace with reality, not just with myself.

Agony of Mother Teresa

The new book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, would be a gospel to militant atheists. As TIME on September 3, 2007 previews, in the book of collection of Mother Teresa’s letters that she wished to be destroyed, she candidly wrote surprising confessions as follows:

When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven – there is such convincing emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. – I am told God loves me – and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?

Mother Teresa, whom we regard as someone who only solaces somebody else, was consoled by Joseph Neuner, a well-known theologian.

I can’t express in words – the gratitude I owe you for your kindness to me – for the first time in … years – I have come to love the darkness – for I believe now that it is part of a very, very small part of Jesus’ darkness and pain on earth. You have taught me to accept it [as] a ‘spiritual side of your work’ as you wrote – Today really I felt a deep joy – that Jesus can’t go anymore thorough the agony – but that He wants to go through in me.

Indeed, a faith might be a fake. Believers may be those who suppress and deceive themselves. At least, one can be pretty sure that a faith does not promise a perfect life.

So it’s not surprising that a devout Christian becomes agnostic, like a Los Angeles Times journalist William Lobdell (The Japan Times, August 2, 2007). After investigating a number of scandals – financial or sexual – involving religious institutions he began to question his firm belief and asked for help to a pastor by throwing tough questions, expecting a convincing answer. The answer the pastor gave, quoted below, did not satisfy the journalist.

My ultimate affirmation is let God be God and acknowledge that He is in charge. He knows what I don’t know. And frankly, if I’m totally honest with you, a life of gratitude is one that bows before the Sovereign God arguing with Him on those things that trouble me, lamenting the losses of life, but ultimately saying, ‘You, God, are infinite; I’m human and finite.’

The journalist concludes his article as follows:

Clearly, I saw now that belief in God, no matter how grounded, requires at some point a leap of faith. Either you have the gift of faith or you don’t. It’s not a choice. And there’s no faking it if you’re honest about the state of your soul.

So, it seems that to some people, faith is simply given, no matter how she or he likes or dislikes it. The believer may become secularly happier or not for the faith – but that’s not a point. Agony is a part of a religious life, as it is a part of a secular life. After all, it is Jesus who said this.

My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
Matthew 27:46

A tender painter of negative spaces

Until a friend of mine in England asked for my opinion in e-mail about Haruki Murakami's After Dark, I kept forgetting that I haven't read the novel. I've lost time and peace of mind to read a novel for many months.

TIME on August 20, 2007 carried a short article on the Murakami. One quotation in the article is worth citing here.

"Murakami is a tender painter of negative spaces."
John Updike

He is. That's why we read his works. In the blinding light of positive spaces of our secular world, I need darkness to keep my vision.

Pluralistic understanding of history

On July 3, 2007, Fumio KYUMA resigned as defense minister for saying what a majority of American people would agree with: the two A-bombs “could not be helped” as a means to end the war and block Soviet influence over Japan. The Japan Times ran a headline, “Attacks just bid to end war, keep Soviet at bay, or one huge atrocity?” I disagree with the use of “or” here. I believe that the A-bombs were a bid to end the war and keep Soviet away, AND one hideous atrocity. Pluralistic understanding of history is required.

Even in natural science, all claims are merely hypotheses. To borrow a Popperian term, scientific claims are the ones that have only survived the tests of falsifiability. It’s not the case that they are positively proven to be true. They are simply not proven to be false. Therefore, even in science, different claims on the same matter are possible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

Most historical claims are not even falsifiable: they are often interpretations quite compatible with other different interpretations. The above claims concerning the A-bombs are interpretations, not basic facts which are either true or false. It is not inappropriate to have different interpretations at the same time.

Rather, I fear the urge to have one true interpretation. You may have a better interpretation, but not the supreme interpretation. You may have more interpretations, but not the only interpretation.

It is the same with understanding. I fear a “correct understanding of history” by the “Ministry of Truth.”

The Ministry of Truth

On June 22, 2007, the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly unanimously demanded that the Japanese national government retract its recent instruction to “correct” high school textbooks regarding the description of the involvement of the Imperial Japanese Army in the mass civilian suicides during the Battle of Okinawa.

The assembly protested, “It is an undeniable fact that mass suicides could not have occurred without the involvement of the Japanese military,” according to the Japan Times on June 23.

On June 20, Prime Minster Shinzo Abe succeeded in passing three education-related bills. One of the bills, the revised school education law, states that students must be led to a “correct understanding” of the nation’s history.

Taking these reports together, I wonder if the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly can be deemed as violating the new school education law, at least in spirit. The law states that an “attitude of loving the nation” is one of the important education goals, as well as a “correct understanding” of the nation’s history.

By the act of instructing the textbook publishers to “correct” their understandings of the Imperial Japanese Army’s involvement in the mass civilian suicides, the Japanese government claimed, I have to assume, that it holds the authority to decide a “correct understanding” of Japanese history.

One can argue, then, that the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly defied the “correct understanding, ” thus deliberately neglected the “attitude of loving the nation.”

As far as I know, recent comments by the Prime Minster and the Minister of Education were not so apparently oppressive. However, I regard deeds of politicians more important than their words, particularly in Japan, where words are often twisted or empty in politics.

The official English name of the Ministry of Education, Japan is extremely long: the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology. (The government invented a nice-sounding acronym, “MEXT.”)

In one April Fool article on my Japanese homepage some years ago, I once fabricated a false report and stated that due to public complaint that the name was too long to remember, the ministry decided to rename itself The Ministry of Truth.

I hope this April Fool article is still understood as a joke.