Kiyoshi Kurokawa's blog （en）

Professor Michael Sandel Visits Japan; What is its Impact?

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Professor Michael Sandel of Harvard University, known and loved by ‘Heated Class： Justice (Hakunetsu Kyoshitsu Justice)’ , a lecture series broadcasted by NHK television, is visiting Japan now.  Right after  his arrival Dr. Sandel gave his lecture at the Yasuda Auditorium of University of Tokyo.  Applications for the seats, as I understand, were more than 10 times of the capacity of the hall?  This class is scheduled to be on air at NHK today (August 26th).  I am sure that it will be broadcasted again sometime in the future.  So please, by all means, watch and hear it.

Professor Sandel is scheduled to give a lecture also on 27th at some other place in Tokyo and I was invited for it but had to be excused because of my other appointments – such a pity!  (I will write a separate column on this later, though…)  So, I introduced the organizers several young people to be there in my place.  I am sure that this will be a very good experience for them.

I have reported on this class in my blog of May 16th  and 19th in which I have made several comments about what I thought was particularly good about Dr. Sandel lecture series – the way he organized the whole session.

Now, students in Tokyo who were lucky enough to have had a chance to attend those classes ‘live’ will naturally compare them to the lectures they hear every day, their own faculties.

And for students to be given such opportunities to attend many classes of various professors beyond one’s own universities even across national borders, for the classes to be opened to students and teachers as much as possible, are the forces which will work to improve the quality of education.  For naturally, everybody will choose what they feel to be better, and teachers will, by witnessing those wonderful lectures and classes, follow the models as their objectives.

In Global Age these good lectures will be ‘open’, thanks to the digital technologies, to public through ‘OCW’, ‘You Tube’, and eventually accumulate ‘global reputations’ leading to the ‘global standards’.  Please note that the evaluations of education and faculties will not be limited only within universities or countries.

Such education based on the concept of ‘open classes’ of the ‘global’ age is provided at Hitotsubashi Business School.  This is something ‘tuff’ to do for faculties but apparently is good for students - they will be encouraged to put much work in their learning which, in return, would lead to the good reputation of the university in both ‘domestic and international’ arena.

‘Impact factors, citations’ of the research outputs are not the only index important in evaluating universities.  Quality of education can also be evaluated globally.  Students need and want this.
 
Of course, the lectures of Professor Sandel can be viewed On-line.

China Ranks 2nd, Japan Goes Down to the 3rd in the World in GDP; From the Article of The Economist

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GDP of Japan which used to be the 2nd largest in the world fell to 3rd after China.

This news itself is not so much to worry about because GDP is strongly affected by the size of the population. China with population 10 times larger than Japan to overtake her (Japan’s) position of the 2nd in the world ranking of the GDP was something that was predicted for a long time the only question being ‘when’.

What truly matters is the GDP per capita.  Japan has fallen off the position of the 2nd in GDP per capita the world and has keeping places somewhere around 18th or so for quite a while.  This is not surprising, since, to begin with, Japan’s GDP has not grown in the least for these 15 years.  I suspect that Japan is the only nation in the OECD (in Japanese) that has not achieved any growth in GDP for these 15 years.

Up to date no signs of growth are observed in Japan, and few in the world expects little sign of change from Japan, thus no investments come to Japan.  Changes in other OECD nations are obvious since the 2008 ‘Lehman Shock’ but Japan is still lingering in that terrible situation of ‘no economic growth, increasing its dept only.’ 

The Economist, as always, is pointing out the important issues clearly in its article of August 19th ‘Watching China whizz by’.　Views of Professor Ishikura, one of my friends, appear in the article, too.  As I say, larger corporations can not make decisions or is late when they do.  As the article points out, big companies are basically all the same in their conducts, our government does not dare to let incompetent companies down so it makes many ‘Zombie companies’ surviving.  This will discourage new enterprises to emerge.  Don’t they realize that the market and business of the world has changed drastically?   We are now in the age of ‘Demand-driven、Open and Disruptive Innovation.’

Anyway, as you see in the chart in The Economist the rate of growth of economy in China is extraordinary.

Not knowing your partners, not having multitudes of networks of friends of long time in growing developing nations can constitute big handicaps for our future growth.  Just to give you an idea, for example, the estimated growth rate of the whole Africa is 5.6%.  What are your business strategies?

Japan-Korea Exchange, Happy Gatherings

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Speech by President Lee on August 15th was for about 20 minutes.  Regarding the relations with North Korea the President expressed 3 strategic steps of partnerships based on ‘Peace’, ‘Economy’, and ‘Korean Reunion’.  I would like to read it if English and/or Japanese translations of the full text were available.

During my stay at Seoul, I was given lots of opportunities to meet people.  To my lecture at the Seoul National University, my old and new colleagues in nephrology, the science of kidney, gathered on the occasion and Dr. Narry Kim (Ref.1,2) a L’Oreal Prize Laureate of the year 2008 kindly came to the confenerce.

In the evening of 13th, the day I arrived at Seoul, I had dinner with Dr. Ju (Ref.1) whom I have introduced to you before.  Dr. Sumio Ishida, the specialist of the history of medicine in Korea (Dr. Ishida has many writings on the history of medical educations in The Netherlands and Korea) and Professor Lee, Heung-Ki (who studies history of hospitals in Korea at the Seoul University) (Dr. Lee’s photo is uploaded at the top of the previous column posting) also gathered and we all celebrated the happy reunion.  Dr. Ju is now 89 years old, but he is still very clear-headed; a truly wonderful person.
 
In the evening of August 15th, we invited a Korean female sophomore student of Waseda University who is currently spending her summer vacation with her family in Seoul.  She used to live in Japan until 5 years old because of her parents’ work and her Japanese is impressive.  Her older brother is studying in Canada.  She is very focused about her career goal and told me that she chose Waseda because of that goal.  She was selected to be a recipient of the scholarship (in Japanese) offered this July by the alumna of Waseda University  (in Japanese). I was very delighted to learn this good news.  I would like to see more and more of such mutual exchanges of young students to take place.

In the morning of 16th, the last day, I came across by chance with Dr. Tsutomu Nakada (in Japanese)(Ref.1) at the Executive Lounge of the Hotel.  I talk to him once in a while over a telephone but he happened to arrive at Seoul the day before yesterday and was leaving for Japan today.  What a coincidence!  This kind of unexpected encounter is apparently one of the hidden pleasures of traveling.  We enjoyed a brief catch ups.

Lunch was with Dr. Han Seung-Soo.  Dr. Han had been appointed to a series of ministers of the Government of Korea, is well known in international arena, was President of the 56th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations (on the very morning of his inauguration ceremony the September 11 happened in NYC….), was a Professor of the Seoul National University.

Dr. Han Seung-Soo published a book ‘Beyond the Shadow of 9/11’  which records one year of his experience as the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations.  This book is a very impressive work which I highly recommend especially to those who seek careers in diplomacy or United Nation and other international istitutions.

Japan and Korea are neighbors.  We share and have long history of deep relations in various fields such as economy, politics, and culture….for over 1,500 years.  We are the most important partner to each other in this globalizing world.  To perceive whatever issue as ‘two neighbor nations in a big framework of the world that is changing dramatically’ and to think accordingly is crucially necessary and important.

This was also one of main messages of my lecture at the Seoul National University which I have reported to you in my previous posting.

Nuclear Plants in the Middle East; Japan has ‘Soft Power’ on Public Infrastructure

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I have posted in January a series of 6 reports (Jan.2nd, 3rd, 5th, 12th, 20th, and 23rd ) about the news of Korea having won the international competition in bidding for the nuclear power plants in Abu Dhabi.

In Japan, social infrastructure of cities such as energy, water, railway, electric power generation-distribution systems were constructed primarily by public service enterprises.  The cost (or a large franciton of) was covered mainly by our tax money.

Were you aware that this is precisely the ‘Soft Power’(Ref.1) that Japan can take pride in?

In the world today where many countries are rapidly developing, social infrastructure is huge business opportunities.  Loans, donations, i.e. public ODA, are good as they are but there is also an alternative for Japan to grow together by building ‘Win-Win’ relationships with those countries through investment in their social infrastructure systems.

In the August 2nd issue of ‘Globe’, the Asahi shinbun featured a special report on the nuclear plants in the Middle East.  Please take a look and think about their points.

Discussions on this seem to be accelerating in Japan recently and I feel that my reports on Abu Dhabi offer a lot of information and insights that you will find useful. There are in some places of these postings where my expressions are moderate than I really meant, though ….  Anyway, the point I wanted to make clear was the critical importance of developing human resource and building its networks for business in this global age.  Strategic thinking and actions are utterly needed to achieve this goal.

This is one of the major themes that I discuss in this website again and again.

NHK TV Broadcast: Global Health- Chatham House

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Recently I have posted a report on ‘From G8 to G20’ meeting on Global Health- Chatham House、London.

I also reported that NHK television crew joined us to cover this meeting.

The NHK made two sets of 30 minutes English programs ‘Asian Voices: Global Health’ based on interviews with the main participants of this meeting.

Dr. Shigeru Omi, former WHO member appears as a guest commentator in ‘Part 1’ and I appear in ‘Part 2’, both hosted by Ms Aiko Doden, who speaks very nice English.

This program will be broadcasted on Cable TV at overseas, but in Japan and elsewhere will appear On-line for several times.

Please check the Cable TV and On-line broadcast schedule （in Japanese） of ‘Part 1 and Part 2’.

‘Part 1’ comes in 6 series starting from 11:10 am, August 7th (Sat) through 7:10 am, August 8th (Sun).

‘Part 2’ consists of 5 series starting from 11:10 am, August 14th (Sat) through early morning; 5:10 am, August 15th (Sun).

I was actually a little nervous when the interview was done without any rehearsals so I imagine that there must be several places here and there that make me blush if I see the video clips (though I haven’t seen it, yet).  But after all, in the Global age, what matters in “English is ‘the content’, ‘to speak’ and not in the least ‘pronunciation’”.

I invite you all to see this program.

See-D Contest: Technologies Appropriate to Local Needs Will Save the World

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The ‘See-D’ which I introduced to you recently, was held at the Fukutake Hall of University of Tokyo on July 31st Saturday.  About 200 people participated, mainly young students, including those who by coincidence came across the event and decided to join.  Kopernick is one of the important supporters of this meeting..

This event is hosted by Ms. Riku and Mr. Tsuchiya (also members of MIT D-Lab, currently living in Boston), D-Lab Japan office, other organizations, and some students from Boston who are in Japan for their summer vacation.  These people are the main driving force for planning and carrying out this conference.

It is very important that such projects/actions are created, spread and encouraged for action, particularly by young people.

At the See-D conference room, twitter and Ustream（Ref.1) were displayed on the screen in real time.  Live program with East Timor through Skype enabled the audience to  communicate by writing some comment via Post-It to moderating staff.  The three people in East Timor responded in English and those comments were instantaneously summarized in Japanese and shown on the Screen; a kind and considerate service!  The report of this event is posted on the web site of See-D Japan  (in Japanese).

Those gathered are eager and enthusiastic in search for what they could do. Three panelists with overseas experiences through JICA programs shared their work and thoughts with us.  One of them was Mr Ide who now works at Sumitomo Chemicals and its mosquito net or BetNet in Tanzania. I met him first time last March year in my flight to Dubai, sitting next to each other and we met a few time since then.

I had an opportunity to further encourage them in my ending remarks.  Here again my focus was on ‘the importance of first hand experience' (Ref.1, 2)　and ‘advice to take leave of absence from school and go abroad’.  I think the event was very hot.  I had the same impression by browsing through the many tweets. 

Anyway, everybody was so lively and high spirited.  The conference fully utilized high-technologies, too.  It was truly a motivating, good, happy conference.  By the way, Mr. Miyoshi (in Japanese)  whom I have introduced in this site many times, currently working in Bangladesh, also joined via twitter.

After this meeting, I moved to join ‘Global Health Summer Course'  which we co-host with the University of Tokyo.  It was almost 7 pm, but everybody was still working hard to make policy recommendations, presentations, having discussions. Thanks to all participants and staffs.  Tomorrow, they will present their policy recommendations in the presence of several legislators.

Students Passionately Driven to Practice ‘Take Leave of Absence from School’

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Since this spring, I have been repeatedly sending out messages concerning the too insular mindset of Japanese youths (actually, the fact is, that older generation is basically insular minded…setting undesirable examples for young people to follow…) and the huge gap which seem to exist between the global world and current status of the Japanese society.  This theme appears regularly in the blog of one of my friends, Dr. Yoko Ishikura.

Starting this year I also talk much about ‘Let Us Take Leave of Absence from School’  （Ref.1) to students and youths who are about to start  thinking of their careers.

Now I see several students responding to my message and taking actions.  In fact I received e-mails from two senior students (undergraduate) who happened to have listened to one of my lectures.  In short they wish to take leave of absence from school for one year to carry out their plans. As expected, they had to face some disagreements from their family, teachers and friends - not to speak of their own inner struggles.

One is a female student planning to go to Moscow where she lived for 2 years with her family as a junior high student (just after the end of the Soviet Union… It must have been a very difficult time…).  She wishes to live in Moscow for 1 year and see how Russia and its people have changed.  She also wants to study Russian.  Another student is a male who, after giving it a lot of consideration, decided to go to Ghana to work with the local NGO.  Both students have worked out and arranged everything by themselves.  I think this is quite impressive accomplishment to these students..

So, I decided to introduce these two students to Vice Minister of education Mr. Nakagawa (Ref.1) (the links are in Japanese) (Top photo)  As you may see from his background, he studied undergraduate years at Georgetown University in Washington DC, which is quite a unique background for a Japanese, so my expectation was that Mr. Nakagawa will instinctively understand the mind of these two students.  I also felt that many officials at MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) had positive feelings for such movements of students.

We had a nice lively conversation with the Vice Minister and I am sure that this opportunity provided a happy experience for the two students.

The female student left for Moscow the next day, and the male student will leave for Ghana in the end of this August.  What kind of career will they follow?  What will their work be like in the future?  Well, for the time being, what I can at least say is that they will without doubt become Japanese of the next generations who have acquired senses to feel Japan from outside and the global point of view (which is very much needed for the global age) and develop their own human networks connected and expanding to the world.  It would be such a pleasure to see them grow.

University of Tokyo and Health Policy Institute Co-Organize ‘Global Health Policy Summer Program’

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Global Health is now a hot topic at the University of Tokyo.   In this context, our Health Policy Institute and the University of Tokyo co-organized‘Global Health Policy Summer Program 2010’ (in Japanese.  English version will be posted soon) with participation of about 30 very eager and movited students (including graduate students and those who are currently studying abroad).  I joined this event on the opening day, July 26th, and enjoyed mainly interactive dialogues for 90 min. The session was carried out half in English and half in Japanese.

Everyone spoke up actively which I think resulted in good exchange of views.  After my speech, Professor Kenji Shibuya, the host from the University of Tokyo, gave another session in English.

As always, I asked the participants to send me e-mails, which they responded, so I continue to hear and exchange views even after the event.  Through these correspondences I realized how each student are thinking hard in spite of all sorts of difficulties and uncertainties that they feel because of their strong interest to this topic.  I sincerely wish that their experience in this program will help each of them think about next steps, in whatever way possible, in the future.  I look forward to seeing what sort of policy recommendations they will come up with.

Fly and soar, you future leaders of the Global Health! 

Dr. Jonathan Dorfan to Assume the Presidency of Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology

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As you know, a plan to build a new graduate university in Okinawa had been in progress for quite a while.

Almost 10 years have passed since the inception of this idea, and ever since the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Promotion Corporation (OIST P.C.)  was launched as an Independent Administrative Agency with Dr. Sydney Brenner as the first President, we have been working hard for many years.  This institution’s concept is revolutionary in every aspect; the Cabinet Office of Japan is responsible in taking charge of this project, it is a scientific institution totally open to the world for the new global age.  Also, I would like to especially point out the fact that Dr. Brenner is extraordinary by his broad views and rich connections and greatly helped build OIST PC..

Since this was a very new concept, we did have some difficulties along the way such as in trying to gain understandings of the stakeholders including Japanese science community.  However, now we have paved the path enough to set up a graduate school, and finally are proud to announce that Dr. Jonathan Dorfan of Stanford University will assume his office in July as the first President elect of OIST (Ref.1).  This is truly an epoch making event.  That Japan will at last have a scientific institute with longer perspectives open to the world is something we all should celebrate.  Again, this is a revolutionary achievement.

As I have written in my past postings, conventional Japanese universities were unable to materialize such concept, although they were willing to discuss it (Ref.1, 2).  

I am determined to support President Dorfan and continue working with everyone to make this institution a success.  The credibility of science research in Japan is being evaluated and watched even through such a seemingly ‘small’ event like this in Okinawa.  I think the world might have started seeing some hopeful signs of change in Japan after a long time.

For up until now, even in the ‘academic arena’ the situation in Japan is yet closed and quite insular minded (Ref.1).

At Chatham House: From G8 to G20, Issues on Health and Development

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Photos by the courtesy of NHK Asian Voice and HPI-Japan

Chatham House in London is more formally known as The Royal Institute of International Affairs, one of the world’s top Think Tanks on international issues, a place for debates, famous also for the rule often referred to as the ‘Chatham House Rule’

This Chatham House, CSIS, an American Think Tank in Washington DC (Ref.1), and  our Health Policy Institute Japan have spent about a year preparing for this meeting at the Chatham House which was held on June 30.  The meeting was scheduled at the timing of the G8 Summit in Canada that took place a few days earlier, and the theme of the meeting was ‘Global Health: What’s next for the G20? Investing in health and development’.　

Its agenda, panel speakers, and sponsors were all superb.  I understand that the total number of participants was around 200.  Dr. Shigeru Omi (in Japanese), former regional director of WHO Western Pacific Regional Office, represented the government of Japan.  Also, some Japanese officials in London were present including Minister Oka of Japan Embassy, from JETRO, and NHK crew came to report this meeting.  I would like to extend my sincere thanks to them all.

Now and in the future, such process of independent Think Tanks or other non-governmental institutions hosting and organizing conferences to set global agendas to lead discussions that in the end can come up with some overall understandings or agreements is and will be extremely important.  Organizing and participating in such conferences have been a very good experience to us, too.  I myself was honored to have a role of listening to the discussions of the day and wrapping them up in the closing.  We also tried to make clear what we could do with the outcomes of this meeting, or what our next steps could be.

These things are easy to say, but actually to reach to this point was truly a tough task. I did write several postings on this process in this site (Ref.1, 2, 3) in addition to the reports which are posted on the web site of the Health Policy Institute, Japan.  Most importantly, we must understand that in the global world, building ‘personal’ credibility/trusts’ amongst ‘colleagues of the world’ is the basis of everything. 

It seems to me that one of the fundamental problems of Japan lies in the conventional attitude of the majority of the Japanese people who think that those global issues must be handled by ministries in charge, i.e. government offices or bureaucrats, or big companies if talking about industry.  In other words, our society is not yet mature enough as the ‘Civil Society’ - at least in my view.

So, let us all together nurture as many human resources and capitals as possible who are capable of taking actions based on the deep understanding of the importance of actions by independent individuals who do not necessarily rely on ‘governmental authorities’, as well as the importance of development of mutual trusts in individual levels, particularly in this ‘global’ and ‘flat’ world.