Kiyoshi Kurokawa's blog （en）

The Year 2012 Starts With a New Big Challenge

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A Happy New Year.

During the past month, i.e. since December 6th of last year, I have not written any new columns nor did send any messages via twitter.

The reason is, as you may already know, that I was suddenly appointed to chair the “Committee to investigate the accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants”.  The relevant laws for creating a committee that is independent from the government and the parliament passed the Diet, as is described in media by words such as “organized by the Diet, totally independent”, or “the very first in the 60 some years’ history of our constitutional government”.  On December 8th, the nine committee members and I received the official notice of appointment at the Parliament from the Presidents of both the House of Representatives and the House of Councilors.

If you search my name on the “news” sites in the web, you will find various reports (Ref.1) (both links are in Japanese) on this  issue.

What a big unexpected challenge I was appointed to!  I used to be one of the members of the “nongovernment Fukushima nuclear plant accident investigating committee”(in Japanese) chaired by Dr. Koichi Kitazawa (in Japanese), former Director of JST, but I resigned from this position for this new responsibility.

I will gradually explain to you, from time to time, the various challenges this committee face, but I think the most important and great challenge is how we - the nine members and I - share the mission of this committee and perform our investigations and analysis.  Every member is extremely busy with their own work, and on top of that, we have to recruit all of the administrative staffs and create rules on how to conduct this investigation as a whole.  So, I had to withhold from making any comments in public until the basic rules were defined within our own committee.  I hope you will understand the situation I had been in.

The “gravity of ‘the very first in the history of Japan’s constitutional government’” is not just about the historical impact to the system of our democracy, but it also refers to the countless difficult issues derived from the fact that this sort of investigation has “never taken place before”.  Therefore, I must say, the operation of this committee is by itself a huge challenge to all of us.

After the official launching of our committee, we traveled right away on December 18th (Sunday) to the site of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident (covering ourselves with heavy protective equipments...), Okuma town located near the nuclear power plant which now looked like a deserted ghost town, and places where decontamination was in progress. On the next day, the 19 th (Monday), we visited the temporary housings of the evacuees and another decontamination site.  (Ref.1) (both links are in Japanese)

The year of 2011 ended with an unexpected big surprise for me, and now the new year of 2012 started.

 

Inauguration Ceremony of Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST)

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I have introduced OIST (Ref.1)  to you several time in this site.  Now, OIST is officially approved as a graduate university starting from November 1st, since the government has given permission.

In Japan, as well as in other countries, we have been discussing much about the reform of universities or researches to address today’s needs.  However, at least from my perspectives, nothing has changed much.  I have been pointing this out  every now and then in my web site whenever appropriate.

On November 18th, the first board meeting as a university was held at OIST.  I have been supporting this project from the start, so I attended and joined in the seminar in the morning of 19th where four researchers gave presentations.  The presenters introduced to the audience new type of researches which were not only interdisciplinary, but also had great scale of scopes.  The researchers from the world who were at the seminar were apparently very impressed.  It is our earnest hope that we promote such unique researches open to the world that will contribute to the solution of global issues, as well as to nurture young researchers of the next generation equipping them with both the mind set and power to take action for such solutions.

In the afternoon, the inauguration ceremony was held.  Mr. Tatsuo Kawabata, current Minister of State for Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs, Mr. Koji Omi, the first person who came up with the idea of this project, and Ms. Yuriko Koike, the Minister prior to Mr. Kawabata were among the guests.  From Okinawa, Governor Hirokazu Nakaima, Mr. Keiichi Inamine, the former Governor were present.  Many more from in and out of Japan attended the ceremony.  The list of main participants should be available for your reference at the website of OIST.

There were four speeches at the ceremony.  Among them, the one I particularly liked was the speech given by Dr Charles Vest, President of the National Academy of Engineering, who served for 14 years as the President of MIT, as a message addressed to this new Graduate University, titled “On Universities of the 21st Century.”  I understand that those speeches will be uploaded on the website of OIST soon.

It was a pity that the weather was a bit rainy this day, that the ceremony had to move its place from the wonderful courtyard to the auditorium.  However, we had a small intermission of the rainfall in the afternoon, and we enjoyed for about 20 minutes dance performance and such at the courtyard.

An Invitation to the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW)

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The Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) has been held simultaneously over the past three years around the world for one week in the middle of November.  You can access a list here [Ref. 1, 2] of the participating countries and the main events which are scheduled for this year.

As I have touched upon numerous times on my own site [Ref. 1, 2, 3, 4] we in Japan would like to expand the reach of these activities throughout the whole of Japan.

Many of the individuals who are involved in these activities were also involved in the establishment of Impact Japan which I have also introduced on this site.

The Honda Foundation served as host for the past three years. Currently the Kauffman Foundation, which has become a central figure in these types of global activities, is acting as the Japanese host with Impact Japan scheduled to take on these duties from next year.

This year’s GEW will be held from November 14th through the 20th.  Many events [1, 2 ] will be held in Tokyo and Kyoto that are open to the public.  I highly encourage you to take a look at the schedule and think about attending.  I am sure that you will meet many interesting people there.

I hope that these activities can spread further throughout Japan and the rest of the world as we move into the coming new year.

Announcement of the November 11th (Friday) Conference

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The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a prominent Think Tank based in Washington DC,  is poised to release the final report of its ‘U.S.-Japan Partnership for Recovery Task Force after 3.11’   in Washington and Tokyo.   In Washington DC, the announcement was made today. In Tokyo, a symposium will be held next week in collaboration with Keidanren.

HGPI, the think tank in Japan which I chair,  had partnered with CSIS on issues of healthcare (Ref.1).

Upon this occasion, HGPI-CSIS will hold a conference for a dialogue between Japanese and U.S. experts, inviting Dr. Michael J. Green, CSIS Japan Chair, Dr. J. Stephen Morrison, CSIS Senior Vice President and Director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, Mr. Seiji Maehara,  Chairman of the Democratic Party of Japan’s Policy Research Committee, Dr. Mitsuru Sakurai, former Vice Minister of the Ministry of Finance, in the afternoon of Friday, November 11th, in Fukushima. 

If you have time, please come and join us.  For details on program, venue, and application form, please see here (for Japanese version, please click here).

I hope you will be kind enough to tolerate any inconvenience which you may experience at the venue, due to the circumstance in Fukushima.

A Sunday in Sendai - to TEDxTohoku

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Today is a beautiful autumn Sunday.  I left Tokyo for Sendai early in the morning to participate in TEDxTohoku. 

ImpactJapan has been supporting TEDxTokyo since three years ago, but it was a while since I met Patrick and Todd, the organizers, last time.  This particular event, TEDxTohoku, was initiated by the young people as actions to respond to the great disaster.  The venue of this event is the kawauchi Hagi Hall at the Tohoku University.  It is a very good hall.

By the way, quite surprisingly, I came across Mr Shinzo Abe, the former Prime Minister, in the Shinkansen bullet train. Mr Abe was on his way to the coast line of Iwate Prefecture to deliver a lecture.  I asked him “If it is all right with you, would you like to stop by at Sendai upon your return and give us a small talk?”, but of course, this sudden invitation did not suit his itinerary.  I wished he could come, though..

Each speaker told wonderful stories and these talks were broadcasted live on the Ustream.  I think you they will be posted on internet soon.  The speakers were actually quite good story tellers.  One of the presentations I particularly liked was the one by Ms Hideko Oikawa , the president of the Oikawa Denim (in Japanese)  of Kesennuma city, and the ordeal of her,three sons and the company  The story itself was very moving but the way it was told - in a simple stammering manner -  was another element that so much moved us. The last presentation was given by Mr Paul Bennett of IDEO, who came all the way from California.  It was a message to Japan in metaphor using four animals. Unfortunately, the powerpoint slides did not work smooth enough so it made the speech a bit distracting.

Sendai is indeed the city of forests.  I enjoyed the beautiful autumn daylight and refreshening air outside the hall.  I joined in the reception, and left the place earlier to go back to Tokyo.

I very much enjoyed spending the day with youths who are working together to make Tohoku, the disaster stricken area,  a drive force in bringing changes in Japan.

 

Two Keynote speeches at GOLD

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The 4th GOLD Conference by Ms Hiroko Tatebe (Ref.1, 2)(Ref.2 is in Japanese) was held at Tokyo American Club, Tokyo.  This year’s theme was ‘Turning Strategies into Action through 3Cs, Creativity, Collaboration and Connection’.  Its program can be seen here. 

I was given an honor of delivering Opening Keynote speech with Mrs Susan Roos, wife of Ambassador John Roos of the USA, Closing Keynote of the day.  Mrs Roos was indeed kind enough to come to listen to my speech in the morning. 

Title of my speech was ‘Turn Crisis into Opportunity: Time to Shape and Create New Generation Diversity’ (see the text ). It was well received (in Japanese) and I left the venue and back to my GRIPS office. Of course, I was back to Mrs Roos’ Keynote speech ‘Women’s Leadership: From ‘I can’t’ to ‘I will’.’ It was well executed and I liked it very much.

The audience was 80% women, many non-Japanese, very passionate and attentive as may be expected of from the mission of GOLD. I heard many, many good comments of the entire gathering and I am very happy to learn many positive responses to my speech. The conference will be, I hope, On-line, sometime soon and will connect you then.

It was indeed a very good day.

 

The United Nations University – Higher Education and Sustainable Development in Africa

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I assume that many of you readers have heard of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of UN.

It is an ambitious goal which the member nations of the UN promised to achieve by 2015.  However, the situation has changed drastically in these 10 years and now the world is shifting to a very different stage from the 2000’s, the time when the MDGs were planned by the UN.

Given this background, ”International Symposium on the Role of Higher Education for Sustainable Development in Africa” was held at the United Nations University in Aoyama, Tokyo, on October 13th and 14th.

I myself have been working on this theme with the world’s science community (ICSU, IAP, IAC, etc.) (in Japanese) personally and through various organizations such as the Science Council of Japan (in Japanese), the government of Japan, the United Nation’s University (in Japanese), and the World Bank.  Perhaps partly because they knew this, they invited me to give a Keynote lecture.  Unfortunately, I had to go to Abu Dhabi and Washington DC during those days as posted earlier, so with their permission, I decided to prepare a video message.

By coincidence, Dr Miriam Were, the laureate of the Hideyo Noguchi African Prize (Ref.1) was in Japan and planned to visit me on that same day of recording, so I asked her to join in the video.  It was a nice, unexpected, great “Surprise” to the audience of the UNU Symposium.  I thank Professor Masafumi Nagao, and staffs for their support in making this happen.

A report on this Symposium posted on the web site of the UNU (Ref.1) has commented on my video message, too.  I was very pleased and thankful to know this.

I plan to create a link to this video on my web site, so please look forward to viewing it.

Steve Jobs Special Issues and Biography

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Two weeks have passed since the death of Mr Steve Jobs.  The most established weekly magazines in the United States, Newsweek, Times, and Bloomberg, published special commemorative issues - a proof that Mr Jobs was truly an outstanding character in the latter half history of the 20th century.

Newsweek and Bloomberg dedicated the whole issue to Steve Jobs exclusively, eliminating any other articles or even advertisements.  This is extraordinary. Apparently these special commemorative issues are the expression of their deep respect to the great genius, the Artist who completely transformed the ways of our society.

Mr Walter Isaacson, a friend of Jobs as early as since he was at the Times, writes his memories in the special issue of the Times, but will also publish a biography of “Steve Jobs” on October 24th.  This is definitely a book that I would like to read as soon as I purchase it, and I think you will also want to have it in your book collection.

I can’t think of anyone else other than Steve Jobs who has so changed our daily life, from children to the grown ups, in the ways how we see, touch, enjoy.  Our hearts were filled with happiness, excitement, sense of being entertained.. by Steve.  He practically stole our hearts!  

By the way here is a good video which I recommend for you to quickly watch and reflect on Steve Jobs’s life and person as a whole. 

 

To Abu Dhabi for GAC, then to Washington DC

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In the evening of 10th, I departed Narita for Abu Dhabi on a direct flight by Etihad.  The objective of trip is to attend the Global Agenda Council organized by the World Economic Forum.  The conference, for your information, was held in Dubai annually for the past three years. I saw many of my Japanese friends also boarded on this flight to Abu Dhabi for this meeting.

After arriving at Abu Dhabi early in the morning I checked in to the YAS Hotel, the venue, which is also the scheduled venue for the Formula One Car Race (Ref.1, 2) in November.  The Car Race was being held at Suzuka, Japan from October 7 to 9, too.  Anyway, I was amazed to see the strikingly gorgeous facilities of this Hotel.

I attended the full two days of the conference at the building standing next to the Hotel.  I understand that this place is going to be used for the Formula 1 also.  As for the meeting, I was in the session of the “Japan Council” for the whole day as the sub-Chair. Thanks to the nice support of Mr. Takashi Mitachi of the Boston Consulting Group  and many others, we managed to facilitate good discussions.  The problem was that there was not much information available from Japan after the “3.11” Disaster (not to mention that six Prime ministers changed within these five years....)  thus offering issues for discussion was not easy, and we had to think hard in order to share views with each other.  However, I am thankful that we had nice constructive discussions with many people.

The reception was at the Royal Tower of the Race Track.  It had a nice view over the straight course of the car race.  Many political leaders including the Prime Minster of UAE were present, too.

After attending the full schedule of the 2nd day, I took a car to Dubai, and boarded on a midnight flight to Washington DC.

It was a very full, busy two days.

 

From Paris to Kyoto – Attending the STS Forum

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After enjoying Paris for two days in the beautiful autumn weather, I returned to Japan at Kansai airport in the morning of Monday, October 2nd, to head for Kyoto where STS Forum (Ref.1) will be held for three days.    I have been participating this Forum since the 1st meeting, and therefore have enjoyed the expansion of networks with wonderful people of the world.  I am now acquainted with a number of extraordinary people.

This year’s Forum had special sessions in the beginning dealing with energy policies, nuclear power and such because of the Fukushima disaster.  I was seated next to Mr. Amano, Director General of the IAEA, at dinner, so had the privilege of talking with him in person on many topics.

Many sessions were held simultaneously, so I chose to participate mainly in sessions on education.  I also participated as one of the panelists in the session on the change in human behavior (in energy consumption, obesity, etc.) chaired by Philip Campbell, Editor-in-chief of “Nature".

On 4th, I returned to Tokyo to have dinner with several political leaders.  In the next morning, I had a breakfast meeting with people related to the American Hospital in Paris, and hosted in the entire afternoon a panel organized by JETRO.  Here, the panelists consisted of six people who participated in the STS Forum; Ellis Rubinstein (YNAS、President)、Mohammad Hassan (TWAS,Treasurer), Risalia Arteaga （former President of Equador, female）、Dr Annette Lraegelou (Leibniz Institute of New Materials, female), Ananda Chakrabarty (Univ Illinois), and Sanwen Huang (Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences).  Joined to the conference include quite a number of people from METI, NEDO, and JETRO.  We all participated in a good exciting discussion.

I always enjoy discussions with friends from all parts of the world.  I learn a lot from them, too.