Doha, Qatar -1: Museum of Islamic Art and Qatar Foundation

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From Narita via Kansai Airport by Qatar Airline I arrived atDoha, the capital of Qatar early in the morning of　29th.  The purpose of my visit is to participate in the ‘Global Redesign Summit’

After taking a short rest at the hotel, I headed to the Museum of Islamic Art (資料１，２）I have learned that many pieces of art objects in exhibition were purchased for this museum and the total cost amounted up to 300 million yen.

The Museum was designed byleoh Ming Pei, broadly known as one of the masters of architecture; the museum opened in 2008.  He is 93 years old now, meaning that he was nearly 90 at the time he accepted this work, which is quite extraordinary.  He visited many places to learn about the culture of Islam.

The museum exhibits various arts from various ages in Islamic nations and region so you will never get bored by the exhibition.  Islamic patterns, as you know, are very sophisticated and geometric.  I wonder how they make those patterns.  Such delicate complex crafts make you humbly aware of the great potentials of human talents but at the same time makes you fear the possibility of great harms in the future that can be done by the very same humans.

Next morning, I visited the Qatar Foundation(Ref.1) and exchanged views with the Vice President of Research and Science for one hour, and visited Cornell University ‘Qatar campus’ 　(Ref.1)　located within the premise.  Quite a number of young scientists from all over the world were conducting research in this great facility (opened in 2004).

I was looking forward to directly seeing this place because I was pretty aware of the fact that Qatar was very devoted to enhancing education and research through this foundation.  Merely less than half of the plans were accomplished, but I had a gut feeling that this visit was very worthwhile.

It made me very proud to know that the overall design of this campus was done by Mr. Arata Isozaki (Ref.1).  He also designed several architectures including this Cornell Qatar campus (the hall is round shaped which allows much better acoustincs? as you can see in the top photos).

 

Geniuses and Super-Talents of the SONY Computer Science Laboratory

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I went to the ‘Open House 2010’ of ‘SONY Computer Science Laboratory (CSL)’  known as ‘Sony’s magic lab ? a place where geniuses and super-talents pop up’.

After the presentations of very interesting fijndings by both Sakurada-san and Rekimoto-san, Kitano-san and Tokoro-san joined to host a panel with these two.  Being requested to make comments, I asked what they thought about recent reports of ‘Craig Venter having succeeded in making artificial life in laboratory’ in relation to their (Sakurada san’s and Rekimoto san’s) research themes.  After all what Venter accomplished is truly ‘extraordinary’ and ‘outrageous’.

Next was unique presentations by young researchers.  Hasegawa-san at Tomato (London) proposing ‘Process Design’, Tobita san in Comic Computing, and Owada san known for ‘Toirel, Moe (Toilet, Sprout); are all very ‘strange’, ‘Otaku-fu (somewhat Nerd or geek)’ but definitely have some big energy.  At a panel after their presentations, Kenichiro Mogi-san tried hard in various ways to provoke them, but these three wouldn’t be provoked so easily, which was in a way surprising.

In the end, Kansai Yamamoto-san sitting at the front row of the room boosted all by saying “Maybe the key is to keep on going, being ‘strange’…..”  and I very much agree.

Kitano san, the Director himself, is quite a character who was awarded the ‘Mentor Award’ https://kiyoshikurokawa.com/en/2009/12/mentor-award-of-nature-the-crazy-ones.html of the Nature magazine by his motto ‘The Crazy Ones’ though he never have worked in Japanese Universities.

I think that you must be a ‘misfit’, ‘out of box’, to develop a new field, new idea, produce outcomes big enough to change old dogma or to pursue something with energy strong enough to change the society.  It has always been so in history.

This is the entrepreneur mind, the father of innovation, and the idea or value lying at the base of the activities of GEW (Ref.1), TEDxTokyo, and D-Lab.

SONY CSL‘Demonstration’ was scheduled 2 days after, but to my regret I have to miss it.

I spent a great, satisfying half day at the Open House 2010 of SONY CSL.

Japan, UK, US, Korea ? Cancer Clinical Trials International Symposium

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On May 25th, in a very pleasant weather, Japan, UK, US and Korea held an international symposium on cancer clinical trials at the British Embassy. At the opening, British Ambassador H.E. Warren, American Ambassador H.E. Roos (see May 27th article of ‘News from the Embassy’, the web site of the American Embassy in Japan), and Minister Hwang, Soon-Taik of Korean Embassy gave speech.  I made remarks as the Chairman of Health Policy Institute of Japan followed by Dr. Agnes Chan  who closed the ceremony as the Goodwill Ambassador of Japan Cancer Society.

Regarding clinical trials, trilateral conference (ICH: International Conference on Harnomization） continued for 20 years. In these years Japan tried to respond to the constant requests by US and Europe to speed up its work, and until just recently the problem of ‘Drug Lag’ was also being called to attention within Japan.
 
Nowadays, world affairs are changing rapidly with increasing participation of Asia and fast growing markets as the background.  FDA of the United States has been sending their staff to China and India for many years to provide training and education so as to make common bases for clinical trials or the common system of approval of new drugs in these emerging markets. This is precisely what I call a strategic action and thinking based on good visions.  Europe is also speeding its participation, and all are working restlessly to become the ‘core of Asia’.

Korea’s rapid change was again clear from their presentation at this conference.   UK, US, and Korea sent their specialists and Japanese participants included President of PMDA and Ministry of Health.  I understand that Japanese government has launched a growth strategy, ‘Life Innovation’, and I am curious to know what sort of strategic policies they would craft.

The programs, participants, references, and reports of the symposium and action plans recommendation to our government and other stakeholders will be uploaded on the web site of ‘Health Policy Institute, Japan’, so I will report to you once they are available.

Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Vibrant China

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I came to Shenzhen via Hong Kong.  There were lots of cars running so naturally it took a long time to enter Mainland China via Hong Kong.  New buildings and roads were being built in a great speed.

One of the purposes of my visit this time was to play golf at the ‘Mission Hills’.  It is a huge piece of development with twelve 18-hole courses.  I understand that the Mission Hills is the largest golf resort in the world.  You may have seen this place on TV since the World Cup was opened in 1995 as the official introduction of this facility to the world.  It was in 1997 when Hong Kong was returned to China from the Great Britain.  I played at the World Cup Course.  It was quite a fascinating course.  Please enjoy the place at their web site.

Surrounding the golf course stood many classy huge housings (I was told that a single house was at least 600 square meters large…I wondered what sort of people were going to live in such places), and I saw signs calling for new members.  Memberships and houses must cost a fortune, but I presume that most of them are for investments ? I could see only a handful of people in these many houses. …. The view reminded me of Japan 20 years ago but apparently the scale is of no comparison.  I had an impression that the interiors of hotels (built more than 10 years ago) somewhat lacked closer attention in  details compared to Japanese hotels, but it doesn’t matter because what matters is energy.  They don’t worry about small details.   It’s meaningless to point out trivial flaws here and there.

The players from China were four from Beijing, one of them is an executive of a company that purchases mineral resources in Africa, and he just returned from Congo.  Another person was in a ship cargo business – all of them were in their late 40’s and full of energy.

I was invited to a restaurant in downtown Shenzhen but was overwhelmed by the speed in which the facilities and roads were being built.  What was this place like 10 or 20 years ago, I wonder?  And how would it be 10, 20 years from now?

Upon my return to Tokyo, I stayed overnight at the Shangri-La Hotel in Hong Kong.  It is one of my favorite hotels.  Gazing the raining Hong Kong Island lying across the sea, I relaxed for a half day.

Although the weather was a mere rainfall in Hong Kong, I understand that the southern China had a very heavy rain.  I do hope that the rain did not cause much damage.

2010 TEDxTokyo; A Very Exciting Day

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Click here for Photos.

On May 15th, TEDxTokyo 2010, the 2nd event following the TEDxTokyo in 2009 which I introduced to you last year opened at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Rinkai Fukutoshin (Water Front City), Tokyo.

Beautiful month of May sunshine, fresh sea breeze, stylish venue, nice entrepreneurial action-oriented people…..

This is an event aiming to nurture ‘Shinsyu no Kisyo (entrepreneurship)’ and promote vibrant movements to bring up ‘Deru Kui (Nails that Stick Out)’ (Ref.1, 2)   through a variety of activities with TEDxTokyo as one of the ‘Main’ event.  The TED main headquarter, the host, and many people worked hard together to organize various related events and programs for these couple of years.

The activities of TED is spreading rapidly throughout the world and focusing more on youth in recent years.

Details of the programs, speakers and wonderful performers are at TEDxTokyo2010, but the point is that this is a global On-line Live event and is expanding worldwide in an enormous speed via various media such as blog, twitter, YouTube.

The great ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro (YouTube here), Ms. Kanae Doi of the Human Right Watch and many, many more people shared lots of excitements, moving experiences, laughter, tears, and ‘thrills’.  It was definitely a very refreshing, good day – even better than the wonderful weather we had.

And, of course, we must not forget that this event was made possible by the wonderful works of Todd, Patrick and other organizers, about 100 volunteers, as well as the help and support from many partners and people involved.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this truly wonderful one day event.

By the way, one ‘Telsa’ (Red), the hot topic, was brought here for test rides (Cool !), but to my great disappointment, I have totally forgotten about it!  Hummmmmm…

Lecture at the Bank of Japan: ‘Stagnant Japan Economy and its Way-out’

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On May 14th, I was at the Bank of Japan to give a lecture.  It was a bit surprising that I was invited, but I was given 2 hours.  Unfortunately, Mr. Shirakawa, the Governor, could not join due to some unexpected duty, but there were about 50 people including Deputy Governor Nishimura. They all must be smart and brilliant people (I am sure), but I regret to say that all of them were men (actually there were 2 women sitting at the side….)

The theme given to me was ‘Japan’s Stagnant Economy; How We Find the Wayout’.  I brought my outline, charts, references, and several copies of ‘Sekai kyu kyaria no tsukurikata (How to build a global career)’ which I co-authored with Professor Yoko Ishikura, and ‘Inovation Shiko-Ho (How to Make an Innovative Mind)’ as a gift.

As you may know, Harvard University recently has made ‘On-line’ a series of lectures by Professor Michael Sandel on ‘Justice’ to the public for the first time in its history; it is because of its tremendous popularity among the students. The lecture captures the listener’s mind right from the start- it’s such a series of wonderful lecture- and the series are being broadcasted on the NHK Education TV channel every Sunday evening (and also late at night…).

So, I started my seminar at the Bank of Japan in a similar style, first asking questions.  Perhaps, I surprised the audience?  After all, it is ‘Bank’ and of course its atmosphere would make such kind of experiment a bit difficult… So, especially young people might have been somewhat startled.  I do understand that it is not easy to speak up in front of all those people.

There was some kind of ambience in the air especially discouraging open and interactive discussion and exchange.  But this ambience precisely is the reason, the cause of the ‘oppressing and discouraging young people to speak out’ feelings that prevail in our (Japanese) society today.  I, of course, pointed this out, too, as a very reason of stagnant economy of Japan.

Japanese society is unique in its mind-set and inherent value perhaps in the last 400 years- taking for granted their male-centered hierarchial organizations, seniority based promotion, social hierarchy that starts with the rank of university entrance exams-scores of the university you were admitted to ? and this uniqueness is very much the basic cause of our nation’s inability in adjusting to the rapid changes of this flattening global world- in one word, lack of flexibility.  To take advantage of the nation’s ‘strength’, our lack of ability to recognize our ‘weakness’ or to take actions – these themes also run throughout my blog postings as one of my ‘core messages’.

I would say that the typical examples that dramatically represented such themes were the ‘Toyota Problems’  and competition of the nuclear power plant bid at the United Arab Emirates won by Korean team. 

Giving a lecture at such prestigious place is a valuable opportunity.  I was honored just to be invited.  I would be very happy to have another opportunity for challenge.

A New Program of Canada

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On May 3rd, the Canadian government announced the launch of the new 5 year ‘Global Challenges Canada’ program. 

While this program collaborates with the ‘Grand Challenge Explorations’ program of the Gates Foundation, its major objective is to have Canadian researchers (though not limited) contribute to the improvement of poverty, health, public health, health care of the developing countries that participate in this program.

The program is limited to 5 years but it is an approach to construct a ‘Win-Win’ relationship with the developing countries through new form of scientific technology diplomacy. With and through the outcomes of this program, Canada is apparently trying to strengthen its presence in international agenda.

I am supporting this program as a member of the scientific advisory board,  but in Japan also, I am happy to report that cooperation with the World Bank will possibly be enhanced, Japan’s ongoing aids to African countries were recognized and approved, JICA and JST are continuing its collaborations in a number of projects.

Promoting multi dimensional effort toward MDG and other goals to fulfill the different needs of the developing countries ? from the poorest to the fairly developed ? together with many ongoing bilateral cooperation or multi nation organizations such as the World Bank is very helpful for the good of human security and the realization of MDG.

Also, it will be important than ever before to collaborate with other nations, and exchange information.

There are still many, many things that Japan can do to help solve the problems of the world.

Think for yourself what each one of you can do to contribute. The point is how you see “the world from Japan and Japan from the world”.

‘Asia Vision 21’; by Harvard and NUS, From Singapore

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On April 29th and 30th、‘Asia Vision 21’ was held under the auspices of National University of Singapore Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy and Harvard University Ash Center.  I have been invited by the Ash Center for several years to attend this Program, but had been unable to until this year.  I am to join the panel on Biotech.

Dean of Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy (Ref.1) , Dr. Kishore Mahbubani, is widely known by his books.  Dr. Mahbubani has been quite visible these years around the world, has been a diplomat for many years, and his discerning wisdom is great.  I have introduced him to you in my blog postings (Ref.1) several times in the past.

Participants from Harvard were also very interesting, including the well known Professors Ezra Vogel, and Arthur Kleinman, Director of Asia Center.   I was with Dr. Kleinman this January during my visit to Boston and we enjoyed a rounds of Martini.  I might add that I was quite filled up then.

The two days session was a very stimulating opportunity, particularly to me to learn much about Asian politics and economy in global world since there were so many experts and first class debaters of this field.  I also made new friends, which is one of the many reasons why attending this sort of meetings is such a pleasure and eye-opening.

I slightly regret to have to say that I can not introduce you in full about the speakers and participants since the host maintains a policy not to post the record of this meeting even on web..

I was at the Breakout Session ‘Flashpoints in Asia’ on the 2nd day where there were about 10 participants. The Co-Chairs of the session Professors Astrid Tuminez,  and Huang Jing, both at NUS, were superb as moderators as well as depth of knowledge and thoughts-provoking comments and questions. Various views, insightful observations by expert participants were full of valuable lessons, and I was quite stimulated.  Harvard University is of course a great source of talents, but the National University of Singapore is also attracting wonderful faculties creating quite a vibrant atmosphere of ‘pulling power’..

Immersed Deep in Debt, Japan At The Brink of Default?

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In the world, especially in the ‘developed countries’, government spending is soaring up high while economy recovery is still slow (although not as slow as Japan…)  so the increase of national debt is now being a deep concern to many government leaders. 

At EU, Greece fell into insolvency, Spain and Portugal may also become excess debts and the value of Euro is facing crisis.

Economy in Japan still continues to be in bad shape.  Japan has seen hardly any significant GDP growth for these 20 years.  National budget this year consists of more government-bonds than tax revenue, and policies they come up with only demands more public spending.  Japan’s total debt (mostly government bonds) is now close to 200% of its GDP.

Nonetheless, I don’t see any self control in Japan in the way they issue national bonds, and compared to other nations Japanese experts, academics and media are being too diffident in expressing concerns on the national debt of our country.  Could it be because the volume of the dept is too huge (200% of GDP)?  I feel that it looks almost like a ‘drug addiction’ symptom.  On top of that, aging of our population is accelerating making it almost impossible to pay off the debt. The younger generation must be feeling, though vague maybe, more and more insecure and depressed.  I must say that our generation is so very irresponsible.

So-called ‘experts’ of ‘Japan Inc’ used to say until a few years ago that since Japanese people have about 1400 trillion yen in savings etc., there is really no over-debt or even possible default in Japan.  But don’t you feel that such kind of commentaries and voices have not been heard in these days?  Why is this?

In late January this year, the Standard and Poor’s (by the way, it appears to have made some illegal moves again in the ratings of financial institutions in relation to the recent Goldman-Sacks incidence….) lowered the credit of Japan by one rank.  Japanese media stangely reported this only a bit,  which is a mystery to me since this is such a big problem.

Come to think of it, the last time they lowered the rank of Japan (was it May, 2002?) the whole ‘Japan Inc’, made a big fuss out of this down-grading, media reporting on this sensationally, ministry of finance sending letter and advertisements of protests even to foreign media.  For example see this article. Do you remember?  It was very different from what we are seeing now.  Have you thought about the reason why it is so?

So, what is the current status of Japan exactly?  It seems obvious that paying back of debt (200% of GDP) of Japan is already impossible.  So the credit of this nation will inevitably deteriorate, growth in economy is hardly possible…..  Next fiscal year I see no other choice for Japan than to ask other countries to buy significant portion of our national bonds since domestic demand will not cover the whole amount (though having sold them almost entirely domestically was not normal in the first place, generally speaking.)  If this happens, then the interest rate would go up to at least about 4-5%, repaying back of the debt would be even more difficult, government debt would go skyrocket high, inflation will follow; the life of people will be more and more painful.

Japanese politics is miserable today.  ‘The Iron Triangle of Policymakers, Industry, and Government’ (‘Japan Inc’) that has dominated this country for a long time proved itself to be awfully incompetent.  It is not hard to guess what the ‘elites’ at the government and/or ministry of finance are thinking.  They are hardly likely to take responsibility to themselves, they would blame the cabinet (policy makers) for its poor work.  I can see the scenario in which the people of Japan, especially the younger generation, are forced to fall into poverty.  It is such a mess.  I think I can even foresee the steps those ‘elites’ are likely to take in the future.

Recently, Minister of Post System, Kamei raised the maximum amount of Yubin Chokin (savings at the Japan Post Office) to 20 million yen.   Isn’t this strange?  We can even interpret this as some kind of apparent conspiracy of trying to sell national bonds of next year within Japanese market only.  So is this again that same old ‘putting off of the problems’, ‘conspiracy’?  Is this their strategy to survive another one year without raising the interest rate and not causing inflation?  The decision was announced too suddenly which adds to the strangeness.   But, having this done, it is yet quite doubtful the budget of the next year (year 2011) can become toward recovery path.

In the end, the interest rate of Japanese government bond will rise, amount of repayment of the debt will increase, Japan Yen will go down, and hyper-inflation will take place.  Can you see how awful this would be?

With the election of the Upper House ahead, policy makers can not bring up the issue of raising sales tax, can not act to bring drastic changes to the government, can not decide… and the same goes with the government, media, and academics, too.  Even media seems reluctant to send out messages broadly on such a bad and painful issue; I am not sure whether they are being controlled by the government or worrying about the advertisement fees that established companies pay to them.

At any rate, after the economy bubbles burst in Japan in 1990, the interest rate sank to extreme in around 1998, causing a large bulk of our savings to flow overseas, and it is highly likely that those money worked in part as a trigger of the ‘sub prime’.  I suspect that after the sub prime burst the bubbles in the world, our savings will never come back.

Economy in Japan is very much in danger zone now (Ref.1,2). Political leadership have been unable to raise taxes because of coming election, large companies seem unable of doing good job in selecting and focusing.  They are still reluctant to offer key executive positions to non-Japanese or women so there is not much hope ahead.  It’s OK to discuss ‘this and that’, but what matters is action.  Mega companies are also low in spirit and seem to be thinking only about ‘inside’ factors.  I truly feel the necessity of more and more aggressive, positive management such as ‘M&A’.

Internationally speaking, reputation of Japan has dropped sharply, and I even sense the air of ‘not wanting to get involved with’ feelings sneaking into the minds of people outside of Japan.  ‘Weak’ is not the correct word to describe Japanese economy of today, rather it is ‘paralysed’.

I have cited articles from ‘The Economist’ again in this posting as I have done in many of my other columns. The reason for doing so is given in my column of February 15, ‘Toyota’s Problems and Sufferings: Eyes to See From Outside, Hearts to Sense Outside’ .

 

Canada: From Asahi ‘Globe’

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The Asahi Shinbun has been issuing 8 pages special features twice a month for several years now.  Its contents, topics are quite unique, and I enjoy reading them very much.

As the title shows, each issue analyzes ‘The Globe and Japan’ from different perspectives and from a very large point of view.  They are truly nice special issues.  I imagine that this idea came from the Editor-in-Chief, Mr. Funabashi because it reflects what he has been in various global stages..
 
What makes this even more impressive is that all articles are available for reading‘On-line’ (in Japanese) After they are printed on the newspapers they will post full articles within several days.

The new April 21st issue focused on ‘Canada’.   I was also interviewed perhaps because I have broad connections with faculties and students of Canadian universities (Ref.1) (Please search by keyword of ‘Canada’ for more columns in this web site).

This feature begins like this; ‘Japan and Canada both has a risk of being overlooked because of the super-powers beside them.  How to cope with this circumstance is our challenge for the 21st century….   In meetings of Japanese and Canadian university faculties such topic was raised…..’  Please read for yourself and find out how it continues.  Canada has a population of about 10% of the U.S.A, and so do Japan which is 10% of China.  The article is of quite interest in discussing how Canada manages to collaborate with the Giant neighbor, U.S.A on one hand and keep one’s identity on the other hand.

Canada is one of my favorite countries, too.  To put it in one sentence, I might describe Canada as ‘a country that inherited the good things of Great Britain and put away with the social classes of the British society.’  ‘The good things of Great Britain’ would be; that with a bit of socialism, its functioning democratic system, quality higher education, has a number of wonderful universities.  Regarding the health care system of Canada which is run as a core public sector as Michael Moore shows in his film, the quality of care is high, co-payments are low for the patients, and is trusted from the people.  The quality of physicians and faculties are also superb.

Canada was the country least affected by the financial crisis in 2008.  The banks stayed outside sub-primes.

I came to Toronto yesterday.  At dinner, I heard that even in Calgary, a city of 1.3 million, large proportion of local residents has habit of not locking the entrance door of their homes.  A good old life style still remains.  This episode is introduced in the film of Michael Moore, too.

I have one request to the Asahi Shinbun.  Why not have such wonderful features translated in English, on its ‘On-line’ version at least?  It is very ‘mottainai (wasting good things)’ to limit the readers to Japanese only.