Pathway to Japanese Literature

The World and Its Many Tales

At the end of May, I departed Japan, attended a three-day conference in Woods Hole—a summer resort on the eastern coast of the United States—and arrived yesterday in Thule, Greenland.
Traveling about fourteen miles across the glacial moraine plain from there brings one to the ice cap.
Just before that point lies Tatoo’s Base Camp.

This place lies far north even within Greenland—only about eight hundred miles remain to the North Pole.
Even within the Arctic Circle, in a location situated far to the north, snow still fluttered down on June 12th.

After concluding my hectic journey and settling into this Tatoo’s Base Camp, I somehow felt a sense of relief and found myself inclined to write letters back to Japan.
By its third year in Greenland, it seemed to have undergone considerable “Arctic drift.”
Since all the machinery I brought from Japan had arrived safely, I would spend two or three days preparing at this base camp and then set out for the observation point located 240 miles inland on the ice cap.

This ice cap was a colossal continental mass formed from snow accumulated over millennia and solidified into ice—its area six times that of Japan, with an average ice thickness of 2,200 meters.
From Tatoo’s Base Camp to the observation point stretched an endless snow plain where no dark objects could be seen.
To traverse 240 miles through this expanse—a distance comparable to that between Tokyo and Maibara—meant being shaken about in a sled.

Until last year, we used a large sled called Swing. This involved arranging sled-equipped vehicles into a train formation, with a heavy oil tractor serving as the locomotive to pull them. Under this system, it took three full days under optimal conditions, and typically around five days. This year saw improvements to the snow vehicles, reducing travel time to twenty-four hours. We were scheduled to depart tomorrow—though I couldn’t help hoping everything would go smoothly.

This observation point was the only permanent human settlement within a snow plain six times the size of Japan. However, that summer had seen French and Swiss expedition teams arrive south of the ice cap—though contacting them remained entirely out of the question.

Although barely ten days had passed since I left Japan, all manner of events had unfolded across the world during that interval. No sooner had they launched mice aboard artificial satellites than talk of an ultimatum emerged in Berlin. From the man who went to the Arctic's T3 ice island came a letter complaining about unbearable heat. From British scholars was proposed a Japan-British joint plan. A veteran of the Pacific War wanted to seclude himself on the Gilbert Islands. Truly, the world is full of all manner of tales. In a tent beneath the ice, writing such stories might prove rather interesting.

Japan-British Joint Plan

In Woods Hole, an international conference was held from June 3rd to 5th over three days, which was a symposium on cloud physics. From the United States, of course, as well as Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada and other countries, nearly all specialists in this field gathered. From Japan, Professor Magono of Hokkaido University and I attended. It was a remarkably successful specialized conference even by recent standards.

In cloud physics, the relationship between meteorological conditions during snow formation and crystal shapes has become an important research topic. This problem has recently come into the spotlight in connection with artificial rainmaking.

This research ultimately settled into experiments with artificial snow, a problem we had been working on for twenty years by then.
In recent years, countries such as Britain, America, and Canada had also taken an interest in this problem and initiated similar research.

Among them, the most enthusiastic and rigorous in conducting experiments was Professor Mason of the University of London.
This man was intelligent, dexterous in experimentation, and possessed both a silver tongue and deft hands.
"Mason seems intent on handling all of cloud physics by himself," grumbled the American colleagues and others behind his back, but he was a rather formidable professor.

This Professor Mason had also conducted artificial snow experiments and produced a diagram showing the relationship between meteorological conditions and crystal shapes—one that generally resembled our own diagram. However, there were portions where they differed, and these held considerable significance. We had been aware of this fact through prior reports exchanged between us, but this marked our first meeting in person.

During breaks in the conference, we occasionally attempted discussions, but as our experimental methods differed slightly, we found ourselves unable to agree on the source of discrepancies.
In such cases, the optimal approach would be for someone versed in one party's experimental techniques to visit the other's laboratory and repeat the experiments using their methodology.
This would resolve the issue immediately.

However, Professor Mason lacked any suitable candidate within his team.
Thus arose the proposal to dispatch someone from Japan to London.
This constituted an excellent plan—if successful, it promised to settle at once a matter that had remained unresolved for years.

Up to this point, the plan was very well conceived, but the question of how to cover the expenses arose.
Like Japan, Britain faced foreign currency shortages, so his university could not provide the funds.
Just then, since an executive from the U.S. National Science Foundation—which had sponsored this conference—was present, the two of us tried asking if his foundation could cover the study abroad expenses.

Then he made a troubled look and said, “That’s a matter between Britain and Japan. It doesn’t seem to fall under our government’s purview.” That was exactly right—this was likely to become a Japan-British joint plan. However, since America had a separate institution for international cooperation, they would attempt mediation through that avenue. It was unclear how this would turn out, but it was a somewhat interesting story.

Artificial Satellites and Golf

I believe the recent story from America about launching four house mice in an artificial satellite was covered in Japanese newspapers.
Prior to that, they had successfully launched two monkeys via a long-distance rocket, kept them under conditions equivalent to space travel for a period of time, and safely recovered them on Earth.
So this time, they attempted to place house mice into an actual artificial satellite, safely return them to Earth, and study the physiological effects of space travel.

When launching a rocket, it passed through the atmosphere at low speed, and after reaching near-vacuum conditions, ignited its second and third stages to achieve ultra-high velocity. In this case, friction with the air was not a significant problem. However, when recovering it to the ground, it entered the atmosphere at ultra-high speed, causing it to generate intense heat and burn up like a meteor. Therefore, the recovery of an artificial satellite containing organisms was an extremely difficult problem. However, that too had now been resolved.

Now, this recent Twenty-day mice experiment ended in failure due to a malfunction of the artificial satellite itself.
If they had been safely recovered alive to the ground, the next stage would likely have been an artificial satellite carrying humans.

However, there is one significant problem here that must not be overlooked.
That is, current artificial satellite launch vehicles—namely rockets—are terribly inefficient and therefore uneconomical.

Twenty-day mice are the smallest breed of mice; even four of them could fit in the palm of one’s hand.
However, the rocket that launched them was terribly large, with a total weight of fifty-four tons.
They launched this fifty-four-ton mass—most of which was fuel—burned through all of it only to create a tiny artificial satellite capable of holding four twenty-day mice; it was utterly absurd.
It’s like using a cannon to launch a marble.

If it were an artificial satellite capable of carrying humans, that would truly be a formidable undertaking—they would have to launch something as large as a small destroyer.
Even if they pushed through once or twice, no matter how large a nation might be, economically speaking, they could not sustain continuously launching such things.
When it came to space travel, that would require tens or hundreds of times more.

Therefore, unless some new power source were employed or a different principle discovered, the prospect of space travel becoming practically feasible remained slim at present.

When I mentioned this, a certain friend dismissed it outright as a narrow-minded scholar’s view.
The friend’s argument ran as follows.

Similar cases to launching four twenty-day mice with a fifty-four-ton rocket already existed in abundance today.

One example was golf.
They would level dozens of hectares of land, plant grass, and tend to it daily.
And across that vast expanse, they rejoiced while rolling a three-centimeter-diameter ball into a small hole.
Since this was human nature, he argued, the artificial satellite race would only grow more fervent in the years to come.

An Account of Arctic Heat Troubles

In the Arctic Ocean, several ice islands were adrift.

Those islands drifted upon the currents of the Arctic Ocean, revolving ever so slowly around the North Pole.
They took about ten years to complete one full revolution.

The largest island among them has been given the name T3.
T3 is an abbreviation for Target (的) Number Three.
Since most of the Arctic Ocean is blanketed in sea ice, even if such ice islands exist, they are rather difficult to spot.
Moreover, since there are many days of bad weather, they are usually found by radar from airplanes.
It is said that this name was given because it resembles precisely hitting a target.

The island of T3 was an incredibly large single slab of ice, measuring nine miles in length, five miles in width, and over seventy feet in thickness.

Ice that had flowed from glaciers on Ellesmere Island along Canada’s Arctic Ocean coast had formed an ice shelf in the shallows.
That which broke off and flowed out formed this floating ice island.

Such ice islands had long been known in great numbers, and the one where Soviet explorer Papanin once overwintered was of the same type.
In America as well, they had been building an observatory on T3 for about five years and conducting meteorological and oceanographic observations there.
For marine observations in the Arctic Ocean, this was an ideal location.
Even if one were to try leaving a ship afloat in the Arctic Ocean for an entire year, that would have been an impossible proposition.
If it was this ice island, since it could be used free of charge for any number of years, it was truly a fortunate situation.

However, in America’s case, one problem was that fully qualified geophysicists remained quite reluctant to go to such places. Even when volunteers occasionally appeared, they only went for brief summer stints; those dedicated enough to overwinter for a year and conduct continuous observations proved exceedingly scarce. From a scientific perspective, such data remains crucial.

Last year at the International Snow and Ice Committee meeting held in Chamonix, France, this issue was raised, and it was decided that two scientists from Japan would go.
So this April, Assistant Professor K and Assistant M from Hokkaido University went to the island and have already begun their observations.

As for Assistant M, he says he will stick with it for at least a year—preferably two or even three if possible.

Assistant M was an odd man who had made it his lifelong aspiration to live in either the Arctic or Antarctic since long ago.
To acclimate his body to polar life, even while in Sapporo, he lived in a room without any heating throughout the winter and never drank hot water, consuming only water.
And he was apparently practicing eating raw meat and raw fish.

By the way, the other day, a letter arrived from T3 from Assistant M, but according to it, he is apparently troubled as things have turned out completely contrary to his expectations.
The first room is too hot, and he doesn’t feel at all like he’s in the Arctic.
Moreover, they’re served Western food every day—the kind they rarely got to eat back in Hokkaido.
They even have movies at night.
With this, I can’t understand what purpose there was in coming to the Arctic.

Reluctantly，he woke up a little earlier during the morning observations．

He walked far out across the ice island，inhaled the frigid morning air deeply，and apparently barely managed to grasp some semblance of the Arctic．

Greenland and Japan

Until last year, I had thought that Greenland was currently the place in the world most disconnected from Japan.

Yet the fact that Japanese goods had even reached Greenland was truly astonishing.

In Greenland there were two airports; of these, only military aircraft went to Thule.
However, just south of the Arctic Circle lay another town called Sandstrøm, where civilian aircraft also stopped at its airport.
The air route connecting Northern Europe and Canada used this place as a stopover.

In the study of Greenland’s ice cap, besides those from America, expeditions had also come from Europe; however, they were conducting their surveys of the ice cap’s southern region using Sandstrøm as their base.

Since this expedition was primarily conducted by France and Switzerland, the leader was Professor Bauer of Strasbourg.
They had been conducting it for three years.

Last year when there was a meeting of the International Snow and Ice Committee in Chamonix, France, Professor Bauer had brought along a boy who was twelve or thirteen years old.
The child was wearing a slightly unusual silk jacket with an embroidered polar bear on its back—above it “Greenland” and below “Sandstrøm,” horizontally stitched in contrasting colors.
Professor Bauer said, “I bought this in Sandstrøm as a souvenir for my son, but look here,” as he folded back the collar to show us.
There hung a small tag reading “Made in Japan.”
Few Japanese would recognize a name like Sandstrøm, yet our goods push steadily into such remote corners.
It was truly remarkable.

The military transport plane bound for Thule took off from the outskirts of Philadelphia, used Canada’s Goose Bay Airfield as a stopover, then flew straight on to Thule.

The total flight time was less than twelve hours; departing in the morning from the center of American material civilization, one arrived by evening at a location eight hundred miles from the North Pole.

Goose Bay is located in the middle of Canada’s Labrador province, but Labrador is known as a region where Eskimos constitute the majority of the population, and within dozens of miles around Goose Bay, hardly any people live. In such a place, they built an airport and created a splendid town where entire families reside. It also serves as a stopover for civilian air routes.

This time when I came, due to bad weather in Thule, I stayed there overnight. When I went to the officers’ club for dinner, I was somewhat taken aback by its extravagance. The interior decor of the dining hall—the chairs, tables, meals, and even the waitresses—were on par with a first-class New York restaurant. A good number of officers had also come with their dressed-up wives in tow. If this was how much money was being spent on national defense, I thought America must find it unbearable.

Now, regarding the napkins in this dining hall—they too were entirely in the style of Japanese paintings.
The design depicted geese, black pines, and reeds rendered in ink painting, arranged with a yellow sun.
This was likely not printed in Japan, but one could hardly deny it represented a form of cultural encroachment.

An Account of Capturing Meteors in the Arctic

Last year, when Mr. Nishibori returned from Antarctica, he related an account that an extremely large number of meteoritic spherules had been collected at Showa Base.

When meteors entered the atmosphere and burned, they often did not completely burn up, remaining as extremely small iron spheres that reached the ground.
When viewed under a microscope, they were perfectly spherical and often exhibited a metallic luster on their surface.
These spheres were called meteoritic spherules and had been well-known since ancient times.

Of course, exactly the same things as these could easily be made in metalworking factories or laboratories.
When sharpening an iron blade on a rotating grindstone, sparks would fly.
When those sparks were caught on soft paper and examined under a microscope, they appeared as spherical iron balls identical to meteoritic spherules.

Therefore, even when such small iron spheres were found, it became impossible to distinguish whether they were meteoritic spherules or artificial ones produced in ironworks or steel mills.

This was first confirmed when they were collected from deep-sea mud in the Pacific Ocean.
This was an old story: when Darwin circumnavigated the globe on the Beagle and collected mud from the depths of the Pacific Ocean for examination, these iron spheres had been discovered.

Substances entering the sea from land settle on the continental shelf, so they do not reach the deep ocean floor.

Therefore, these iron spheres sinking to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean were considered to be meteoritic spherules.
Subsequently, Professor Hans Pettersson of Sweden found numerous meteoritic spherules from the depths of both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and this was confirmed.

If one wished to capture these meteoritic spherules on land, Antarctica or the Arctic would be the best locations.
Not only was there no concern about ironworks, but meteoritic spherules had also been accumulating in the perennial snow since ancient times.
Therefore, when melting snow to produce water, it could be considered that meteoritic spherules accumulated at the bottom of the container.

What Mr. Nishibori collected had indeed been gathered in that manner, but one puzzling aspect was the sheer quantity.
Since deep-sea mud from the Pacific Ocean sediments very slowly, taking a slightly longer core sample would contain meteoritic spherules that had accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years.
Yet because their numbers were not particularly large elsewhere, Prince Harold Coast proved to have meteoritic spherules orders of magnitude more abundant compared to other regions.

This was not only true for Showa Base but also for the American base on the opposite side of the South Pole, where a large number of meteoritic spherules had been collected.
If meteoritic spherules were abundant in polar regions, then similar observations should have been observable in the Arctic as well.

However, I had never heard such accounts before.

Therefore, during my stay in Greenland at the time, I thought of trying to capture Arctic meteoritic spherules partly as a hobby.
At this observatory on the ice cap, vast amounts of snow were melted every day for domestic water use.
Yesterday, I had some water drained from the tank's outlet and examined its sediment under a microscope.

Since it was an iron container and there was much dust from human habitation，meteoritic spherules were hard to find，but so far two likely candidates were found．
If I had some free time，I wanted to take snow from a place completely isolated from human habitation，melt it，and examine it．

*Black Cloud*

The name of British astronomer Fred Hoyle was well known in Japan as well.
As both a proponent and expositor of new cosmological theories, his name had become a best-seller in Britain, been translated into languages worldwide, and was widely read.

According to his theory, the Sun was not on a path to extinction but was instead gradually growing hotter, meaning Earth would eventually become a ball of fire—a hardly reassuring prospect.

Of course, this was a matter of tens of millions—or hundreds of millions—of years in the future.

Even more impressive was his theory that throughout the entire universe there exist at least five hundred thousand planets with natural conditions closely resembling Earth's. It seemed unthinkable that the solar system alone should occupy a special position in the cosmos.

Therefore, if natural conditions were identical, similar organisms would likely emerge—indeed, it appeared more scientifically sound to presume that humans like ourselves might inhabit such worlds.

Yet here on this Earth, billions of humans persisted in squabbling over atomic bombs and artificial satellites.

Given that such humans exist not only on this Earth but also in about 500,000 other races beyond it, this was truly a scientific theory that shook one's outlook on life.

However, this astronomer had written a science fiction novel about two years prior that became quite popular, and recently its mass-market edition had been released.
The title was *Black Cloud*.
Having authored a best-selling science popularization book and now producing a science novel as well, he might be considered what people called a science journalist.

However, he himself was an orthodox astronomer who lectured on mathematics at Cambridge and also taught astronomy at American universities.

On my way to Greenland this time, one of my American colleagues who had become engrossed in *Black Cloud* said it was interesting and lent it to me to read.

I had previously read Hoyle’s science books and found them quite engaging, so I felt some curiosity about this new novel of his as well.
I tried reading it to pass the time during that lengthy journey across the ice cap, but to state my conclusion upfront, it only confirmed that scientists truly cannot write novels.

This book was extremely interesting both in content and conception.

The existence of extremely rarefied gas in outer space is now generally accepted, and this was also his field of expertise.
However, a relatively dense mass of this gas existed in part of the universe and came toward the solar system.
And it ended up entering Earth's orbit.
As a result, the Sun became completely obscured, causing cataclysmic upheavals on Earth, followed by severe cold that brought most living organisms to the brink of extinction.

This concept was a cut above previous similar books that featured unknown celestial bodies entering the solar system.

The key lay in introducing unknown phenomena that did not significantly contradict current science.
Moreover, the way this black cloud’s entry into the solar system was discovered through sky photographs and planetary orbital anomalies proved highly specialized and quite interesting.

However, when that black cloud finally arrived and Earth descended into chaos, he could no longer write effectively.
"In tropical regions, up to two-thirds of the residents perished."
"In countries where heating facilities and fuel were prepared, there were only a small number of casualties"—this was the extent of description he could manage.

In short, he simply could not write the novel portions.

In the latter half—when it became clear that this *Black Cloud* harbored life and attempts were made to communicate with it—what might have seemed fantastical instead came across as a cybernetics patient’s delusion and bordered on absurdity.

Pole Cat

The other day at an aviation-related gathering, there arose a discussion about Japan’s air transport future.
The issue lay in railway competition.

As Japan National Railways had continued making remarkable technological advances in recent years, air service between Tokyo and Osaka would become largely obsolete once the New Tokaido Line was completed.
This line might eventually extend to Fukuoka.

Such pessimistic views stemmed from simply extrapolating current conditions into the future; in principle, traveling through air should have been far more time-efficient than moving across ground.

In some cases, it proved less effective because transportation issues between city centers and airports were being overlooked.

Not limited to this problem—the so-called “small-scale transport” issue tended to be neglected everywhere alike.
To take an extreme example: travel from America to Greenland could now be completed in twelve hours by air.

However, that applied to the journey from an airport in the suburbs of Philadelphia to Thule in Greenland.

We were heading to the observation point located 220 miles inland over the ice cap from there, but until last year, that journey had been conducted by sled train. Under optimal weather conditions, it took a full three days; if the weather deteriorated even slightly, the journey required five days and nights. The time from departing Sapporo until the plane actually took off from Chitose proved nearly equal to the duration between Chitose and Sendai—and in reality proved even worse. However, when we arrived this year, we found that within a single year, circumstances had completely changed. Cargo was still being transported by sled train, but people were now to be carried by a new snow vehicle called the Pole Cat.

With that, the journey could be completed within a day and night. It was a remarkable advancement.

The Pole Cat was a model where a caterpillar-tracked light tractor pulled a similarly tracked passenger car, capable of reaching speeds of twelve miles per hour on favorable snow and averaging ten miles per hour. Snow vehicles shake violently, so the fact that it could maintain an average speed of ten miles per hour without significant swaying was remarkable. Since its performance matched that of old trains, one could say the problem of snow transport in extreme cold regions had been largely resolved. I believe the crucial improvement lay in making the passenger car caterpillar-tracked as well.

In such cases, they traditionally used sled attachments, but those caused such severe shaking that people couldn’t handle it.

Not limited to this example，technology related to snow processing had recently achieved remarkable progress．At airports in snowy regions，snow removal for runways and taxiways was the primary challenge；however，to make it practically effective，the work needed to be done swiftly．This was because at moderately busy airports，large aircraft were taking off and landing every few minutes．Regarding this，among the snowplows Switzerland produced last year，there existed rotary-type models with a single-pass clearing width of five meters—these claimed an hourly snow removal capacity of 8，000 tons，with at least 5，000 tons guaranteed．With such equipment，even a fairly large airport would have its snow cleared within about thirty minutes．

It was an astonishing account.

Such stories might have held no interest for people in areas of Japan where it didn’t snow.
However, at airports, merely being capable of snow removal wasn’t enough; it had to be done swiftly.
In transportation, “small-scale transport” was crucial.
These points—that science and technology only become truly useful when refined to the second approximation, and that the world’s current state had indeed reached such a stage—would generally have served as an instructive reference.

The Story of Being Mistaken for an Eskimo

When traveling abroad, even someone like me gets mistaken for people from various countries, but the masterpiece among these was the time I was mistaken for an Eskimo.

Last summer, during my second Greenland observation trip, I had become fairly familiar with the area and often went to visit the nearby town of Thule when staying at the base camp.

Since there was a bar at the officers’ club there, I would occasionally go out with colleagues to unwind.

Now, one evening, while I was having two or three drinks at the counter, an Air Force officer sitting next to me struck up a conversation.
He was saying something in a few words, but I couldn’t quite grasp what he was talking about.
As I reluctantly gave vague replies, the man said, “You’re a Greenlander, aren’t you?”
It was only then that I realized he had mistaken me for an Eskimo.

Greenland is a territory of Denmark, but most residents are Eskimos.
However, their numbers are small—on this island six and a half times the size of Japan, there are only a few tens of thousands of people in total.

These Eskimos originally migrated from the northern coast of Canada long ago, and currently, the Danish government officially refers to them not as Eskimos but as Greenlanders.
It must be one of the governance policies.

Being mistaken for an Eskimo was indeed a first for me, and at that moment I was quite startled, but upon reflection, it wasn’t the least bit strange.

To that extent, Eskimos closely resemble Japanese people.

Generally speaking, the Eskimos that Japanese people imagine are those wearing sealskin and living in ice houses.
However, such customs are rarely seen today.
In the far north, only faint traces of them remain.
However, even in the past, ice houses were temporary dwellings used during seal hunting expeditions, and they typically lived in peat houses year-round.

There existed a book titled *Greenland* published by Denmark’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs—a work co-authored by five or six specialists and, though a small booklet, an orthodox introduction to Eskimos compiled with remarkable concision.
The following account was borrowed from this book, but among present-day Eskimos there existed those who lounged back in armchairs in their living rooms, watching television while puffing on pipes.

This book also included those photographs.
Eskimos were highly dexterous and intelligent; once taught something, they could memorize it immediately.
There were radio technicians among them, and they repaired motors.
To be mistaken for an Eskimo and immediately conjure images of ice houses was a level of perception akin to foreigners asking, “Do you have trains in Japan?”

What surprised me even more were the photographs of Eskimo customs in this book.
The people appearing in them had faces exactly like those of uncles and aunts we used to see daily in rural farming and fishing villages of backcountry Japan during our childhood, wearing similar clothing.
A photograph of a young mother carrying a baby on her back, draped in a traditional carrying cloth—if such an image were displayed at an exhibition without context, anyone would surely mistake it for a scene from rural Japan and pass it by without a second glance.

Her face was oval-shaped, a Japanese-style beauty. The elders’ faces too were weathered by ocean winds, their skin deeply etched with wrinkles, looking exactly like those of old men seen in the fishing villages of Hokkaido and Tohoku. Dressed in workman’s jackets resembling mojiri, trousers, and rubber boots, their appearance was identical. Rather than seeking Japanese ancestors among Himalayan residents, looking to Eskimos might prove a quicker path. Thus, I couldn’t help but inwardly admire the discernment of the man who had mistaken me for an Eskimo.

The Principles of English Conversation

I was extremely fortunate to be able to study abroad in my third year after graduating from university.
At that time, atomic physics was in its emerging era, and German physics reigned supreme.
However, as I favored British physics—which carried on the traditions of Kelvin and Rayleigh—I resolved to go to London.

Yet I had heard accounts that nowhere was English as incomprehensible as in London.
The British possess excessive pride and, unacquainted with foreign language struggles, show no patience for non-native English.
Londoners proved particularly intolerable in this regard, having presumptively decided their thick local accents would be universally understood from the very start.

Hearing such accounts made me suddenly grow anxious.
So, since Professor Tanakadate had also attended the farewell party, I asked him about the principles of overseas travel for someone who didn’t speak the language.

At that time, whenever there was an international conference, it was always Professor Tanakadate who served as Japan’s representative, having traveled abroad dozens upon dozens of times.

In his usual forthright manner, Professor Tanakadate said, “Such things require no special knowledge or preparation at all.”
“If you think you’ll be killed when your message doesn’t get through, then anything will get through,” he added.
This was indeed a truly wise saying.

I came to fully understand that things were exactly as he had said when I actually went there.

Lately, young Japanese scientists have been increasingly invited abroad—primarily to the United States—but among them are some who worry excessively about their inability to speak English.
However, that is a completely misplaced worry, for they are not counting on those people’s English in the first place.

In America, even beggars can speak English, so being proficient in English is nothing to boast about.
What they expect is their academic capabilities.
And if that aspect is handled in Professor Tanakadate’s way, there’s no need to worry at all.

Of course，if one could not communicate in English，life in America became dreadfully dreary．
One wouldn’t understand the country’s customs and social nuances，nor make good friends．
So while there’s nothing better than having English flow freely，that was ultimately for one’s own enjoyment．
Scholars need not worry about anything as long as they can pursue their studies．
Worrying about language is a trivial inferiority complex．
For diplomats and businesspeople，it was a different matter．

Regarding that matter，I would share one curious episode.
It was an account of being slighted precisely because I spoke English.
This occurred during my two-year stint assisting at Wilmette’s Snow，Ice，and Permafrost Research Institute.
One day，the institute arranged a Canada-U.S. coordination meeting on snow research，with strict orders for my attendance.

Though I typically avoided such gatherings，the presence of a Canadian Air Force general and my budding interest in their methodology compelled me to participate.
Yet when I attempted conversation with this officer，his insufferably pompous air grated on me.

I decided to put an end to it and offered a vague excuse about the tea.

That evening at the director’s house, there was a party for the Canadian contingent, and our family was also invited to attend. Then the general asked, “Where are you from?” “I’m from Japan,” I replied, whereupon he looked utterly astonished. “To tell you the truth, I thought you were a Nisei because you spoke English. I was terribly rude earlier. Are you a scientist from Japan?” he asked, his demeanor suddenly shifting to utmost politeness.

To despise someone for being Nisei is outrageous, but in this case, I set that matter aside.

Therefore, to you young scientists coming from Japan, one precept:

"Do not speak English too well." (September 1959)