Homage to Gaia (64 page)

The most extraordinary events of my seventh decade took place in that distant land, Japan, and somehow they typify the extravagant joy that came after three score years and ten. Those who have travelled this far with me will be aware of my lack of respect for time and I am starting my account of Japan with our last visit there in 1997. I have to do this to avoid what would otherwise be an anticlimax.

The culminating event of our Japanese period came modestly. In May 1997 the fax machine at Coombe Mill gurgitated a sheet of paper from the Asahi Glass Foundation. They were frequent correspondents, and often sought nominations for their prestigious Blue Planet Prize. I walked over to Sandy, holding the fax in my hand, as she was discussing the day's meal with Margaret Sargent. Not wishing to disturb them, I started to read the fax when a sentence leapt at me from the page: ‘Let us know if you are willing to accept the prize and are free to come to Tokyo in November for the ceremonies.' I was overjoyed and blurted out to Sandy, ‘It has happened again, another prize!' The previous year, in similar circumstances, our fax had delivered the news of my award of the Volvo Prize for the Environment.

It was wholly unexpected and left us in a happy daze trying to come to terms with our good fortune. The Asahi Glass Foundation established the Blue Planet Prize in commemoration of the 1991 Rio Conference on the Global Environment. They award two Prizes annually, one to the organization and one to the individual that did most, in the opinion of their jury, to further the aims of the Rio Conference. I was moved and honoured to have my work on the ECD and on Gaia singled out as worthy of the Prize, and in October 1997 we flew from Heathrow in two adjacent seats in the first-class cabin of a British Airways 747 on our way to Tokyo. The twelve-hour flight, mostly over what was once the Soviet Union, would have been hard for me to endure in the economy section of the plane. In our section, with seats that reclined completely to form a bed, it was a pleasant interlude. We arrived at Narita at about midday local time, and were met by the Foundation's representative, Mr Nobuaki Kunii, and taken to a fine suite in Tokyo's Imperial Hotel.

The organization chosen to receive the 1997 Prize was the environmental charity Conservation International, whose representative was Dr Russell A Mittermeier. We each received the Prize at an impeccably staged ceremony in the Imperial Hotel, and for me it included a congratulatory letter from my past Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, read out in the preamble to the award. The British Ambassador to Japan, Sir David Wright, then gave his panegyric, and to my delight read a congratulatory letter from our present Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Dr Jiro Furumoto, Chairman of the Foundation, handed us the Prize—a glass sphere with an emblem engraved on it to represent humankind. It was as well that we had rehearsed it in the morning, for it was so heavy that we feared to drop it and see it roll onto the feet of their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princess Akishino. All went well and we were introduced to their Highnesses at the reception afterwards. My granddaughter, Mary Flynn, and so many of our Japanese friends of earlier visits were there to join with us in celebrating that wonderful occasion. It was a fitting conclusion to four visits to Japan initiated by that singular and honourable man, Hideo Itokawa. We dearly wished that he could have come to the ceremonies but, sadly, he had suffered a stroke a year earlier.

After the Prize ceremonies, we spent several more days in Japan. Our friend Yumi Akimoto, President and CEO of Mitsubishi Materials Corporation, had organized a meeting on Gaia science, and we spent a productive day with Japanese scientists. The following day, Yumi and Sadako took us to see a traditional Kabuki play, and it moved us deeply. Sandy and I were delighted to go and enjoy our friends' company, but I wondered, before we arrived at the theatre, if it would be one of those quiet cultural affairs where one politely watches an incomprehensible display of costumes. We should have known our hosts better: the Kabuki consisted of a series of entrancing and captivating parables, acted out so well that our lack of Japanese was no handicap. The play gave us a feeling for Japanese history and made us realize how much we in England have lost in the dubious deconstruction of our past.

We went on to see our friends Yasuaki and Keiko Maeda at the Osaka Prefecture University in Sakai, and there renewed our acquaintance with Dr Kozo Ishida of the Horiba Company, before leaving from Kansai airport on the long Trans-Siberian journey home.

An earlier visit to Japan was in 1993, when the Japanese Atomic Industrial Forum invited me to present a paper at their meeting in
Yokohama. I was glad to have a chance to express in public my strong support for nuclear energy. I expect that some time in the next century, when the adverse effects of climate change begin to bite, people will look back in anger at those who now so foolishly continue to pollute by burning fossil fuel instead of accepting the beneficence of nuclear power. I often think of the Green Movement as some global over-anxious mother figure who is so concerned about small risks that she ignores the real dangers that loom. As in the biblical fable, we strain at the gnats of Chernobyl, and swallow the camel of massive pollution by our carbon-burning civilization. It was after the meeting that we first met Dr Yumi Akimoto, who, I was delighted to find, shared my views not only on nuclear power but on Gaia as well. He has expressed them in his book,
Towards
an
Elastic
21
^st
Century.
We went with him to his home in Kamakura, where he and his wife, Sadako, made us most welcome. I learnt from Yumi that he had been a naval cadet on an island in Hiroshima Bay when the first nuclear weapon exploded in anger. He saw the mushroom cloud and had a real sense of what a nuclear war means, but in no way did the experience diminish his support for nuclear power. He shared with me his view that the best way to dispose of the huge stockpiles of weapon-grade plutonium and uranium would be to burn them in power stations. After our morning of discussion, Yumi and Sadako took us to the shrine at Kamakura followed by a wonderful traditional Japanese meal.

The Akimotos and the Japanese scientist Shigeru Moriyama came to our Gaia meeting in Oxford in 1994. And in 1995 we enjoyed at Coombe Mill visits from Yumi and Sadako Akimoto and from Professor Yasuaki Maeda and his wife Keiko. The Maedas invited us back to Japan in 1996. After arriving at Tokyo Narita airport, they took us to the Imperial Hotel opposite the Royal Palace, where they accommodated us in a wholly delightful suite. We now looked on Japan as some kind of magic kingdom, where always we are greeted as honoured guests.

We all know how Japanese products excel in their attention to detail. Before Japan became the industrial giant it now is, we suffered consumer electronics that seemed to fail as often as they worked. Now, thanks to Japanese diligence, we expect our televisions and high-fi equipment to work unceasingly without breakdown. Less well known is the fact that the same painstaking attention to detail pervades Japanese life. Nowhere ever have we enjoyed such unstinted
care and attention as from our friends in Japan. One Saturday not long after our arrival, Yumi had arranged a meeting of scientists interested in Gaia. Even though it was a small select gathering in the hotel, there was simultaneous translation of all we said. Inside our air-conditioned meeting, all was calm and thoughtful, while outside a typhoon raged. After lunch, we briefly felt the fierce wind and horizontally driving rain before entering the cars organized by Yumi to take us to a traditional Japanese guesthouse, owned by his company, for dinner. I have grown to love and feel at home in the calm atmosphere of a Japanese banquet. Kneeling for me comes naturally, and my
yukata
sits comfortably on me after the restriction of Western jacket and tie, and, for me, Japanese food is the best of all.

Next day our hosts took us to Hakone, on the Isu peninsula south of Tokyo. Isu is a resort region rather like our own Lake District in Cumbria, and we went first to the vast crater of a not-so extinct volcano, now a pleasure lake on which sail replica galleons. We boarded one and sailed across to lunch at a hotel on the opposite shore. After lunch, we went by limousine to the Gora Kadan Inn. The Inn is a felicitous combination of Italian style and Japanese tradition, and its owner a delightful young Japanese woman who had inherited it from her father. In the spacious suite of rooms she had chosen for us were our personal attendants for the visit. They performed the necessary task of dressing and preparing us in formal Japanese garments for the banquet soon to be enjoyed, and then took us to a private banqueting room where we joined Sadako, Yumi and Hideo Kobayashi, Yumi's personal assistant, and our host the innkeeper. There were ten courses of Japanese food, exquisite in both style of preparation and taste, and as expected of a perfect meal we were satiated only by the final course. It was a happy occasion, with much laughter, and one we shall never forget. The next morning we said our farewells to our host and to the ladies who had so well cared for us. We went by car to the Hakone Open Air Museum, a beautifully landscaped park at the foot of Mount Fujiyama, in which were tastefully displayed contemporary sculptures by the most distinguished eastern and western artists. We travelled by car from the museum to Nagoya and took the Shinkansen to Osaka. It was good to see Yasuaki Maeda's welcoming face on the platform. He took us to the Osaka Imperial Hotel and to another suite of huge dimensions, in which were two WCs, the latest high-tech versions, and daunting to use. Beside the seat was an illuminated panel of Japanese characters and, when I cautiously
pressed one of these, a gentle fountain of warm water began to wash my backside. Another button released a stream of warm dry air. I never dared to try the other six characters.

After breakfast next day we were delighted to find our friend Ralph Cicerone, now Chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, waiting in the hotel lobby, together with Keiko Maeda and two young men from the university. We went with them to the university at Sakai, and there gave our public lectures on environmental affairs, and talked with scientists there. In the afternoon, we went to Kyoto and to the offices of the firm Horiba, famous for its analytical instruments; here I lectured on the ECD. Dr Kozo Ishida took us to a small but exquisite restaurant in the old section of Kyoto. Here we enjoyed an unforgettable meal and an evening of happy conversation. The talk, most unusually for businessmen, covered everything except business. The courtesy and consideration of our Horiba hosts touched us; in a lifetime of business meals, this was a rare exception to the usual incessant shoptalk. Lectures delivered, next day we started a round of sightseeing. Yasuaki and Keiko were wonderfully generous in their efforts to show us the many treasures of Kyoto. They took us to Nara, and we spent much of the day visiting the shrines and temples; unlike the urban and industrial Japan that we knew, Nara was unusually open, and there were green park areas, many trees, and even deer wandering at will.

We often had to pinch ourselves to make sure we were in a real, not some dream, world. What we had imagined as a typical scientist's trip to a lab in another country turned out to be a week among the historical treasures of Japan. We climbed the steps of the White Castle of Himeji and walked the paths of the gardens. One day we took the train to Hiroshima, where we were to stay the night. No one in western civilization can visit Hiroshima without some sense of shame: here at one site was commemorated the greatest triumph of 20
^th
-century science and its most profound misapplication. The sensitivity the Japanese display in their park and Peace Museum deeply moved us. In so many nations, it would have been either a call for vengeance or a whinge of victimhood. Here the simple message was: in war, we all do dreadful things. The next morning we boarded a boat and set off to the island of Miyajima and its maritime shrine. Back in Hiroshima in the evening, we were surprised, and delighted, to be the guests of the Gaia Fan Club. In Japan, they are not frightened of the word Gaia, and use it in the title of a popular natural history
programme on television,
The
Gaia
Symphony.
It was a pleasure to meet and talk with the producer, Jin Tatsumura.

On the last night of our visit to Japan, Professor Maeda and his wife, Keiko, invited us to have supper in his lab. Keiko prepared the meal with the help of the students, and it was splendid Japanese home cooking, with vast pans cooking gently on the lab hot plates and venting their most unscientific fragrance. There could have been no better way of welcoming us into the life of a Japanese university. Our lack of Japanese mattered less here, for half the students were from other Asian countries, and many spoke only their own native language with a smattering of Japanese. They asked many questions during the meal, and Dr Bando of the university acted as translator of both science and language. Their search for knowledge was impressive and there was a complete absence of cynicism; hardly had I swallowed one noodle before they posed the next question. I have never liked lecturing—it gives me no pleasure whatever—and an hour's lecture takes me weeks to prepare. By contrast, I thoroughly like talking with young men and women and trying to answer their questions, and in so doing I often find important gaps in my own knowledge. There was a family feeling in this university group, one of mutual affection and respect, and if this is representative of Japan, one needs look no further for its success. As always with Japan, our departure from Kansai Airport was a sad occasion. Surrounded by our friends it seemed almost a monstrous discourtesy to board the plane.

These wonderful visits to Japan started in the summer of 1991, when a fax came from Fred Myers, an American friend who lives in Tokyo and whom I had met at the United Nations University in Tokyo in the 1980s. Fred conveyed an invitation from a distinguished Japanese gentleman who was interested in Gaia. Would I like to visit Japan and lecture on Gaia in 1992? I was due at the time for more urethral surgery, and not in the mood for long-distance air travel. My reply was not encouraging, and I added that Sandy and I always travelled together and we had no wish to be parted. Another and more specific fax arrived from Fred, saying that his Japanese friend was Hideo Itokowa, head of the Systems Research Institute of Japan, and that if we came there would be two return tickets for us and a lecture fee of at least £10,000. Had we known Hideo Itokowa as well as we do now, I believe we would have travelled to Japan by any means, no matter how uncomfortable. But money does speak and the conditions offered were irresistible.