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YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

July 9, 2008

Friendship among the towns of kinship

Shimane University has started trial curriculum course of space education for the students who want to become schoolteachers. I went to visit Matsue city on last Saturday. Nagasaki University already has the curriculum, so Shimane University is the second in having this course. They do not aim at educating university students but the final objective is on children. Training course has been already established for schoolteachers but the university tries to start it from a little earlier phase of budding teachers this time. This is really a fresh idea. I gave a lecture to juniors and seniors under the title of “Human’s advance into space and the meaning of learning”.

Last week I paid a visit to Mr. Katsuhisa Hattori, a musical composer, asking for his cooperation to space education. He said he went to Australia to observe Halley’s comet in early 1986. He seems to be very much interested in space. He promised me to call on Mr. Masashi Sada and many other friends of him who like space for their cooperation. Space has so many faces of wonders to resonate with diversity of children. I hope Mr. K. Hattori will kindly compose a space music someday. Also last week I met with the mayor of Sagamihara city and new president of Sagamihara Rotary Club asking for their cooperation to space education. They so kindly agreed to my request. In Sagamihara resides Mr. Ukyo Katayama so famous for Formula One. I’m planning to visit him shortly.

By the way, on November 8, 1987 there was set up friendship city relationship called “Galaxy federation” of parody tone among the then ISAS (present JAXA) and two cities and three towns where ISAS had their research facilities.

They are, in order of north to south, Noshiro city where static firing test facility for rocket motor was installed, Sanriku town (present Ofunato city) where atmospheric balloon observation station was located, Usuda town (present Saku city) of 64 meter antenna, Sagamihara city where ISAS headquarter is located and Uchinoura town (present Kimotsuki town) where rocket launch site is located. The names of city and town were changed due to merging of municipalities. Atmospheric balloon observation was moved to Taiki town in Hokkaido now. There may be more of city and town merging. Among those five cities and towns there are held many kinds of events like exchanges of local products and space summit for children.

Quite recently, I heard the news that exchange meeting will be held among the kinship towns of astronauts. “Kinship” could be interpreted in many ways such as related to birthplaces, places where one grew up and schools one attended and numberless many others. For instance, there will be many cases as follows as far as I know.

Toyohiro Akiyama (Tokyo, Mitaka, London, Washington D.C.)
Mamoru Mouri (Yoichi, Sapporo, Adelaide)
Chiaki Mukai (Tatebayashi, Tokyo)
Takao Doi (Machida, Kofu, Osaka)
Koichi Wakata (Saitama, Fukuoka)
Soichi Noguchi (Chigasaki, Yokohama, Taishi)
Satoshi Furukawa (Yokohama, Tokyo)
Akihiko Hoshide (Tokyo, Tsukuba, Singapore)
Naoko Yamazaki (Matsudo, College Park)

Interpretation of “kinship” in a word sense may stimulate sentiments of local people in relationship to particular person or places. For example, Shoin Yoshida is an unforgettable person to the natives of Hagi city: you can never speak ill of Saigo-san in Kagoshima. I heard that “Oda Nobunaga Summit” will be held next year in Komaki, Aichi pref. In fact, KU-MA is to co-host “Oda Nobunaga Summit” together with NPO of citizens’ network of Komaki city. To begin with lecture by Mr. Kazuma Yamane on coming August 30, we will hold a chain of lectures until the Summit next year. Please watch with an expectation how “Nobunaga” is going to be related to “Space, Children and Future”.

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp

(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)