YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

March 4, 2009

At committee on educational affairs of Liberal Democratic Party

On last February 26 I attended the committee on educational affairs hosted by Liberal Democratic Party, for I was asked to give a lecture on space science of Japan. As I’ve been there to the committee couple of times before, I knew in advance what kind of atmosphere would be there; this time I had a special interest in it due to the current political situation.

Another agenda on that day was “copyright”. “Copyright” issue can be easily discussed by anyone so that one assembly member after another actively expressed, as expected, their various opinions to have considerably prolonged scheduled session to shorten the time for discussing space science, for which I was very sorry.

As it may be trend of times, about one third of the assembly members in session covertly used cell phones to contact with outside, which associates me with high school girls in a coffee shop. They probably must have been busy with gathering information reflecting current political climate.

I, at the committee, talked about mainly on the accomplishments of KAGUYA, and also in connection with the achievements by HAYABUSA and HINODE I explained, “how high Japanese standard of space science is in the world”, which owes to “not just JAXA’s credit but to co-operations from many researchers of laboratories and university institutions all over Japan”. I told them of the variety of subjects in space by touching upon such topics as “International Year of Astronomy”, “40th anniversary of Apollo” and “200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth”.

In the last place, I referred to the development of space education by showing a projector screen plotted on a map of Japan with marking which areas of Japan are active with space education, which I worked hard to prepare previous night. They all leaned forward in their chairs to look at the plotted marks, which I expected they would do beforehand.

After the session was over, several members asked me questions, “Such and such places are not active in space education yet?” and made a request, “Please go to visit such and such places” by saying real place-names. They seem to be very concerned about their voting districts. This was also what I had expected.

What I frankly felt at the committee, however, is that they might have needed a little more sense of urgency as they are in the middle of formulating fundamental strategy for space development of Japan under Basic Space Law. My personal opinion is that unless Japan could come up with a big scale of space development, which is great enough to influence the future of mankind, Japan will never restore her strength and power. These two factors are inseparable unity.

I recalled the story of “piano lid” described in the book “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth” written by Richard Buckminster Fuller. I remember the story was something like, “when a shipwrecked passenger find a piano lid nearby that was in a ship lounge, he or she will hang on to it as if catching at a straw, but actually this is not the best way to survive”. I think what Fuller means to say is that modern civilization shortsightedly hanged on to technology which is appeared to be the best way to avoid crisis, but actually civilization has no other means but sink into the bottom of ocean together with technology like a passenger hanging on to a piano lid; and that is a real crisis of modern civilization.

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

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