Science in Japan

[Mulboyne]

Riken News: Conversation between Professor Ryoji Noyori, President of RIKEN, and Professor Hayao Kawai, Commissioner of the Agency for Cultural Affairs

The scientific mind-set of the future: East and West
Kawai: [T]he Western way of thinking connects more easily with science, which was born in the West. Doing science with the Eastern way of thinking is twice as hard.
Noyori: Western thought has always been reductionist, but in the East we think more about the whole.
Kawai: If we are not careful in Japan we label people as outstanding simply because they reflexively follow the West. Some people have quickly reached the rank of professor mainly by abandoning Eastern thinking.
Noyori: Do you think this has anything to do with cyclicity or the Buddhist cycle of reincarnation?
Kawai: Yes, I do. Eastern thought is fundamentally cyclical, while Western thought is linear.
Noyori: In the future science and technology must move from a linear model to a cyclic model.
Kawai: When that time comes, the Japanese will not be very sophisticated in their use of the cyclic approach, and they might simply resort to being vague. They might even become illogical. Naturally we have to use words that make sense to non-Japanese. How is the cyclic approach different from the linear model that Westerners talk about, and why is it different? We will have to explain these things clearly. However, Japanese scientists have dedicated themselves to catching up with and surpassing the West, and they have done their best to cast aside the cyclic model. It could turn out that Japanese academics are more set in their ways, more Western than the West. So if Japan is to play a larger role globally, it must not throw away its traditional legacy but instead make use of it in pursuit of science.

Kawai: There is a Zen koan that goes "Two hands make a sound when they clap. What is the sound of one hand clapping?" That is all well and good, but as a religious person in the modern age I once asked for example, "What is the 'sound' of Chernobyl?"

[Socratesabroad]

Let's not forget who Riken is:

Indicted are Takashi Okamoto, 40, of Riken's Brain Science Institute, and Hiroaki Serizawa, 39, an associate professor of the University of Kansas Medical Center. According to the U.S. justice authorities, Okamoto worked for about two and a half years, until July 1999, at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF) in the State of Ohio, one of the leading medical research institutes in the United States. Since September 1999 he has played an important role in genetic research at Riken. At the CCF Okamoto was involved mainly in research relating to Alzheimer's disease. According to the U.S. justice authorities, in July and August 1999 Okamoto stole research materials that had been developed for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and DNA samples from the clinic, put them in four boxes, and took them to Japan. At the same time, he allegedly destroyed other DNA samples and, to cover up the theft, filled laboratory vials with tap water.
http://www.fpcj.jp/e/shiryo/jb/0122.html

The indictment
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/Okamoto_SerizawaIndict.htm

And lest we forget, Riken 'received over 94 percent of its operational funding from the Ministry of Science and Technology of the government of Japan.' (same as above)

[Socratesabroad]

[cstaylor]

Japan is extremely strong in hardware but very weak when it comes to developing software.

That's because software development is essentially a solitary sport. There are good Japanese programmers out there, but they're all hackers instead of corporate goons. Japanese corporate culture doesn't suit the software development field at all.

[Charles]

Hmm.. that reminds me of a remark in the preface of an old Japanese textbook I like, let me go look it up....

The people of Sony and Nissan and Toyota did not get where they are today by wafting incense back and forth.

Anyway, that linear vs. cyclical stuff is such a typical nihonjinron, and there actually IS a tiny bit of truth to it, but these pseudoscientists haven't got a clue to what it is, and instead make grandiose sweeping generalizations without knowing WTF they're talking about.

Take a peek at this 1.6Mb PDF of an old article in Scientific American entitled "Japanese Temple Geometry." Back about the time of Newton and Liebnitz, Japanese mathematicians was inventing Calculus independently of any knowledge of western methods. And a most interesting thing happened, it's mostly based on circular geometry instead of linear geometry. Look at the illustration on page 1. It's a classic demonstration of integration to find the area under a curve. Except instead of the western linear thinking, which would have cut the area under the curve into linear sections, this method divides the area under the curve into circular areas. I don't even want to think about how hard it would be to develop integral calculus around THAT concept.

This is surely not what the pseudoscientists were discussing when they meant that buddhist philosophies are cyclical. The works in the Temple Geometry article were executed and donated to buddhist temples in the belief that meditating on the mathematics would reveal the true nature of reality, and was in itself a buddhist meditative practice. But these pseudoscientists don't understand any of this stuff. The article goes into some very interesting differences between Japanese and Western mathematical principles, but the RIKEN pseudoscientists obviously know nothing about this subject, they prefer to waft incense back and forth.

[Mulboyne]

Mulboyne, cheers for the bright start to my morning.

My pleasure, sir.
I personally liked the idea of a country being able to identify what it couldn't do and bringing in a few foreign characters to fill the gaps. Because, of course, government has a great track record in prediction. But, of course, it would make it a lot easier on issuing visas - just create a category called "hired gun" and don't worry about offering tenure since that would be too "lateral". The "circular thinking" clearly refers to the idea that foreigners ought to turn round and go home when they have nothing else to offer.

[Neo-Rio]

I do the odd occasional translation work at RIKEN.

This was not one of them.

[Socratesabroad]

I do the odd occasional translation work at RIKEN.

This was not one of them.

I don't think even an excellent translation could save this crap
http://www.riken.go.jp/r-world/info/release/news/2005/jan/index.html#spe_01

As the saying goes 'You can spray-paint a turd and tell people it's gold, but it's still a turd'

[Neo-Rio]

Sometimes it's funny doing translations for Japanese people.

Say I'm given a translation to do, and then I finish it really quickly (because the Japanese is really simple), they get confused and think that I've been slapdash about it. They cannot seem to believe something that would have taken them all afternoon can be done in a short space of time.

So then I am asked "am I sure?" about the translation (it almost always happens). Of course, this goes on in an anal retentive fashion for about 15 minutes, where I then have to take them over every single line of the translation so that it is (to their acceptable levels) almost EXACTLY the same as the Japanese translation would be. Let's forget about what a literal translations and how bad they can be for a minute. They almost want a freaking report on exactly why I chose not to do a literal translation in some area. This almost ends up as a free English lesson. If the grammar doesn't match up perfectly, it bothers them. The only thing that bothers them more is when I tell them that there's two ways of saying it in English, at which point they get stuck, unable to choose the "correct" one for me.

THEN it's time for the whole ware-ware nihonjin thing when I say that it's done. They want check that I understood the Japanese in the first place, because (as I couldn't already guess) they were Japanese and they could read it and I somehow can't. Now they're thinking that maybe it was a better idea that THEY did the translation as I am not a native reader of Japanese. So now I am not only getting lectured on my Japanese ability, but my English ability as well. This is all the while they fuss over my translation assuming that even though a native speaker can write English, it's not "perfect" enough.

After all this annoying anal retentive behaviour from someone who is too proud to admit that they can't understand English, they FINALLY accept my translation.
When it finally gets published, there are a bunch of small changes in my work... essetially somebody converted my translation back into Japlish at some point.

But at least I get paid.

[Socratesabroad]

When it finally gets published, there are a bunch of small changes in my work... essetially somebody converted my translation back into Japlish at some point.

I feel your pain. Luckily I don't have to see most of my finished work after I've sent it to the client. Now and then, though, I'll get something back for additions or whatnot. I do remember one such job I got recently; the paper I had translated had been 'corrected' by the original Japanese and Chinese authors into Engrish. I simply translated the additions and tried my best not to even look at the rest of the paper lest it depress me - 'what's the point? the whole thing's farked.'