Friends Go Anywhere My Favorite things Comment

Friends Go Anywhere

Hayakawa-san went on his honeymoon to Canada in May vacation. They visited Lake Louise and Banff via Vancouver and Calgary.

This is a photo taken on the Bow Lake. They stayed the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff. It looks wonderful like a chateau. Lake Louise was covered with ice. It seems to be in winter there even in May. They found an avalanche. This photo is "Plain of Six Graciers is beyond there"(?) per Hayakawa-san's explanation. In Banff, mountains were reflected on the lake. They encountered a deer on the way of walking, or a goat on the way of cycling.

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My Favorite Things

• Movie
  • Top 200 movies
    I like movies very much. This is a list of top 200 movies that I ranked personally.

• Music
  • The Rolling Stones
    The Rolling Stones Page
    I am happy to upload The Rolling Stones page on September 30, the day when new album, "Bridges to Babylon" is released.
    

  • The Classical Music Page
    Per Mr. A's strong request in the neiborhood, I start The Classical Music Page.

• Paintings
  • Rouault
    It was in an exposition of Idemitsu Museum when I watched Rouault's painting for the first time. The painting was "A Clown". I was impressed at his face, looked like smiling, or expressionless, or grieving. I guess his series are famous that portraits are described in frames.

    As I could not find a painting, "A Clown", I introduce "A Doomed King" in Ohara Museum in stead of it.

• Book
  • Fermat's Last Theorem

    Fermat's Last Theorem was once popular. I read this book, as I wanted to learn the theorem. It is;

    "There are no positive integers x, y, z, and n>2 such that xⁿ�{yⁿ=zⁿ"

    In seventeenth century, a mathematician, Fermat, wrote, "I found an astonishing proof but there's no room to write it here." and died without the proof. The teorem had not been proved for alomost 360 years.
    I started to read the book to find how it was proved. But the author of the book seemed to believe that it is necessary to study the basic mathematics to understand Fermat's Last Theorem. In the first 200 pages of 220 pages of the book, basic mathematics are explained. I was a little bit disappointed. But it was unexpectedly interesting. After a number was created in a stone age, the evolution of numbers such as natural number, integer, rational number and irrational number are described. It also describes episodes of "pi", "e" and so on, and historical mathematicians, such as Pythagoras, Diophantus, Pascal, Euler, etc.
    I enjoyed stories of historical mathematicians or advanced mathematics in old China. But the chapter of "Tools for the Last Theorem" was quite difficult to understand because of quite advanced theories.

    In 1994, a British mathematician, Andrew Wiles, proved the Last Theorem. Some Japanese take part in this proof. It was found that if "Tanimura - Shimura Conjecture" is true, then the Last Theorem is true. Wiles succeeded to prove Tanimura - Shimura Conjecture utilizing Iwasaki's Theory. After all three Japanese took part in the proof of the last theorem.
    In Japan, mathematics or theory of "e" might be behind to the world. But it is fun that Japanese contributed to the difficult problem that had not been proved for almost 360 years.
    

    Author : Hirohisa Tominaga, Publication : Natsume Company

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Is Japanese disappearing ?

When I attended some lecture meeting last year, Kan Kato, a president of Chiba Shoka University had a lecture.
One of agenda was a population profile of Japan. Currently the birth rate is below 2.0, and the population of Japan will begin to decrease at 2007. It is fugured using Malthus' Population Theory as the graph below.

Now the population is approximately 127 million, and 90 million at 2050, 67 million at 2100. 100 years later, population of Japanese will become half of today.

According to the lecture, 50% of people living in Japan should be foreiners to keep current economy size in 2100. Now people around us are almost Japanese and we can communicate with Japanese. But in the future, people around us might be foreiners and they speak different language and have different culture.
He said, "Japan will be a society of unkown people, unkown countries and unkown organization in 21st century."

By the way, this situation is quite normal in U.S. A person who looks like totally Japanese talks to me in English there. People from many countries, south america or asia, are working for taxi drivers, in restaurants or gas stations. I feel strange that Japan will be the situation like that. In the street, there would be full of English, Chinese or other languages on sign boards or information boards. It would be exciting. ( I will not be alive then though. 20 or 30 years later, are people of 20% from other countries? )

And population of Japanese will be around 1000 in year 2250, 200 in year 3000 and zero in year 3500. But I believe many people of mixed races will be living in Japan. People who are born in Japan must be called "Japanese". I hope they still use (right) Japanese and keep Japanese culture then.

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