August 21, 2015: Blog

August 21, 2015
Dear Friends and Students
Today I went up to Keio Mita Campus to study Psychology and Sociology.
The class starts at 8:45 and ends 5:15.  On the way back I took a classmate to Friends Center.
I remember the Religious Organization of Friends were saying that they have some difficulties in putting the dormitory with people.  I always said Keio summer students will be happy to board, so took one from Saga, Kyushu. I think they will be more than happy to stay in the Important Cultural building from 1922 and where the present emperor visited to see his tutor.
GtO

August 18, 19, 2015: Blog

August 18, 19, 2015
Dear Friends and Students
I started the last week of Keio University Summer Session with Psychology and Sociology.
I put one whole day writing my life history with 5, 000 words Japanese yesterday.  I thought most students will have their homework.  On the contrary I was the only one who brought the paper.
I was surprised the others didn't. The professors were quite interesting character, one young professor spoke about his difficulties being a gay and spoke about high rate of suicide exist in the Ministry of Social Welfare and Labor where he was a young high ranking bureaucrat before switch to the study of Sociology.  The other professor just returned from his trip to Germany.
 He was like a Steve Jobs type of speaker. He had a good command of speaking and communication with audience.

August 16/17, 2015: Blog

August 17, 2015
Dear Friends and Students
Today I finished my second group of Exams for my summer sessions of Keio University at Hiyoshi.
My first Exam was on the Japanese Legal history from Ritsuyo(Chinese T'ang dynasty laws imported to Japan)to Meiji Japanese Westernization. The amazing part of this legal structure was that it was almost perfect and detailed legal system. No wonder the East Asia was ahead of all for 2,000 years and was hard to revise it in the 19th century to the Western legal system in China, Korea or Japan.
The second Exam was the Medieval European History. It was extreme comparison with the first class as to see  how much Europe was  behind Islam or Constantinople or much further behind China for a thousand years legal structure , economy, or in civilization. The only development took place is the Christian monastery and its influence upon people.

August 15, 2015:Blog

August 15, 2015
Dear Friends and Students
Today, August 15, 2015 is the ending of World War !! for Japanese.  That is the Japanese interpretation but most considered September 2, 1945 because that is the day the Japanese signed the surrendering of the war.
The war is still every where in this world. Japanese had 70 years of peace from the end of the past war.  I still don't know why we start war and why keep continue fighting.
Today I had the Japanese legal history. I learned Kamakura legal structure and the importance of land to Japanese Samurai, warriors; due to their strong attachment to land so the most importance legal judgement for the Kamakura Shogunate is to solve the disputes over the land ownership among their Samurais(warriors).
European medieval history was concentrated with city development of 11th century and monastery development in Europe.
I learned how Franciscan started and develop into an Order with Dominicans and two others.
 I have to write 3000 to 5000 words autobiographical Japanese report on Sociology class before the class starts next Wednesday. So I will start soon on that.

August 14, 2015: Blog

August 14, 2015
Dear Friends and Students
Today I had two classes in Keio, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.
The legal history of Japan was interesting class where he starts with several pages of hand outs
and amazingly fast class with a lot of information without any breaks for 105 minutes.
I was amazed with the legal structure and highly educated bureaucrats in early Japan going back to Nara period(800 AD). If you compare with the Medieval Europe I am taking in the afternoon.
So East Asia was far advanced until 18th century.

August 13, 2015: Blog of GtO

August 13, 2015
Dear Friends and Students
We had rain this morning and cooling the temperature in this area.
I am sure we still have a higher temperature day coming yet but I remember
when I was a Boy Scout I heard from scouts from Hokkaido that when the camp is over
in mid-August, they will need stove when they returned to Hokkaido.
My friends in Myanmar and Singapore always say they envy Japanese for their autumn, cooling of hot summer and have a present air condition type of weather in September, October and November.
I still take two courses in Keio right now. I learned that Japanese desperately imported the Chinese legal system in 800 AD and learned that Otto the Great of Holy Roman Empire
imposed the Vatican to have a celibacy. Popes of Rome were considered one of Bishops and marriages were their choices to have or not and it was a family business for many of them.
Many of what we know paintings of medieval time is propaganda of Church or regimes of that time.

GtO

August 12, 2015 Blog restarting

August 12, 2015
Dear Students and Friends
I am going to restart the Blog.
I was supposed to be writing the Blog daily to the students to guide them and give them what they should do for homework.
I was not as easy as I thought I could initially do it.
However, with an encouragement and a gift of Air Mac from the Most Respectable Sir Kermit Carvell, I think he deserves to be given a title, I am trying to restart writing this Blog.
There should be some kind of division of Blogs with other two Blogs. However, at the moment I will try with this for a month or so.

Today I took the Legal history of Japan and Medieval European History at Keio University Hiyoshi.
I start from 8:45 and ends at 5:30 pm, of course there is a lunch break.
I found out that Hatoyama's great grandfather went to Columbia and Yale with Ph. D. in law
after the initial education at Tokyo Imperial University in 1870's to 1880's.  His American university education  gave him a chance of getting the first law professorship at Tokyo Imperial University,
but he had a fight with the administration and became the first Japanese lawyer.
If he had stayed in the university , Japanese legal structure will be completely different with what we have today which is basically based on the German legal structure.  It would have been Anglo-American legal structure.
Remember Japanese put a lot of money and energy in educating their young elite to modernize when other Asians were not interested yet.
And I see many of these young elites were extremely intelligent and mastered the language and mastered the knowledge abroad in surprisingly short time.
GtO