Checking my 2008 resolutions

1. Health
Keep my condition good.
Concrete plan: Take no day off with my bad condition. I took five days off with my cold last year. I want to reduce how many days off I take.
I go to my fitness club more. I did yoga everyday and went to my sports club twice a week, but I took five days off with cold.

result
I could keep my condition good till November. But in December, I developed a stress disorder because of my overwork for big problems between my important client and my company since October. (For example, I worked 27 days and over 100 hours overtime) and took some days off. After I told my boss the diagnosis, my boss decided that he took my hardest work (negotiations with the top person of my client) and gave me the half (morning) days off everyday till the end of January.
So I didn't achieve this resolution, but I appreciate myself for keeping good condition till November. I went to my fitness club 78 times in 2008, I think it made my condition good except overwork months.


2.Learn cooking
Concrete plan: Cook one lunch every week. Increase my menu two to five in this year.

result
I've learned to cook five simple menus: ketchup rice with some vegetables and sausages, beef rice, spaghetti Neapolitan (Japanese original menu – pasta with ketchup and onion, pimento, mushroom and ham), okonomiyaki and curry rice.
I couldn't cook one lunch every week, but I cooked most of weeks.


3.TOEIC score up
Concrete plan: 800 (now 740)
Keep my private English lesson with my American and English teachers and review my TOEIC text that I learned last year.

result
I got score of 825, thanks to my teachers, Sarah and Laura!


4. Know my city Nishinomiya
Concrete plan: Visit more 5 spots in Nishinomiya city

result
I visited more than five spots as follows (Sorry, most link targets are my Japanese blog):
Kitayama Botanical Garden
Architectures near my flat – including ex-classic hotel planed by a pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright
Sake (Japanese rice-based liquor) breweries (Nishinomiya is famous of good water production for sake)
A Shinto shrine, Japanese-classic-style lighthouse

My harvests in 2008

Books
Sorry, most of them are written in Japanese and are not translated in English. Therefore I will introduce only two books:



Dostoyevskii / The Brothers Karamazov : I feel the strong power of story from this novel. Deep. I will read this masterpiece several times.




Kazuo Ishiguro / Never Let Me Go: A grotesque background appeared through simple, plain and calm sentences. This novel is not similar to any other novel I have read.


Music



Beethoven / Symphony No.6 "Pastoral" conducted by Carlos Kleiber (Bavarian State Orchestra)
The most marvelous music I've listened to in 2008. I didn't know that such dramatic and lively "Pastoral"




Perfume / GAME
Perfume is Japanese techno-pop idol group. Their composer / producer is Yasutaka Nakata, he composed and arranged high-completion rate songs for them.




The fireman / Electric Arguments
Paul McCartney's relax feeling produced his original pop-sense and some new taste.


Movies



Mystic River




Letters from Iwo Jima




Two of Us (TV movie. Fiction based on the fact that Paul McCartney visited John Lennon's house in 1976)


Climber's High (Japanese TV Drama)




The Dark Knight




Prestige


Art



"Vermeer and the Delft Style" Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum(Sorry, this link target is my Japanese blog)
It was the "incident" that as many as seven Vermeer's paintings were gathered in Japan. One of my ambitions is to appreciate all Vermeer's paintings (about 30) scattered across Europe and the US. So it was a big chance for me. In addition to, my music- lover-friends and I appreciated this exhibition together and talked over the paintings through "fresh eyes" (not genuine art lover's eye). It was very fun.

Toru Takagi / The War Public Relations Company

Since the Yugoslavia conflict of the 90s, the international society has thought Serbia as evil. Why do most people think only Serbia as evil, not Bosnia? Why did people have strong concern about the Yugoslavia conflict even though they didn’t have oil and economic power. For the former question, I thought the reason why was, Serbia was the strongest in Yugoslavia. For the latter question, I thought the reason why was, Yugoslavia is in Europe and people are white. However, I have changed my thoughts after reading this book. At least in the Bosnia conflict, it was the power of an American private company labeled that Serbia as “evil” and Bosnia’s Muslims became “Victims”.

Before surveying this book, let me summarize the Bosnia conflict. Yugoslavia union consisted of various ethnic groups. After the strong leader Tito’s death and the Cold War ending, every ethnic group wanted to have their own nations. At first, Slovenia and Croatia became independent. Next, when Bosnia-Hercegovina tried to become independent, a problem arose.

Slovenia consists of Slovenian and Croatia consists of Croatian. On the other hand, Bosnia-Hercegovina consists of 40% Muslim, 30% Serbian and 20% Croatian. Serbian and Croatian dominate the mainland, Serbia and Croatia. However, Muslims have only Bosnia-Hercegovina. If Bosnia-Hercegovina became independent, Serbian people and Croatian people in Bosnia, would become an ethnic minority group because they are isolated from the mainland. So Serbian and Croatian representatives left Bosnia government. After all, Bosnia-Hercegovina was ruled by a Muslim government, even though the country containing two other ethnic groups. However, the “Ethnic minority group” Serbian had a stronger military power than the Muslim’s because of the support of Serbia. This unbalance between “weak mainstream” and “strong branch” became the origin of the conflict.

The first scene of this book is the US visit of Dr. Haris Silajdzic, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia-Hercegovina. He had the mission: if Bosnia was attacked by Serbia, the international society will be in favor of Bosnia, not Serbia. He succeeded to make the meeting with the Secretary of State Baker and received the following advice; if Bosnia want the US’s power, you need to control the opinion of the US people. A civil-right activist, who was a friend of Silajdzic, introduced him to Jim Harff of PR company, Ruder Finn. PR companies’ works is to generate positive opinions for their client. Jim Harff was the man whose clients were nations.

Harff and the president Finn decided to accept the offer for their company's fame and position among the PR company world. Their committee of ethics didn't forget to confirm that Muslims were the real "victims" and this work had no problems on ethical ground.

Then, Harff started to support Silajdzic all out as a professional. At first, Harff set up many press conferences, because Silajdzic was very good at English. Harff frequently reported Bosnia's tragedies to people of importance, to change the public opinion using the Bosnia-Hercegovina Fax-Update. Healso set up oppoturnities for Silajdzic to appear on TV programs and give interviews to journalists. (After these interviews, Harff and Silajdzic never forgot to write thank you letters to the journalists.) He made "stage directions" for Silajdzic, not as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, but as a witness who had just seen Bosnia's tragedy right then. (Actually, he was staying at the US all the time, and didn't go back to Bosnia.) These steady efforts bore fruits and the US people began to be interested in Bosnia.

Meanwhile, a phrase made Bosnia's position among the US public change dramatically.

Harff thought that it was important to get Americans to recognize that Bosnia's problems were concerned with "democracy" and "human rights". Therefore he decided to use the phrase "ethnic cleansing" when he received the news that Serbian had selected and exiled Muslims from their dwelling village.

This phrase was appropriate for stimulating American's human-rights-mind. If this phrase had been "contemporary holocaust", American Jewish people might think the phrase a blasphemy for holocaust victims. However, the phrase "ethnic cleansing" was no problem. In additon, this one phrase was enough to express Bosnia's tragedy strongly. Harff started to use this phrase for most Bosnia reports.

This effort produced much effect. In the May, journalists didn't know the place where Bosnia was correctly, but in the July, some ordinary American people began to declare to adopt Bosnian children who lost their parents. At that time, The UN Secretary-General Ghali (born in Africa) said that there were at least ten places which had more serious conditions than Sarajevo. It was true, but international society criticized that saying intensively. At last, on 9th of July, President Bush used the phrase "ethnic cleansing" to blame Serbia at CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe).

Of course, Serbia didn't keep silent. At the end of July, President Milosevic asked for Millan Panic to be the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia Union. Panic was the man who had sought refuge in the US, established a medicine company and succeed in business. In the US, he made an appeal to the US people tosupporting Serbia using an advocacy ad. Milosevic thought that Panic was useful for changing the evil image of Serbia (At that time, the Yugo Union was almost the same of Serbia.) After his inaugurating the President, Panic gathered his close subordinates who were good at English and sent them abroad to make an appeal known as "changing Serbia". And like Bosnia, he delegated his subordinate to get a powerful PR company on his side. However, he realized Serbia's delay.

The powerful PR companies had already contracted the other Yugoslavia members. Panic's subordinate managed to find a good PR company which hadn't contracted with other nations, but the company replied that they couldn't contract with Yugoslavia Union because it meant being against economic sanctions. For that reason, Panic asked a Serbian in America to make a contract with a PR company for Serbia, and this PR company accepted Panic's offer.

At precisely that same time, the second phrase "concentration camp" appeared. The origin was the news that Serbian made a concentration camp of Muslims. The news was from a New York tabloid and the reporter didn't confirm the information firsthand, only that he had heard that a man had apparently escaped from a camp. Harff understood the importance of this article, he wrote the news on the Fax-Update. This second phrase became popular in mass-media like the first phrase "ethnic cleansing".

Because of this second phrase, the PR company which had decided to contract with Yugoslavia refused the contract. The company told Yugoslavia that they couldn't make Yugo-support-image under such circumstances. Panic on the verge of Yugoslavia's image collapsing, visited Bosnia the Government suddenly by himself with ABC TV reporters, but during the visit, a member of the TV crew was shot and killed, so the meeting between Panic and Bosnia's Prime Minister canceled. On the 22nd of September, the UN exiled the Yugoslavia Union.

These Harff's strategy succeeded for both Bosnia and Ruder Finn. Nevertheless, Silajdzic didn't pay much money (only $90,000) and was in a bad mood whenever paying money. On the other hand, Harff received an award of their PR company world. Ruder Finn got many businesses. The clients were the companies which had defective products, if these companies had made bad decisions without consulting with Harff then the companies would have collapsed.

Now, I admit that if you can make the public opinion of the US be on your side, it means that you make the public opinion if the whole world in your side. A private company can change a nation's destiny – that's American company's power.

I also realized the importance of the ability of English among the international society. Silajdzic was proficient in English, so he could made direct messages to the US media. His English ability meant strong power of their PR plan.

The strongest point that I realized from this case is the power and importance of presentation skills, personal relationships and eagerness in "communication". Harff triumphed based on these factors. His work made Serbia's images worse than reality, I understand some people were blamed for that. However, I also think Harff's work deserves praise. At least, he didn't tell a lie.

After this case, Harff became independent and now he is the CEO of Global Communicators Inc. If Harff had supported Rwanda and Sudan, their destiny might have changed dramatically.

[more]

David Snowdon / Aging with Grace

The world of abbeys is suitable for medical studies. All nuns never smoke and have the same situation of medical treatment, meal and living. Due to the same situations comparative research is easy. Why do some nuns have Alzheimer disease and other nuns not under such the same situations? The author, David Snowdon (Ph.D.), focused on this point and studied it.

The fact he found at first surprised me who know next to nothing about aging. The better educated nuns, the less death rate they have at all age. Research at Massachusetts (of the public) before this study showed the same results. However, this research showed people who graduated only elementary school have higher smoking rate and lower level medical treatment than other educated people. They have the cause. On the other hand, nuns also have the same tendency under the equal environments.

Proceeding the study, the author realized the existence of precious documents for study at abbeys. They are short autobiographies that nuns wrote when they entered abbeys. He assumed that he could research the relationship between Alzheimer disease and nuns' intelligence at their younger age. Then, he turned to Dr. Susan Kemper, who is the specialist for aging and language ability.

Dr. Kemper proposed him the research for "meaning density" of sentences in nuns' autobiographies. "Meaning density" is the number of propositions in every ten words. The author researched the mutual relations of "meaning density" in nuns' autobiographies at their younger ages and the cognition tests results for Alzheimer disease at their older ages. After that, he found clear correlations between the two.

In other words, people who had the high literate abilities to write high "meaning density" sentences tended to have a smaller chance to develop Alzheimer disease.

However, some people criticized the way of this study. They say, such high-meaning-density sentences might be relatively too complex and unintelligible. The unintelligible sentences show writers' low language ability. The author argued that all the autobiographies that they analyzed featured correct grammar and expressed clear thought properly. He declared that high-meaning-density sentences never mean unintelligible.

On the other hand, the author had the question as follows: Hemmingway's sentences are famous for his concise style. If we analyze his sentences, what result do we find? Dr. Kemper's reply: High-meaning-density sentences don't always compose excellent literature.

It surprised me that language ability at younger ages affects everyday life at older ages. It might be natural that we want to do something for our children for their future lives. Dr. Kemper gives us good advice, the answer is read to children. According to her advice, meaning density depends on vocabulary and the ability to read and understand. She said that to increase vocabulary and the ability to read, the best way is to read books to a child when he / she are infant.

Of course, the cause of Alzheimer disease isn't only language ability. It depends on genes, habit of smoking, having enough vegetables. This book gave me a new viewpoint as even the language ability affecting Alzheimer as the same way of other facts.

It was also interesting to me, the way found the results. Not only the author but also the Sisters co-operated in the study. They hand in their writings, tests and their brain after their death. I was intrigued by both the unexpected results and the process of the study.

The Rules of Acquirement of Japanese Nationality

Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?

A Question from anonymous
"So why did they attack? I've heard it suggested that they didn't want Hawaii interfering with plans for the Pacific, but the US and Japan were still negotiating at the time, so why the preemptive strike? I do remember reading about the US opening the Japanese ports in 1850, but that was a long time before WWII." (quoted from comments of this blog on Dec. 8 2007)

Why did Japan decide to fight the US?
Before replying to the above question, I will divide it into two questions. One is "Why did Japan decide to fight the US?" The other is "Why did Japan attack without a declaration?"

About the former question, I introduce a radio lecture that aired in December 1941, about reasonings behind the start of the Pacific War by Dr. Shumei Ohkawa who was asked by the Japanese government. According to the lecture, he said the reason why was "The US got in the way of Japan's Asian management." In detail: Opening Japan ports in 1853 by the US was fortune, she kept polite and opened Japan with negotiations, not plundered. After Spanish-American War in 1898 (the US got the Philippines), she realized that the Asia-Pacific interests were important. The US persuaded Japan to sell the half interests of Manchuria (northeast China) Railway (the US failed), planned to construct a rival railway company to the Manchuria Railways with the UK (they failed), and so on. After that, the Washington Conference was held from 1921 to 1922. During that conference, participant nations set Japan's navy battleships weight as 60% of the US. In 1941, the US froze Japanese capital in the US and stopped exporting oil to Japan. Japan considered the above actions as obstacles of Japanese Asian management.

The US and other nations regarded "Japan's Asian management" as an invasion. So did the Asian nations invaded by Japan. It is the reason why the US 'got in the way of" Japan. Japanese people in those days, however, seemed to think that Japan's Asian management was relief to Asian nations from white people's plundering. When I read the radio lecture, I was surprised that Dr. Ohkawa's logic lacked a pang of conscience for Japan's ruling other Asian nations. In my opinion, generally, colonialism had many problems for colony nations, for instance plundering, discriminations and so on. Of course, Japanese colonialism included. Ruling "primitive" Asian nations, however, seemed "common sense" for Japanese people in those days.

I think that the reason that Japan started to fight the US was a collision of imperialism between Japan and the US. At the time, imperialism for Japan was justice and important to develop Japan. For the US, Japan's invasion was an obstacle of getting interests from Asia.

I have a second question "Why did Japan decided to fight the US even there was the vast gap between Japan's nation power and the US's?" In 1941, the GNP of the US was as many as 11.83 times larger than the one of Japan.
According to the book "Asia Pacific War"(Yutaka Yoshida, 2007), 1941 Japan had the largest budget for preparing for the war. It was 56 times larger than the war budget in 1931(the beginning year of China invasion). The Japanese Navy was a little bigger than the US Navy in the Pacific Sea in 1941. Depending that, some Japanese Army leaders mistakenly thought that Japan could win the US if the Japanese Army could end the war in a short time.

Why did Japan attack without a declaration?
The Pearl Harbor Attack is recognized as a surprise attack. The US people think it was an unlawful and dirty act. Why did Japan start the war in such away?

Do Japanese people think that the surprise attack was not a dirty act? I feel that most Japanese feel a little pang of conscience about the Pearl Harbor Attack, in spite of them knowing about it. The reason why is they believe in some explanations that justify the Attack (in detail: see my blog "How do the Japanese think about the Pearl Harbor attack?") Generally, they recognize that a surprise attack is evil. So why did Japan attack without a declaration?

I have no idea. I checked some books about the Pearl Harbor Attack whose authors approve the Pearl Harbor Attack, but even they couldn't show the validity of the surprise attack. The Attack was one of the big mistakes that the leaders of the Japanese Army decided, I think. The Attack not only was against the rule but also provoked the US people's wrath and union to fight Japan.

My opinion
I think that the surprise attack was the biggest mistake and the Japanese can't justify it. It was an unlawful and dirty act, in addition to, uniting the US people to beat Japan.
What about Japanese decision to fight the US? I also think that the war was a mistake. Even with pressure by the US, the Japanese government should have sought an alternative way because the war left a vast number of victims and destructions. In the first place, fighting against an enemy twelve times larger (GNP) enemy was unrealistic.
What should Japan have done? I have no idea, maybe she should have reconsidered her colonial plan of Asia. Japan can learn many things from this Attack and the War.

I think the US also can learn many things from this Attack and the War. One of them is that the strong pressure as to act "the world police" sometimes possibly provokes the unlawful and unrealistic counterattack.

Related posts

-How do Japanese think about the Pacific War?
-How do Japanese think about the Pearl Harbor attack?
-The Great Tokyo Air Raid - More Victims than the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb
-Which was the best era in Japan? An interview with my grandparents who were born in the early 20th century

Why do Japanese businesspeople work till late?

A bureaucrat's comment
About this question, a Japanese bureaucrat made a comment on his blog. He had experience working with EU bureaucrats in Belgium so he compared Japanese and European work style. It indicates the vast gap between the two. Japanese bureaucrats work till midnight every night, but EU employees work till 6pm with a 2hour lunch and a higher salary than Japanese.

He was interested in this gap, so he asked EU people about the difference. He learned four reasons.


Reason 1: Europeans are tolerant of others and themselves but Japanese aren't
An EU legislation was due to reconsider until a certain date, but a European bureaucrat in charge did nothing after the date. The EU committee explained to the parliament "The person in charge was busy on his long holiday." The parliament replied, "I see. No problem." If this case occurred in Japan, the person in charge's boss would get fired, the parliament would go mad and mass media would buzz.


Reason 2: Europeans do the same work for a long time, but Japanese do one type of job for a few years*
European people are easy to look at the overview of their work. Japanese people, however, have to catch up with them because of their little experience and knowledge.
*Why do the Japanese government and many companies transfer their members to other departments every few years? I have no idea, but some people said it is concerned with the Japanese career-long employment: If a person work the same company, he / she has to have experienced many groups to manage a department.


Reason3: European groups have severe delegation of authority, but Japanese don't
European people don't explain all about their work to their bosses. It seems to take them a shorter time to explain something to their boss than Japanese do.

He thinks there is the same root between Reason 3 and 1. Most Japanese businesspeople know how difficult it is to say "I have no idea." Their bosses take it for granted that their subordinates know all. It leads to on increase in explanations. For intolerance for themselves, the bosses want to know all. For intolerance for others, they never forgive people who say "I have no idea."


Reason 4: European customers are tolerant, but Japanese customers are not
European register clerks are eager to chat with co-workers, in spite of making long cues. There are 30 minutes- long line in front of registers at McDonald's. European customers don't complain and wait.
In Japan, some people think "Customers are Gods." This bureaucrat was more politely welcomed when he bought a rice ball (1.2$) in Japan than when he bought a car in Belgium. He thinks that Japanese business services try to listen to and remedy all customers' complaints, so it makes some business people's physical and mental health seriously suffer.


My opinion
I think this bureaucrat's comments are proper because I experienced a similar situation to the above comments in Japan. (I have no experience to work with foreigners.) In particular, Reason 3 is familiar to me. In my company, sometimes the time to make documents for the bosses may be more than the time to make documents for my clients because of little delegation of power in my company. It's non-sense, I think. I have some favorite points and some disappointing points of my company, this is the most disappointing, I think. I would like to be severe at my work but tolerant for other people.

Nishinomiya City Kitayama Green Botanical Garden

I visited the garden with my wife, son and in-laws. One of my new-year-resolutions is "to walk around my town Nishinomiya", this visiting is part of them.




Shukugawa river in front of the Garden is very small because the garden is located in the middle of a mountain.




Mountain cherry tree near the entrance gate.




Splendid weeping cherry tree.
In Japan, in the first week of April, many people gather near cherry blossom trees to appreciate them, so sometimes you miss a place to look at cherry blossoms because of congestions.
I learned if I visit this garden in the third week of April, I can appreciate the cherry blossoms without congestion.




I found pretty flowers named Veronica. The name reminded me of Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney because they composed an excellent song of the same name.




Decent pansy and unique tulip.
I think that one of the good points of this garden is the staff have good sense to mix such breeding flowers with wild plants.




This monument was presented by Shaoxing City of China, which is a friendship town of my town, Nishinomiya.




Lunch.




Japanese-style lodge for official guests from foreign countries.


We enjoyed many beautiful flowers in this compact garden at the best season for flowers.
I think that this garden is good for families because not only do they have pretty flowers but they also have a their kitchen garden and free spaces for relaxing and having lunch.

Collapse: One Island, Two Peoples, Two Histories

This chapter focused on two nations, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in the large Caribbean island of Hispaniola. These two nations embodied this book's subtitle: How societies choose to fail or succeed.

You can find much difference between the two nations. The wooded area of Haiti is only 1% of the area of the whole country, the Dominican Republic has 28% wooded area in the whole country. Haiti is one of the lowest income countries in the world except for Africa. It has one third of the area of the whole Hispaniola island but two thirds population for the whole island. In other words, it falls in a vicious cycle of poverty and high population growth. Social infrastructure still doesn't supply many citizens with electricity, water, sewage, medical care and schooling.

On the other hand, the Dominican Republic's income is five times larger than Haiti, its population density and population growth rate are both lower than Haiti. Many people go to the U.S. to work and send money to their Dominican families, some of them succeed as baseball players. (For instance, Sammy Sosa) Of course, security level is different between the two nations. When I checked out their security information on the webpages of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan in December 2007, they told us of travel warnings for Haiti, but no warning for the Dominican Republic.

What made such differences between the two nations on one island? The answer is not simple like the Easter Island case. However, history affected the difference like Easter Island.

On Hispaniola Island, people who were of the same race with Native Americans once lived, but after the Spanish came, they were exterminated with Spanish disease and killing. After the extermination of Native Americans on Hispaniola Island, the Europeans repopulated with slaves from Africa. Slaves were worked hard for sugar plantations.

That was the typical pattern of European ruling of the Americas. After that, the history of Hispaniola Island is not typical: the French occupied the western area of the island while the Spanish checked the other land, for example, for silver mines in Bolivia.

Then, being affected by the French Revolution, people of the western area of the island, Haiti, declared independence and became Haiti, the first black republic in 1804. When I read this part of the book, I breathed a sigh of relief. But this was Haiti's first step to a bad direction. The independent black people burned down plantations and killed well-educated French administrators. Consequently, their doing lost their economic base.

Haiti once occupied the whole of the island, then the eastern area of the island became known as Santo Domingo Republic. (Dominican Republic) Unlike Haiti, people of the Dominican Republic didn't destroy their economic base very much and didn't exclude foreigners. Therefore, the Dominican Republic's motto of "Welcome immigrants and Spanish OK" gathered many immigrants and foreigner's interest than Haiti's motto of "Excluding foreigners and Creole language (mixed African with French)".

As a result, the Dominican Republic could progress modernization and changed living energy from charcoal to hydroelectricity. On the other hand, Haiti's energy is still charcoal. Therefore, Haitian people have been cutting down trees.

These are not only reasons of difference.

Both Haiti and the Dominican Republic have had long period of dangerous dictators than the dictators of Haiti, the dictators of the Dominican Republic seemed to have much more concern about the natural environment. One of them, Trujillo, called for scientists to assess the environment and regulate deforestation in 1937. In the 1950s, he guarded wooded areas which could keep rain water to make hydroelectricity power stations work. His successor, Balaguer, was also eager to preserve wooded areas. He commanded that illegal people who cut down trees be shot from helicopters. When he retired at 94 years of age, he made a law to preserve the national parks against his successor who considered passing a weak national park preservation law. In contrast, the dictators of Haiti, Duvalier and his son, did no such presarvation.

Why were the dictators of the Dominican Republic so eager to preserve the environment? To begin with, why were they, who killed their political enemies and opposition factions, concerned about the environment? Maybe the main reason was economy. However, setting aside the period of Trujillo, in the period of Balaguer, which the nation modernized to a certain extent and established its economy base, why did he do so? I think such doing was merely his own interest.

The author, Diamond, had the same question. Therefore he asked Dominican people why Balaguer was so keen to preserve the environment, and all the answers were different. Some of them said, "Adolf Hitler loved dogs and brushed his teeth, but that doesn't mean that we should hate dogs and stop brushing our teeth." In addition, he recalled that he was about to be killed by a soldier in Indonesia under military control, but the government had a concrete plan to keep national parks' condition good. After all, the author didn't have clear answers, but he brought up that the logic of dictators are evil therefore they are never interested in preserving the environments was incorrect.

Reading this chapter, I learned some theories as follows:
Even a nation that was trampled on by Europe, used European know-how to establish the economy base.
You cannot construct a nation with only anger and pride.
Top-down system is the strongest in any means.

[more]

Collapse: Twilight at Easter

There are no trees on Easter Island except for the trees which someone planted recently. I was convinced that this meant such a tragedy by the book "Collapse: How societies to fail or succeed" by Jared Diamond.

Originally, there were many trees on Easter Island like other Polynesian islands. In 900, people from other island settled on Easter Island and they prospered. Increasing population and communicating with tribes on the island provoked tribal conflicts. People established many moai statues for their demonstrations and many trees were cut down for moving and erecting moai statues.

As a result, all the trees on the island vanished from 1400 to 1600. The lack of trees affected the possibility to grow other plants and animals. This meant a decrease in something to eat, Easter Island inhabitants had began to decline.

At the time, people changed their religions and tore down the moai statues. The author, Jared Diamond, said it as "Easter Islander's toppling of their ancestral moai reminds me of Russians and Romanians toppling the statues of Stalin and Ceausescu when the Communist governments of those countries collapsed." I think it could be symbol of twilight at Easter Island. Although there were still some standing moais on the island when Captain Cook went there in 1774, all moais fall down by 1868.

Tragedy had not stopped with the decreasing food (plants and animals), The islanders also decreased. Until, finally, they begun to eat human bodies. According to excavating results, human bones were found out not only in graves but also at trash sites. The author introduced, "Oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with cannibalism; the most inflammatory taunt that could be snarled at an enemy was 'The flesh of your mother sticks between your teeth.' " After that, epidemics and capturing islanders for slaves by Europeans made islander population only 111, despite several thousands to thirty thousand at their most prosperous era. (Now there are two thousand islanders on the island, but most of them are half-breeds.


Why did only Easter Islanders take such a destiny? The reason why is that some conditions of the island happened to make it difficult to grow trees. In a dry and relatively cool climate trees grow slowly, inactive volcanoes make non-fertile soils, no high mountains mean clouds don't appear easily and little rain, small island which is affected easily by environmental change, and because the island is located far from other islands, the islanders didn't move from the island.

The author compared the last reason with the contemporary society. Of course, in our society, people, substances and information circulate all over the world unlike the ancient Easter Island society. However, changing the point of view, we can say that Earth in the outer space is similar to the isolated island. We are in same boat. The author admitted this analogy is pushy, nevertheless, he insisted that we have to do something to avoid the destiny like the Easter Islanders. I agree with it.