(Around Tokyo, On August 31, 2008)Japanese Buddhism and Mathematics
Some Japanese politician once said that politics depended on the number of the Diet (congress) members; the number of Diet members depended on money; and thus politics was all about money to control Diet members as many as possible.
However, if voters come to hate money, things will be different even in the United States.
SECTION I: Master of Misunderstanding
Generally speaking American elites have no ability and capability to learn anything valuable from Japan.
However, without any wisdom learnt from Japan, American elites think that they can understand China, while Japan shares the similar value system and the similar global and historical view with America but China does not.
That is why American elites fail often; but some Japanese pundits and critics give too much credit to American elites in terms of their ability and capability.
Those Japanese think that American elites are on purpose making mistakes in dealing with China and the rest of the world except Japan, since American elites are wise enough to understand Japan and Chine very correctly and profoundly, which is however against the reality and fact.
That is why this morning the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper introduced a comment by an American pundit that the Beijing Olympic Games impressively displayed that China has become a great country and the Russian invasion of Georgia has proved that Russia is going to regain its international status as a super power.
Yet, the truth is that the Beijing Olympic Games had nothing but exhibitions of fireworks and mid-air suspension which were designed to hide China’s huge problems in politics, industries, and civil right issues; the Russia’s invasion was nothing but inability to be respected by neighbor countries as a great nation.
In summary, the two incidents concerning China and Russia, the two old-fashioned, potential military super power in the 20th century, only showed they are still the two old-fashioned, potential military super power without respect from the world; and American elites are not smart enough to correctly and profoundly understand the truth as they were in the 20th century, which some Japanese cannot believe so as to think American mistakes have been all made on purpose for some significant interests and strategies which however do not exist at all.
The reason for some Japanese critics blindly praising American elites for their intended or planned failures, which are so perceived but genuine failures in reality, is simply that there are so many Nobel Prize winners in the United States.
Yet, there are many talented Japanese of the Nobel-Prize winner class so good at science and engineering, though they are mostly pious Buddhists.
SECTION II: True Ability in Understanding
It is well known in the Japanese academic society that first-rate Japanese scientists are often excellent learners of Buddhism.
Even their excellent works are often developed and realized based on their intellectual ability and capability cultivated by Buddhism.
However, it is different from the way Indians have been traditionally good at mathematics and philosophy.
Kiyoshi Oka, a notable Japanese mathematician, was pursuing some mathematical problem from before WWII when he quit a teaching job for some mysterious reason at a certain university in a local city in Japan.
When he found the solution to the problem, he visited his friend in Kyoto University to commit his paper to this old friend for submission to the French mathematical association.
The friend, a professor of Kyoto University, later recalled that it had been a big surprise to see his old friend, Kiyoshi Oka, looking like an old farmer in rags and tatters for the first time after the War.
Anyway, the mathematical paper was further entrusted by the professor to Hideki Yukawa, the first Japanese Nobel Prize winner, who was about to go to the U.S. to see Albert Einstein. Subsequently, Yukawa met a Japanese mathematician who was then working in the U.S. to ask the delivery of the paper. The Japanese mathematician immediately contacted André Weila, a notable French mathematician working in the U.S., who sent it to Henri Cartan, the then head of French mathematical association.
Half a year later when Kiyoshi Oka took a teaching position in a university through a help of his old friend, he got a letter from France that Oka’s hand-written paper must be typed and then it would be printed in the academic journal since his paper had superb value.
In this way, the mathematical work Kiyoshi Oka had accomplished while living in true poverty through WWII, selling his humble properties for money, eating potatoes he had grown, and praying to Buddha, was introduced into the international academic community to be one of the greatest basics of the modern mathematics.
( http://reuler.blog108.fc2.com/category2-1.html )
He continued and presented his work vigorously so that some French scientists thought Kiyoshi Oka must be a representative name of a group of Japanese mathematicians, since his work was so vast, influential, and fruitful.
Indeed, Kiyoshi Oka was a unique mathematician even from a Japanese view point, since he often chanted Buddhism creeds to purify his mind so as to concentrate the work of his mind to a target problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyoshi_Oka
http://www.learn-math.info/historyDetail.htm?id=Oka
SECTION III: Faces of Women
Kiyoshi Oka, a notable Japanese mathematician, is also well known even today 30 years after his death as a unique critique.
He wrote that his study on Buddhism critically helped him in his work in mathematics.
Kiyoshi Oka once wrote in his commentary that faces of Japanese women changed drastically after WWII.
Japanese women's faces turned to be more animal-like from flower-like after WWII, according to his observation.
As an effect of education is more clearly perceived on the face of young people, it is a grave issue.
As boys were not so deeply influenced by emotional, sensible, and humane aspects of life as girls, Japanese boys’ faces after WWII were not so drastically changed; but they showed half the effect girls were receiving in the Americanized society of Japan after WWII, according to his observation.
Indeed, for some traditional Buddhists, the faces of Western people look like those of animals, since pious Buddhists don’t eat beef or any other types of meat which is associated with killing of living things.
And, it looks like that the more the Japanese society is influenced by the Western material culture, the more the Japanese look like animals.
Kiyoshi Oka thought that it represented erosion of the traditional Japanese spiritual culture.
( http://shioyama11.blog95.fc2.com/blog-entry-29.html )
As a matter of fact, the standards of beautiful women in Japan have become very close to those in Europe and America.
However, it tells a crisis of the inherent Japanese spiritual culture, according to the great Buddhist mathematician.
(The educational policy of the former Abe Cabinet of Japan seems to have been partly influenced by the teaching of Kiyoshi Oka, though the then Prime Minister Mr. Shinzo Abe appointed the first female Defense Minister, namely Ms. Yuriko Koike.)
If it is true, it can be alarmingly applied to Koreans, Chinese, other East Asians, and even Indians or Muslims.
The Anglo-Saxon-style money culture is also making pious American Christians put on faces more animal-like than angel-like.
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Most of Japanese, including pundits and critics, often overestimate American elites.
On the other hand, European and American elites, except true experts in specific fields, have no ability and capability to understand Japanese.
Nonetheless even in Japan, only the Kiyoshi Oka class experts, respected so much by Western experts, can find a grave crisis of the Japanese spiritual culture by realizing the change in Japanese women’s faces over WWII.
It is so grave, since it also tells a grave crisis of Christianity that once took animal-like faces off Europeans living in the south and the north of the Alps so as to have them long for Angel-like faces.
Devils riding on the global diffusion of money culture are destroying traditional flower-like faces of Japanese women and angel-like faces of Western women.
It is because money is a kind of poison that destroys an internal face of man if some claim it being a panacea.
Truly words of the God are a panacea without any side-effect as a poison that destroys an internal face of man.
And, that is why I am telling you to let Muslim ladies wear the vail so piously.
(For a future U.S. female President:
http://www.menziesera.com/midi/ifollow.mid
Source: http://www.menziesera.com/singalong/i_will_follow_him.htm)
Luk 9:4 And whatsoever house ye enter into, there abide, and thence depart.
Luk 9:5 And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.