Homage to Gaia

by James Lovelock

  The Akimotos and the Japanese scientist Shigeru Moriyama came to our Gaia meeting in Oxford in 1994. And in 1995 we enjoyed at Coombe Mill visits from Yumi and Sadako Akimoto and from Professor Yasuaki Maeda and his wife Keiko. The Maedas invited us back to Japan in 1996. After arriving at Tokyo Narita airport, they took us to the Imperial Hotel opposite the Royal Palace, where they accommodated us in a wholly delightful suite. We now looked on Japan as some kind of magic kingdom, where always we are greeted as honoured guests.

  We all know how Japanese products excel in their attention to detail. Before Japan became the industrial giant it now is, we suffered consumer electronics that seemed to fail as often as they worked. Now, thanks to Japanese diligence, we expect our televisions and high-fi equipment to work unceasingly without breakdown. Less well known is the fact that the same painstaking attention to detail pervades Japanese life. Nowhere ever have we enjoyed such unstinted care and attention as from our friends in Japan. One Saturday not long after our arrival, Yumi had arranged a meeting of scientists interested in Gaia. Even though it was a small select gathering in the hotel, there was simultaneous translation of all we said. Inside our air-conditioned meeting, all was calm and thoughtful, while outside a typhoon raged. After lunch, we briefly felt the fierce wind and horizontally driving rain before entering the cars organized by Yumi to take us to a traditional Japanese guesthouse, owned by his company, for dinner. I have grown to love and feel at home in the calm atmosphere of a Japanese banquet. Kneeling for me comes naturally, and my yukata sits comfortably on me after the restriction of Western jacket and tie, and, for me, Japanese food is the best of all.

  Next day our hosts took us to Hakone, on the Isu peninsula south of Tokyo. Isu is a resort region rather like our own Lake District in Cumbria, and we went first to the vast crater of a not-so extinct volcano, now a pleasure lake on which sail replica galleons. We boarded one and sailed across to lunch at a hotel on the opposite shore. After lunch, we went by limousine to the Gora Kadan Inn. The Inn is a felicitous combination of Italian style and Japanese tradition, and its owner a delightful young Japanese woman who had inherited it from her father. In the spacious suite of rooms she had chosen for us were our personal attendants for the visit. They performed the necessary task of dressing and preparing us in formal Japanese garments for the banquet soon to be enjoyed, and then took us to a private banqueting room where we joined Sadako, Yumi and Hideo Kobayashi, Yumi’s personal assistant, and our host the innkeeper. There were ten courses of Japanese food, exquisite in both style of preparation and taste, and as expected of a perfect meal we were satiated only by the final course. It was a happy occasion, with much laughter, and one we shall never forget. The next morning we said our farewells to our host and to the ladies who had so well cared for us. We went by car to the Hakone Open Air Museum, a beautifully landscaped park at the foot of Mount Fujiyama, in which were tastefully displayed contemporary sculptures by the most distinguished eastern and western artists. We travelled by car from the museum to Nagoya and took the Shinkansen to Osaka. It was good to see Yasuaki Maeda’s welcoming face on the platform. He took us to the Osaka Imperial Hotel and to another suite of huge dimensions, in which were two WCs, the latest high-tech versions, and daunting to use. Beside the seat was an illuminated panel of Japanese characters and, when I cautiously pressed one of these, a gentle fountain of warm water began to wash my backside. Another button released a stream of warm dry air. I never dared to try the other six characters.

  After breakfast next day we were delighted to find our friend Ralph Cicerone, now Chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, waiting in the hotel lobby, together with Keiko Maeda and two young men from the university. We went with them to the university at Sakai, and there gave our public lectures on environmental affairs, and talked with scientists there. In the afternoon, we went to Kyoto and to the offices of the firm Horiba, famous for its analytical instruments; here I lectured on the ECD. Dr Kozo Ishida took us to a small but exquisite restaurant in the old section of Kyoto. Here we enjoyed an unforgettable meal and an evening of happy conversation. The talk, most unusually for businessmen, covered everything except business. The courtesy and consideration of our Horiba hosts touched us; in a lifetime of business meals, this was a rare exception to the usual incessant shoptalk. Lectures delivered, next day we started a round of sightseeing. Yasuaki and Keiko were wonderfully generous in their efforts to show us the many treasures of Kyoto. They took us to Nara, and we spent much of the day visiting the shrines and temples; unlike the urban and industrial Japan that we knew, Nara was unusually open, and there were green park areas, many trees, and even deer wandering at will.

  We often had to pinch ourselves to make sure we were in a real, not some dream, world. What we had imagined as a typical scientist’s trip to a lab in another country turned out to be a week among the historical treasures of Japan. We climbed the steps of the White Castle of Himeji and walked the paths of the gardens. One day we took the train to Hiroshima, where we were to stay the night. No one in western civilization can visit Hiroshima without some sense of shame: here at one site was commemorated the greatest triumph of 20th-century science and its most profound misapplication. The sensitivity the Japanese display in their park and Peace Museum deeply moved us. In so many nations, it would have been either a call for vengeance or a whinge of victimhood. Here the simple message was: in war, we all do dreadful things. The next morning we boarded a boat and set off to the island of Miyajima and its maritime shrine. Back in Hiroshima in the evening, we were surprised, and delighted, to be the guests of the Gaia Fan Club. In Japan, they are not frightened of the word Gaia, and use it in the title of a popular natural history programme on television, The Gaia Symphony. It was a pleasure to meet and talk with the producer, Jin Tatsumura.

  On the last night of our visit to Japan, Professor Maeda and his wife, Keiko, invited us to have supper in his lab. Keiko prepared the meal with the help of the students, and it was splendid Japanese home cooking, with vast pans cooking gently on the lab hot plates and venting their most unscientific fragrance. There could have been no better way of welcoming us into the life of a Japanese university. Our lack of Japanese mattered less here, for half the students were from other Asian countries, and many spoke only their own native language with a smattering of Japanese. They asked many questions during the meal, and Dr Bando of the university acted as translator of both science and language. Their search for knowledge was impressive and there was a complete absence of cynicism; hardly had I swallowed one noodle before they posed the next question. I have never liked lecturing—it gives me no pleasure whatever—and an hour’s lecture takes me weeks to prepare. By contrast, I thoroughly like talking with young men and women and trying to answer their questions, and in so doing I often find important gaps in my own knowledge. There was a family feeling in this university group, one of mutual affection and respect, and if this is representative of Japan, one needs look no further for its success. As always with Japan, our departure from Kansai Airport was a sad occasion. Surrounded by our friends it seemed almost a monstrous discourtesy to board the plane.

  These wonderful visits to Japan started in the summer of 1991, when a fax came from Fred Myers, an American friend who lives in Tokyo and whom I had met at the United Nations University in Tokyo in the 1980s. Fred conveyed an invitation from a distinguished Japanese gentleman who was interested in Gaia. Would I like to visit Japan and lecture on Gaia in 1992? I was due at the time for more urethral surgery, and not in the mood for long-distance air travel. My reply was not encouraging, and I added that Sandy and I always travelled together and we had no wish to be parted. Another and more specific fax arrived from Fred, saying that his Japanese friend was Hideo Itokowa, head of the Systems Research Institute of Japan, and that if we came there would be two return tickets for us and a lecture fee of at least £10,000. Had we known Hideo Itokowa as well as we do now, I believe we would have travelled to Japan by any means, no mat
ter how uncomfortable. But money does speak and the conditions offered were irresistible.

  In September 1992 we started our journey to Japan by flying to Philadelphia for the semi-annual visit to Hewlett Packard, and from there to Chicago and Tokyo on a long fourteen-hour flight on United Airlines. We left Chicago’s spacious airport early in the afternoon and arrived in Tokyo at dusk on the next day. We had reclined our seats to the horizontal position and slept for much of the journey across the Pacific. After passing through customs at Narita Airport, we saw Fred Myers waiting, and with him were Hideo Itokawa and two young Japanese friends. There were also the media, with television cameras and journalists to interview us. We were warmly welcomed and, with our bags, taken in a limousine to the New Otani Hotel in the centre of Tokyo, a journey that took nearly two hours. At the hotel, a suite of rooms awaited us, more luxurious than any we had previously known. After an hour to settle in, our hosts invited us to a meal in the hotel’s Chinese restaurant. We are immune to jet lag, that misery that comes from travelling by air across time zones, but knew that to be fresh the next day, it would be wise because of our long journey, to stay awake until our usual bedtime of 10 pm. At about 8 o’clock our escorts, Jiro Hata and Hiroshi Yajima, knocked at our door and invited us to accompany them to the private dining room. By now, although dazed, we realized that we were experiencing a royal welcome. These young men were providing care with a degree of attention that made us feel truly wanted, and it was to be like this throughout the whole of the two-week visit. They were there always, ready to carry, to pay and to meet our needs. I began to understand why the rich and the royals never carry money. They do not need to.

  Dinner was in a room with a large round table and seated around were our host, Hideo Itokowa, and his friend, Takeshi Kanai. Next to them was a young woman violinist and her husband, and the timber industry’s chairman, Motomasa Shimada, and our young friends, Jiro Hata and Hiroshi Yajima. The meal somehow combined the intimacy of a family occasion with the delights of Asian cuisine. It lasted about two hours, by which time we were ready for bed, and knew that this was going to be the most memorable of visits.

  There was nothing planned next day until 10 am, when there were two newspaper interviews, and they advised us to sleep late and catch up for any lost sleep on the journey. Hideo invited us to join him and a friend in the hotel dining room for lunch. Our young friends took us there, and to our surprise we found that the huge dining room of the New Otani Hotel was deserted. There were a few people standing outside, all men, but the room itself was empty, and it seemed odd. Sandy and I were taken in and seated at a table with room for about ten. Our two escorts moved to another table some distance away. Soon Hideo joined us and said his friend would be arriving shortly. A well-dressed man wearing one of the most attractive ties I have ever seen came in, and sat next to Hideo, and opposite Sandy and me. Hideo introduced his friend to us and told us that he was the Japanese Finance Minister, Tsutomu Hata, later to be Prime Minister of Japan. We were flabbergasted. I tried to imagine a Japanese couple unable to speak English seated in a similar room with the Chancellor of the Exchequer facing them. The smooth, almost casual way that we had been elevated to the highest levels in Japan overwhelmed us. Hideo was nothing if not a talented showman, and his grin as he watched across the table made me wonder what would be coming next. After the presentation of gifts—an inscribed collection of Japanese stamps—we were served lunch and started our meal.

  The main thrust of the conversation with Tsutomu Hata was about the American super-conducting super-collider experiment. This was a colossal science undertaking due in the next few years in Texas. The Finance Minister wanted my opinion on its scientific merit, because Japan might have to pay several billion dollars towards its cost. I have long believed, and have often expressed the opinion that the value of a scientific project is not commensurate with its cost. Perhaps there is an unrecognized law of economics ‘The lower the cost the greater the payoff.’ I came to this view because few of the large steps in science have cost much. Consider Newton, who did his thinking in his spare time, outside his employment as a government advisor. Consider Darwin, who developed his theory while employed as a naturalist on the Beagle. Consider Einstein, working as a clerk at the patent office at Bern and developing his ideas in his spare time. None of these great men needed a hugely expensive experiment. Their brains and a pen and paper to record the steps of their thoughts met, for the most part, their needs. I also remembered Professor CF Powell of Bristol University. His research was also into particle physics, and he received a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the pion. He did not do it by seeking funds for a large atom collider; he did it by sending a pile of photographic plates to the upper air, lifted by some surplus meteorological balloons. Nature provided the source of high-speed particles, the cosmic rays from space. I also thought of my own voyage on the Shackleton: how little that research cost, yet its results still reverberate around the scientific community. So here was I, called to account in a high place to justify my opinion. With these thoughts in mind, I answered Tsutomu Hata’s question by saying that a better use for the billions might be to fund a series of smaller scientific projects, especially those of environmental importance. I have no idea whether this personal counsel carried weight in the decision by Japan to withdraw from that very expensive project. There was already a particle collider at CERN in Switzerland. I wondered whether one of these monuments of big science was not enough.

  When we left Coombe Mill for Japan, Sandy and I did not know about Hideo Itokowa’s standing in Japan. We did know that he had been the Japanese equivalent of our own beloved designer and inventor, Barnes Wallis. Hideo had designed the Zero fighter aircraft used during the Second World War, and after the war he turned his talents to space engineering, to violin design and to founding the Systems Research Institute of Japan. But in England, I can think of no scientist or inventor who could invite the Chancellor of the Exchequer to a private lunch with a visiting foreign scientist. We wondered what was next in store for us. After lunch we all travelled by taxi to the main railway station where Ann, Hideo’s wife, met us with drinks of iced tea. She was an engaging, young middle-aged Japanese woman. Her laughter and the warmth of her welcome told us how much we would enjoy ourselves. Hideo had told us that Ann did not speak English but did understand it, and we communicated with her by speech and body language well enough. Soon we were all on the train to Ueda-shi. This was before they built the high-speed Shinkansen line for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, and the journey was to take several hours. As the train travelled, we realized for the first time what an urban country Japan is. We seemed to pass a never-ending succession of factories, houses, and tiny green plots of rice. Not until we reached the central mountains did we see the natural landscape appear.

  When we left the train there was a sizeable group to meet us, and across the platform hung banners in English and Japanese saying ‘Welcome to Dr James Lovelock’. They were treating us like royalty or sports stars, and then they took us by car to Hideo’s ‘country cottage’. It was a traditional Japanese farmhouse, built of wood and located just outside the small town of Ueda. It was an old building that they had moved from a site elsewhere in Japan. Hideo took us to our room, which had a futon and en suite facilities, and then we were able to look at each other and wonder about this extraordinary day. The furnishing was sparse by western standards: the central room had a sunken area with a large low dining table in its middle. This was the important part of the house and where everything went on, just as in the spacious kitchen of an English farmhouse. We joined the family meal by sitting on the cushions placed on the rim of a rectangular depression in the floor. Hideo explained that in wintertime there would be a fire beneath the table for warmth. In all of our time here, and for the greater part of our two-week stay in Japan, we ate and lived in the Japanese way, and enjoyed it immensely.

  Next day we took a short walk along the country lanes that went from the house to
the hills. As we turned the first corner, there stood before us a huge violin, standing twelve feet high, beside the road. A quarter of a mile further uphill we came to an open-air theatre and concert hall, with its terraced wooden seats, and nearby was an enclosed concert hall, presumably for the cooler times of year. The idea that Japanese country life included a theatre and a concert hall within walking distance was a wonder to us. We walked on past small, about one-acre-sized, fields with whole families working in them. Much of the area seemed to be devoted to fruit growing—apples and the delicious kyoho grapes. It was perhaps the Japanese equivalent of Snape Maltings in East Anglia or Tanglewood in the United States. Having absorbed the influence of the countryside, we returned and prepared for an excursion to an active volcano. Jiro Hata and Hiroshi Yajima accompanied us to the volcano, which on this occasion was quiescent with the water-filled crater no more than a calm lake. Steaming vents and fumaroles exhaling their sulphury smells reminded us of the fire beneath. Hideo’s friends were Takeshi Kanai, a local farmer who was also a software developer and an architect, and Motomasa Shimada, a prominent person in the timber industry and politically active in Nagano. They were a joyful company, making every day as if it were the best of family holidays; visits to exciting places, heavenly treats in Japanese inns and eating-places, and their warm and welcome company. In no place abroad had I ever felt so much at home. Without Sandy, though, I would have been overwhelmed with the kindness and the joy of it. Life as a hermit at Coombe Mill, and the long years of Helen’s decline had not equipped me for the intensity of this welcome. Sandy is at home in any social scene and seems effortlessly to become a part of it. Alone, I would have felt awkward; together, we felt as if we were members of Hideo’s extended family.