My first encounter with Komei Sasaki was at the late Hiroko Morishima’s laboratory at the National Institute of Genetics, around 1990 or 1991, as I recall. Prof. Komei, as I came to call him, was already a distinguished scholar and remote from my usual circle. That was hardly surprising: he was, after all, old enough to be my father, and our academic specializations were different. But, as it happened, he was trying to assemble scholars from Minpaku and the National Institute of Genetics to launch a special research project titled ‘Tradition and Change in Contemporary Japanese Culture’. Prof. Komei’s and Morishima’s discussions were fruitful, and a research group was created to explore the formation of Japanese culture from many different perspectives, including the Japanese people, language, rice cultivation, animal husbandry, and companion animals.
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