From the Editor: 
Message for the New Year 2015
Editor: Toru Nakagawa (Professor Emeritus, Osaka Gakuin University), Jan. 6, 2015
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Message for the New Year 2015 |
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| Posted on Jan. 8, 2015 |
Message (Toru Nakagawa, Jan. 6, 2015)
Greetings from Japan for a Happy New Year 2015!! Wish the year be healthy, happy, and successful for you all and peaceful in the World.
It is a tradition in Japan to send post cards for celebrating a new year. In the Japanese page of this site I posted my New Year post card, which I sent to my friends whom I met before my TRIZ days (Note: To those I got acquainted in relation to TRIZ, I do not send post cards, because this Home Page is more useful). Here is the card in Japanese:
| Top of this page | Photos | Some thoughts | Activities 2014 | Plan 2015 | Message, Last year 2014  |
Japanese page |
Here is the photo in the post card enlarged. I joined a sightseeing tour to the Adrian Sea with my wife Masako in early June. The sea strait between Korcula Island and the mainland Peninsular (front) is a very popular site for board sailing. Many people were training, sailing back and forth.
During the last year, the whole society in Japan has been led towards unhappy and dangerous directions. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is driving people in this direction with his flowery rhetoric and partial emphasis on complex reality. He claims the 'success' of his economy policy, 'Abenomics', mentioning the rising share values, recovering from deflation, the depreciation of yen (easing export industries), recovery of business, etc. In reality, however, the economical and life conditions of most of the people (namely except for top 10 % or so) in Japan have got worse for these 2 years of Abe's government. The yen's depreciation means that the whole value of proprieties of Japanese people has reduced to two thirds and it causes to raise prices of many goods, directly and indirectly. Some people suspect that the present share values reflect not the reality but the bubbly market speculation. At the end of last November, the GDP growth late for the 3rd quarter (Jul. - Sept.) 2014 was estimated to be positive by the government and by financial establishments, but was found to be negative, by the difference of about 3 %. This was a shocking reality that the government and big company community have been making decisions in their own fictions.
The recent dissolution of the Diet by the prime minister for snap election shows self-righteousness of Abe's political measures. Though he says the general election intends to ask for nation's verdict, he has not conducted serious discussions before in the national parliaments on the important issues about the future policies on nuclear plants and about his cabinet's decision of reinterpreting the Constitution concerning to the self-defence, etc. He chose to call for the election at the stage when his choices are not fully discussed/criticized in the parliaments and hence the people in Japan do not understand well about his and alternative choices. And he won the election. The democracy and political decisions are still poor in Japan, unfortunately. ...
As I wrote last year also, Japan is now facing with big problems in its society. Problems, such as decreasing trends of children population, aging of society, instable employments and widening disparity, issue of energy, and decrease in the food sufficiency ratio, are demanding urgent addressing and solutions by the government and society for keeping people's lives. Concerning to these many big problems in Japan (and in the world as well), we need to identify the tasks and goals to be achieved and to find out general directions to pursue. To such big and complex problems and issues, we should have good Creative Problem Solving methodologies to apply in various places and occasions, I believe.
Being aware of such needs, I attended at many symposia and seminars on different themes, this year too. I have been excited with presentations of new and excellent achievements in science and technology and also unique approaches to social or educational issues, etc.
With such desire in my mind, I am trying to do my own limited work of what I can do, with getting help from friends. Last year 2014, I made the following activities (as I wrote often in this home page), thanks to many people:
(a) I continued to advocate 'General Methodology for Creative Problem Solving and Task Achieving (CrePS)' and presented some papers at conferences.
(b) The top page of "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" has been renewed and four 'Entrance Pages' were introduced (for Children, for Students, for Engineers new to TRIZ, and for Practitioners) for more easy and friendly access to the rich contents of the site.
(c) Starting a sole proprietary 'CrePS Institute' and started the publication of "TRIZ Practices and Benefits" book series. 4 Books are published: i.e., (1A) Darrell Mann' HOSI, (2A) Darrell Mann's "Matrix 2010", (3) Larry Ball's "Hierarchical TRIZ Algorithms", and (4) Umakant Mishra's "TRIZ Principles for IT", in Japanese Editions.
In this year 2015, I would like to work in the following themes and activities:
(1) On the basis of this "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" site, I will keep working towards the main goal of establishing and spreading the 'General methodology of creative problem solving'.
(2) In such a field, I will introduce and post good presentations/papers by Japanese as well as foreign authors, in Japanese and in English pages (hopefully in bidirectional translation) in the home page.
(3) To establish the 'General Methodology of Creative Problem-Solving and Task-achieving' (CrePS) by writing down its details and its case studies, and posting them publicly in Japanese and in English.
(4) In the "TRIZ Practice and Benefits" book series in Japanese, I will publish some more volumes, such as "Lecture Notes on Creative Problem Solving Methods", "Introduction to TRIZ". "Introduction to USIT", etc. (in tentative titles).
(5) To give presentations at international and domestic conferences and to have chances of lectures, trainings, actual applications, etc., as much as possible.
(6) For these activities, I wish to work in cooperation with a number of colleagues and groups.
Please contribute your thoughts, reports, communications, etc. to this public Web site. It should be my great pleasure if the present home page would be of some help for you.
Wishing you your health, success, and happiness throughout the new year,
Sincerely,
Toru Nakagawa, January 5, 2015.
Last updated on Apr. 12, 2015. Access point: Editor: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp
