08every day about politics and social issues, as well as different ways of solving this and that mathe-matical problem. It was quite an intellectually stimulating environment. And what about you, Dr. Ochi? Why did you choose Hiroshima Universityʼs Faculty of Medicine?Ochi: I also loved math in high school, while my weak subject was social sciences. During my last year of high school, I changed the subjects in which Iʼd take the university entrance exam three times. My homeroom teacher gave me an earful, saying that I was not serious about getting into university. He then recommended to me the Faculty of Medicine at Hiroshima University, which didnʼt have social sciences among its exam subjects. Reading novels such as ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ and ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ by the physi-cian-cum-novelist Morio Kita, who went to Tohoku Universityʼs School of Medicine from Matsumoto Higher School, I got the impression that life as a physician could be interesting. I also took the exam for the Faculty of Political Science and Economics at Waseda, for which it was possible to take mathe-matics instead of social sciences, because I wanted to do physically active work and a newspaper reporterʼs career appealed to me. It was not that I absolutely wanted to get into medical school, for my mother had forbidden me to spend an extra year preparing for the entrance exam because she knew that I would never study then.Ochi: Among the primates, your research focuses on gorillas, not chimpanzees or orangutans. Why?Yamagiwa: When you think about Japanese society, you canʼt ignore family as a social unit. Chimpanzees and orangutans donʼt live in families. Only gorillas live in family-like units. Dr. Kinji Imanishi, one of the founders of Japanese primatology, intended to search for the origin of family when he went to Africa in 1958. However, wars for independence erupted in Africa in 1960. His research was interrupted as Congo and other habitats of gorillas were turned into battlefields. I had the daring idea of going there and finding a breakthrough. I did fieldwork in Congo, but internal disturbances continued. I actually went through quite dangerous situations as well.Ochi: What was the most dangerous experience you had?Yamagiwa: I was surrounded by boy soldiers, with a gun pointed at me. I was also attacked by gorillas. To get into a group of gorillas, you have to spend several years, patiently showing up and following the group every day to let the gorillas know that youʼre not dangerous. The gorillas flee at first. If you chase them persistently, then you could get attacked. I was once surrounded by female gorillas who were feeling hostile toward me. I got bitten on the head, with my leg almost bitten off.Ochi: Werenʼt you afraid that you might get killed when you were attacked?Yamagiwa: My injuries required 17 stitches on my leg and five stitches on my head. Reflecting on the incident, I later figured that they could have cut the carotid artery or torn open my abdomen if they intended to kill me. Why did they attack me on the head and the leg? These parts of the body that were bitten were fatty areas in the gorilla body. But, being a human, I didnʼt have much fat there, I only got injured. I understood that the female gorillas wanted to punish me without the serious intention of killing me.Ochi: Nevertheless, it must have been a frighten-ing experience.Yamagiwa: Based on my research on mountain gorillas, I had initially assumed that once I had the male gorilla of the group under control, the female gorillas hiding in his shadow would never attack me. But those gorillas were western lowland gorillas, a subspecies different from mountain gorillas. Western lowland females would attack perceived enemies, ignoring their males. I was totally wrong to assume that all goril-las were the same. The experience drove home to me that they had different cultures and behavioral patterns in different regions.Ochi: You have said, “culture is what is not included in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).” In Japan, there are diverse regional cul-tures rooted in their respective societies and their history. Inevitably, I feel a sense of crisis when I feel that this diversity is in danger of homogenization. It would be too late to react once regional cultures were lost for good. I believe that we must take action at the earliest time possible to protect them.Yamagiwa: Todayʼs young people donʼt have the opportunity to learn about regional cultures within Japan. They develop their decision-making criteria and methods mostly based on information available on the internet. This phenomenon can be termed “denationalization of culture.”Ochi: Do you mean that Japanese peopleʼs iden-tity has essentially developed on the foundation of regional culture?Yamagiwa: Yes. To put it simply, Japanese identity is an amalgam of some 300 identities originating from those 300 han (feudal domains) that existed at the end of the Edo period. They each have their traditional and customary knowledge that gives rise to different ways of thinking. When two different cultures meet, they give birth to something new. These differences are the source of innovation. When everything is identical, nothing new can be created. We in Japan should make the most of this advantage of diverse regional cultures.Ochi: Itʼs the same in Italy, where I studied before. Northern and southern parts of Italy are complete-ly different, and encounters between those differ-ent regional cultures produce new cultures and ideas. Now, returning to the subject of university, if all Japanese universities become carbon copies of the University of Tokyo or Kyoto University, no innovation can occur in a global manner that encompasses universities in the provinces. I think itʼs necessary that totally different types of univer-sities maintain their originalities while moving for-ward in tandem with other universities. We should build a new mechanism for creative collaboration that replaces simple competition. Yamagiwa: Thatʼs true on an international scale as well. Instead of competing against each other in terms of rankings, universities need to form alliances with one another within and beyond the national borders, just as Hiroshima University is doing with the Arizona State University (ASU) of the United States. Joint-degree and double-de-gree programs are good examples. I think that scholarship and education must be transnational to build the foundation for ushering in a new era.Ochi: We have invited ASU to open its Japanese school on a Hiroshima University campus. In our joint program, students spend two years at HU and the other two years at ASU in the United States. I hope that, by making use of this environ-ment, HU students will have more opportunities to experience different cultures.Finally, what do you think students should learn while in university?Yamagiwa: I consider university as a place of dia-logue where teachers and researchers share their future visions that may be dormant in their minds with students so that all can help each other in developing ideas. While at Kyoto University, I con-sistently promoted dialogue-based autonomous learning and a liberal university culture. Dialogue is a two-way communication and not a debate in which you can either defeat or be defeated by your opponent. To engage in a dialogue, you must have a broad culture.Ochi: At HU, we inaugurated the Special Lecture Series, “Liberal Arts Education for Spreading Your Wings around the World” in the academic year 2017 in the hope that lectures would further motivate students to enjoy learning and take up many challenges. Their target audience are newly admitted students, and as lecturers we have had prominent personalities who are active in their re-spective fields, including you. The ultimate objec-tive of this program is to get students to acquire, at the outset of their university life, the attitude of pursuing liberal arts throughout their lives. Thank you very much for this enjoyable talk today.After the lecture, President Ochi presented Dr. Yam-agiwa with a certificate conferring the title of “Special Invited Professor.”Understanding gorillaculture after attacksRegional culture asa source of innovationLiberal arts are all the more important today
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