Sitting in Mie Prefecture, Japan, as a young soldier in World War II, KAWAKITA watched his comrades shipped off to China, some never to return. The trauma of war made the young geographer, who was blessed with a sensitive heart as well as an inquiring mind, determined to devote his considerable skills to the global, rather than the purely national, community, and to the cause of peace by helping underdeveloped societies achieve economic well-being.

JIRO KAWAKITA was born on May 11, 1920, the fourth of six children and second son, of banker Kyudayu Kawakita and his wife Tame Ito. Shortly after his birth in Tsu City, Mie Prefecture, near Kyoto, the family moved to Tokyo, only to be driven back to Kyoto by the devastating Kanto earthquake of 1923. Here his parents saw to it that he received a fine education. At the age of seven he was placed in the Second Branch of Fuzoku Shogakko, the primary school attached to Kyoto Prefectural Teachers' Training College. By the end of his five years there—the school had an accelerated program of five rather than six years—his scientific inclinations had already manifested themselves by an interest in plant collecting.

These interests continued to grow throughout his middle and preparatory school years. In Kyoto Prefecture's First Middle School (Daiichi Chugakko), he joined the mountaineering club, embarking upon a pastime that would eventually take him from the hills around Kyoto to the Himalayas of Nepal. Perhaps his hobbies of mountain climbing and plant collecting—what he refers to as his "natural history" phase—absorbed more time than they should have, for his chemistry grades declined. After a sharp rebuke from his teacher, Takao Konohira, KAWAKITA threw himself into a course of self-study, and emerged first in his class in the next examination. Impressed by this unusual determination, Konohira invited the boy to his house for special studies. Thus KAWAKITA's interest shifted from natural history to the analytical and systematic sciences.

Gradually, however, he was attracted by the philosophical principles behind chemistry, and at the age of 16 or 17 he began to read the works of well-known philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel. In particular, he was attracted by the thinking of the Frenchman Henri Louis Bergson and the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida, both of whom emphasized the importance of direct perception and human inspiration rather than of strict logic. Under the influence of these writers KAWAKITA's interests shifted away from analytical science toward a broader, more complicated view of scientific thinking, one which encompassed the chaos or specificity of real life—the recognition that people, places and conditions do not lend themselves to neat generalizations.

During his years at the National Third Higher School (Daisan Koto Gakko) in Kyoto, which he attended from 1937 to 1941, KAWAKITA found ample opportunity to pursue his new interests. He focused on geography, a science he found more "complicated" in scope than chemistry. During the summer of 1938 he went with a friend to do geographical research in the Bonin and Volcano islands of the western Pacific. Two summers later he joined a similar expedition to study geography and plant ecology in eastern Manchuria. His high school studies, however, took him one year longer to complete than was normal, due, he says, to his "idleness."

The summer expeditions continued while he was enrolled (1941-1943) in the Geography Department of the Faculty of Letters at Kyoto Imperial University. Led by animal ecologist and mountaineer, Kinji Imanishi, KAWAKITA and a group of fellow students conducted ecological research in the Marianas, Marshall and Caroline islands in the summer of 1941, followed by work in the northern Great Khingang Range of Manchuria the next summer. At this time KAWAKITA was interested in the writings of American geographer Isaiah Bowman, particularly his book entitled The Pioneer Fringe and The New World. As a result of his own experiences on the "pioneer fringes" of Asia, KAWAKITA gradually expanded his field to include cultural anthropology. On the basis of his research during the Manchurian expedition, he wrote his university thesis on "Land Reclamation of the Northeast Asian Countries."

The war shortened his university course to two and a half years. Upon graduation he was hired as a geographical surveyor by the Showa Trading Company, Tokyo, but in February 1944, a scant three or four months after joining the company, he was conscripted as an infantryman into the Japanese Army. (His university education entitled him to apply for admission as an officer, but he had fallen sick on the day of the qualifying examination.) By the end of the war he had risen to the rank of sergeant, but he never saw action for by the time he entered the military the seas around Japan were infested with American submarines and his unit was unable to join the rest of his regiment in South China. It was during this time, however, that he promised himself that if he lived through the war he would contribute whatever he could to the promotion of international peace.

As soon as the war was over, KAWAKITA wrote to a well-known geneticist, Hitoshi Kihara, asking him if he could become a member of the Kihara Institute for Biological Research. He was accepted as a parttime researcher and was sent to supervise the institute's farm in Tottori Prefecture at the foot of Mt. Daisan. Although he spent only 10 months with the institute his interest in agricultural management increased, and he undertook to study the remote villages in the mountains of central Japan. As he learned more about land productivity and the population capacity of the land under various conditions, he began to develop further ideas he had first espoused at the university. His goals now, however, were directed toward the broader cause of world peace. "I wanted to know the population capacity of the habitable world," he says, "because population pressure is sometimes the cause of international strife. "

The system he developed, and which was published in its final form in 1949, was based on the calculation of annual calorie production for any given agricultural field His system eliminates the problem of what particular crop is grown on a field; it doesn't matter, for instance, whether the staple is rice, wheat or corn. As a result, he says, "I can compare the various degrees of productivity anywhere in the world, not only in Japan." Having calculated the average productivity of a particular piece of land, he can then calculate its population capacity.

In December 1946 KAWAKITA had joined the faculty of Tokai University in Shimizu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, as teacher of geography in the junior course. Three years later, when the faculty became embroiled in internal squabbling due to the machinations of "one particularly malignant teacher," KAWAKITA became so annoyed at the mismanagement of the problem that he challenged the administration and resigned from the institution.

For a few months he taught as part-time lecturer in Kansai University, Suita City, Osaka Prefecture, before joining the faculty in January 1950 of the Institute of Geography of Osaka City University.

In 1951, when he was promoted from lecturer to associate professor, he was finally able to marry the girl he had met a few years earlier while teaching at Tokai, Kimiko Nakata, daughter of a company president who had received her schooling at Jissen Girls' Higher School (now Jissen Women's University) in Tokyo. In 1952 Kimiko gave birth to the couple's only child, a son named Yashio. A blood incompatibility caused their second child to die in infancy and prevented them from having more children.

The year 1953 was to change KAWAKITA's life. In that year the Japan Alpine Club sent a major expedition to Nepal to climb the unscaled 8,156 meter high Mt. Manaslu. Attached to this party was a two-man scientific research team that included KAWAKITA. While the climbers scaled the peak, KAWAKITA studied (March-August) the region's plant ecology and ethnogeography. He collected butterflies for a colleague and fell in love with the people of the mountains. He produced three research papers from this expedition—"Vegetation,""Crop Zone" and "Ethnogeographical Observations on the Nepal Himalaya"—all of which appeared in the three volume report, Scientific Results of the Japanese Expedition to Nepal Himalaya 1952-1953.

Five years later KAWAKITA himself organized a second, purely scientific, expedition to Nepal composed of academics from a number of different institutions. It was sponsored by the Japanese Society of Ethnology and the Fauna and Flora Research Society of Kyoto University, and financed, for the most part, by Japanese corporations.

After climbing Mukut Himal, the team conducted ethnogeographic, agricultural and botanical research in the Dolpo district north of the Dhaulagiri mountains. During this trip KAWAKITA's "affection for the remote areas of that country became deeper," and he determined that in the future he would carry out some small-scale technological project "for this beloved land," despite the risks to an academician of spending his time on, and engaging in, the practical application of his ideas.

In April 1960 KAWAKITA was appointed associate professor in the Department of Polytechnics, Tokyo Institute of Technology and two years later he was promoted to full professor. In July 1963 he led an expedition, sponsored again by the Japanese Society of Ethnology, to study the culture of rice-cultivating peoples in Southeast Asia, and was finally able to lay the foundation for technological cooperation with the mountain people of Nepal. The team conducted ethnogeographical research on the Mundas in Bihar, India and on a group of villages in the Dhaulagiri zone of Nepal, particularly in an area KAWAKITA named the Sikha Valley (it had no local name), after one of its villages.

The Sikha Valley lies on the southwest side of Mt. Annapurna 1, one of Nepal's highest peaks. Of the five villages clinging to the valley's slopes, four are inhabited predominantly by Magars and are situated between 1,800 and 2,200 meters above sea level, near the upper limits of cultivation. Culturally they lie between the lowland areas of Hindu civilization and the highland areas of Tibetan-civilization. They have what KAWAKITA terms a "two-layered culture," holding to various tribal religions, yet at the same time adopting elements from Hinduism or Tibetan Buddhism. In both Hindu and Tibetan cultures societal units consist of a group of villages; in the intermediate zone of the two-layered culture each village is self-contained and thus offered KAWAKITA small, discrete societies with which to work.

The villagers of the Sikha Valley cultivate primarily wheat, barley, corn and millet on small terraces carved out of the mountain, and pasture their water buffalo, cows, sheep and goats in the jangal (forests) and alpine grasslands above. Among other things the animals provide manure which is essential to the fertility of the upland fields.

KAWAKITA's research in 1963 suggested that the Sikha Valley "was experiencing an ecological disaster of major proportions." Unprecedented population growth over the past century (over 500 percent in Sikha Village, from 60 to 325 households) had caused the people to cut down the forests for new crop and pasture land, thus setting in motion a vicious cycle. [Deforestation caused landslides and soil erosion and the productivity of the land in use deteriorated, creating the need for more land-clearing, which in turn caused further deterioration. The decrease in income resulting from degradation of the land forced many people to emigrate to the cities. Emigration meant fewer hands to take the cattle to the ever higher summer pastures, which led to fewer animals, less manure to fertilize the fields and therefore a further decrease in productivity.

One of the problems was the difficulty of transporting materials down the mountainsides. Since forage, for example, was no longer within easy reach, fewer animals could be maintained through the winter; by the same token, the closest forest areas were overcut for both forage and firewood. The depletion of vegetation also caused the drying up of some nearby water sources, and the deterioration of the water supply meant not only a lower crop yield and resultant lower income, but increased health problems and a general decrease in the quality of personal and community life.

KAWAKITA therefore sought solutions to these problems through a method of research, soon to be known throughout Japan as the KJ (KAWAKITA, JIRO) Method, that assimilated and sorted out enormous quantities of purely qualitative data. He had begun to develop this methodology as early as 1951 when the standard anthropological field techniques proved inadequate. He had found that analytical studies of the environment, population, kinship, village organization and religious belief were of secondary importance to a study of their interrelationship. In the same way statistical analyses that dealt with the simple ratio between population and natural resources, or the balance sheet between income and expenses, told little that he wanted to know. These so-called scientific methods, says KAWAKITA, "neglect the holistic integration of qualitative data," the study of the total ecology. At the same time they attempt to fit facts into predetermined, generalized categories, failing to recognize what KAWAKITA considers of primary importance—that each area and its problems are idiosyncratic and must be treated as such.

The problem KAWAKITA had to solve was how to draw conclusions from the chaotic input of a myriad of facts from both objective and subjective sources. His fundamental premise as he set about this task was to "let the facts speak for themselves," rather than impose any preconceived ideas or hypotheses upon them. Thus he started by writing down in sentence form each item of data on an individual label. Then he grouped the labels by relationships he perceived among them. Each group was given a title, usually a short sentence exactly describing the perceived relationship. More relationships were then found among the groupings themselves, until the entire body of facts was reduced to a manageable number of headings. From later experience, KAWAKITA concluded that this number would have to be 10 or less for the overall view to be easily understood and a consensus reached.

From his research KAWAKITA realized that many of the villagers' basic needs could be met with two innovations that would be within the scope of a small technological cooperation project. These were ropelines to facilitate the transportation of fodder, firewood and manure down the mountainside, and pipelines to bring clean water to the villages. The people of the valley knew how to dig waterways into the side of the mountain, but such channels, by cutting into the soft layers of schist, caused mudslides that quickly destroyed them; pipelines, however, could be laid above the ground and would preserve the fragile geological structure and reduce the incidence of slides. The valley enjoys a moderate climate so freezing posed no problem.

Although KAWAKITA was confident that these two innovations were the solution to the key problems of the villagers, he recognized the necessity of testing whether the villagers perceived the priority of the problems as he did, and if so, if they perceived the pipeline and the ropeline as the most suitable solutions and would participate in their installation. Rather than resort to the classic sociologist's method of carefully prepared questionnaires, he preferred to chat by the fireside night after night with the people, mixing suggestions with gossip and not using any persuasion. This process he calls the Key Problem Approach. Because it included a high degree of villager input at all levels, it proved to be extremely effective in gaining a consensus among the villagers regarding solutions. This in turn promoted a high degree of motivation among them, which KAWAKITA felt was the vital "driving force for the achievement of the project."

KAWAKITA understood from the beginning that the KJ Method and the Key Problem Approach had far wider application than the Sikha Valley Project. His instinct was borne out by the immediate popularity of the booklet he published in 1964 called Patigaku (Partyship), which applied the KJ Method to business principles such as leadership and partnership. The many requests he received to teach the method led to its further refinement and eventually to the publication of a new book in 1967, Hasso-ho (A Method of Idea Generation), which included a training course in the KJ Method. From middle level businessmen, interest in the course spread to other levels of the business sector and soon gained popularity among university students and researchers.

On his return to Japan in 1964 KAWAKITA and his students attended to the practical aspects of the proposed Sikha Valley Project. After some study the group settled on polyvinyl chloride as the best material for the pipeline. They realized that, although ropeline technology was not difficult, a special type of wire rope would have to be developed to suit the specific conditions of the Sikha Valley. The rope must be light in weight as it had to be carried up the mountains by foot. It must also have very high tensile strength since the geography of the valley would require each span to be quite long. Finally, because the people of the valley were poor and could not afford frequent replacements, the ropeline had to be very durable. To create such a rope, KAWAKITA turned to the research department of the Shinko Kosen Company, a subsidiary of Kobe Steel, which produced a 6-millimeter wire rope fitting the specifications.

KAWAKITA also had a philosophic reason for demanding an "advanced technology" ropeline—something not yet demanded by the developed world. He firmly believes that unless underdeveloped communities are given advanced technologies to solve traditional problems, they will always be at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the advanced communities, even within their own country. They need new and interlocking technologies (i.e. the ropeline and the pipeline together) to build upon in order to save the best of their traditional environment and at the same time give their people the quality of life they seek.

Funding proved to be a more difficult problem than technological research. Although his project proposal was well received on the personal level by both the Nepalese and Japanese governments, "the bureaucratic obstacles involved in going through official channels proved too numerous," and he was forced to abandon this approach. By 1968 he had decided instead to seek financing from a number of private sources.

Having made this decision, however, the project was unavoidably shelved due to a wave of student unrest that washed over the Japanese universities. By 1969 the wave had hit the Tokyo Institute of Technology, causing great turmoil among both students and faculty. KAWAKITA himself felt the students were wrong in the way they proceeded and he "couldn't accept their way of thinking," but he disagreed strongly with the way the university managed the situation, and in 1970 tendered his resignation.

Protest, for a man like JIRO KAWAKITA, cannot remain negative for long. Having rejected the methods of one form of education, he immediately took up the challenge of finding an alternative means. He called his experiment Ido Daigaku, or Mobile University—and that is literally what it was. A total of 17 or 18 two-week courses were held in various parts of the Japanese islands, from Hokkaido to Okinawa. KAWAKITA decided the optimum number of students was 108; they could thus be divided evenly into three units made up of six teams, each of which consisted of six members. The students paid from 60,000-100,000 yen (about US$200-300) per two-week session, depending on costs; except in winter, they camped out in tents. The theme of each session would be chosen to suit the site. In Shiga Prefecture, for example, KAWAKITA asked the students to study how to make the wisest use of Lake Biwa. Under this general direction each team selected a particular sub-theme on which to concentrate.

In 1972 KAWAKITA tried to formalize his new system of education by forming an association called Sankaku Kyokai, or Participation Society. Unfortunately, the effort failed. Some of the men who joined the association as directors did so with the intention of obtaining the legal rights to the KJ Method for their company. KAWAKITA refused to surrender control of his method and the society was unable to attain legal status and was forced to disband.

Undaunted, KAWAKITA concentrated on his own institute in Tokyo, the Kawakita Research Institute, founded by him in 1970 for the purpose of disseminating the KJ Method. The institute consisted, as it still does, of three or four full-time staff who handled the practical arrangements. The courses were taught by a number of part-time instructors. Surrounding this core were several hundred members of the KJ Method Association, who were graduates and practitioners of the method and could be called upon to supply special training. The association also holds an annual academic assembly to exchange information on the research of its members. During the 14 years of its existence the institute, KAWAKITA estimates, has trained at least 10,000 individuals, of whom 2,000 to 3,000 have received more intensive special training. Special training is custom-tailored to requests, whether from private corporations or government organizations.

Throughout this period of turmoil and transition KAWAKITA did not lose sight of the proposed Sikha Valley Project. Realizing that any new technology should be tested on a limited scale first, he persuaded four members of the Tokyo Institute of Technology Alpine Club to work in the valley in 1970 after they had completed a climbing expedition. They constructed 1,000 meters of pipeline and 500 meters of ropeway.

The results, although mixed, provided valuable information for the full-scale project. The ropeway, constructed as a two-way system, was too short for the valley's needs, and the villagers only required a downhill line. (The fuel and fodder carriers were so light when empty that the supply for one ropeway could be carried uphill by a single person.) The pipeline, on the other hand, was so successful that when KAWAKITA went to the valley four years later to inaugurate the main project, he found that the Nepalese government, in cooperation with UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund), had already adopted the idea and had begun to build pipelines in a number of mountain villages to assure them a safe water supply.

In the meantime a second reconnaissance party reaffirmed the willingness of the villagers to push ahead with the project. KAWAKITA formally organized a private, non-profit volunteer organization called ATCHA (Association for Technical Cooperation to the Himalayan Areas), whose acronym means "fine" or "all right" in Hindi. Its purpose is to discover the main needs, and the optimum technology for meeting them, of villages in underdeveloped rural areas, especially those in mountainous terrain.

ATCHA seeks to achieve its goals through a combined program of research and technological adaptation, with the participation at all stages of the project by those who would benefit. KAWAKITA is also concerned with developing a spirit of volunteerism in Japan. He believes that small-scale volunteer projects can better serve the people of an underdeveloped area, than the bureaucratically designed projects of government and corporate business that create major dams and road systems, but do little if anything to ensure that the quality of life of the people they are meant to serve is enhanced.

The board of ATCHA is composed of notable Japanese intellectuals and headed by KAWAKITA. The first Sikha Valley Project was funded by foundations such as the NHK Broadcasting Culture Foundation, the Toyota Foundation, and the National Institute for Research Advancement, a semi-governmental organization.

Finally in the autumn of 1974 a long cavalcade, headed by KAWAKITA on horseback, wended its way for four days from the airstrip of Pokhara into the deep Himalayas. With him was a team of some 10 backpacking Japanese engineers, followed by a long string of Magars, each laden with a coil of specifically designed rope or a section of PVC pipe. The party also included Hideaki Miyazawa, the Japanese inventor of the modern hydraulic ram. The hydraulic ram is traceable to the 19th century water hammer that uses the force of the water flow itself to pump a running stream from a lower site to a higher elevation. By mixing air bubbles with the water, Miyazawa was able to develop a pump that could lift water from 120 up to a maximum of 200 meters, using only the natural pressure of water dropping 30 meters (vertically four meters). ATCHA had decided to test this technology in the

Sikha Valley along with the ropelines and pipelines.

This time the ropeline was designed for downhill use only and consisted of spans of more than 1,000 meters each. "The villagers welcomed this kind of ropeline with great enthusiasm," reported KAWAKITA, "which was proof enough that it met their true needs." By the end of May 1975 the group had installed nine kilometers of ropeline, four kilometers of pipeline and two hydraulic rams—or "natural force pumps" as KAWAKITA calls them—for five villages.

A follow-up study in 1977 revealed some technical difficulties occurring in some of the pipeline systems—particularly with regard to the water tanks into which the pipes emptied and the hydraulic rams. The pressure of the water in the ram was so strong that its constant surge broke the major valve. (In 1979, at the request of the Nepalese government, a hydraulic ram demonstration project was set up in a village near Kathmandu, but it too ran into similar difficulties and Nepalese engineers in Kathmandu could not always repair the valve.) There was also pollution of some of the springs because of increased livestock grazing nearby.

KAWAKITA attributes the troubles with the water project, not to careless management by the villagers, but to the careless mistakes of the installation team and poor quality-control by one manufacturer. Moreover, the members of the water project team were not experts in pipeline or natural force pump technology, whereas the ropeline team included a few experts.

The team also investigated the accusation that, with increased accessibility to the forests via ropeline, overcutting would be greatly accelerated. It found, KAWAKITA reported, "no evidence that the ropelines had or would accelerate the destruction of forests, both in the view of the villagers as well as in that of the team." In fact the villagers saw the ropeline as a way to protect the jangals, which they had always had an almost religious attitude toward, recognizing them as a source of great benefits; they had abused them only out of economic necessity. The ropeline, by cutting down tremendously on the time involved in transport, enabled the villagers to range further afield and cut more selectively. They had even found time for some minor reforestation. "The most important cause of the degradation of the forest was not overcutting, but overgrazing," the report stated, a condition not influenced by the ropeline.

Despite the problems, KAWAKITA feels that the impact of the project has been good and its influence has spread beyond the confines of the villages concerned. The most remarkable aspect is a new spirit of self-reliance, fostered, he believes, by the "personal participation" method his group used in developing and implementing the program. Infected by the success of the Sikha Valley experiment a large number of villages in the western hills of Nepal seem to have been encouraged to improve their own communities.

In March 1978 KAWAKITA was invited to join the faculty of Tsukuba University, located just north of Tokyo. Within the Tsukuba area are concentrated the major research and development institutions of Japan. KAWAKITA was appointed Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the Institute of History and Anthropology, and Professor of Cultural Ecology in the Graduate School of Environmental Science. In order to join Tsukuba, a national government institution, he had to resign as head of the Kawakita Research Institute; his wife became director in his place.

That same year KAWAKITA received two awards for his work in the Himalayas. The first, conferred in March, was the Prince Chichibu Memorial Academic Prize, given by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for the research behind his English language book, The Hill Magars and Their Neighbours. The second, the Gorkha Dhaksin Bahu Third Class Decoration, was awarded in September by the King of Nepal for his research and projects in Nepal, and for his role in developing cultural intercourse between Japan and Nepal. Earlier, in 1976, KAWAKITA was given an honorary degree of Doctor of Science in Geography by Tokyo Metropolitan University.

In April 1979 the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the major organization devoted to overseas development, sent KAWAKITA to a number of Latin American countries—Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil—to visit Japanese colonies and settlements and investigate the relationship between emigration and environment. In August, under KAWAKITA's direction, ATCHA began a series of studies in the Akka hill villages of Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan. The group compared the cultural ecology of the Akka area with that of the Himalayan. Using the same principle of village participation as used in the latter, ATCHA developed successful projects introducing appropriate technology in 13 mountain villages.

One of the devices that proved successful in the Akka region was tested in Nepal in 1982 and 1983 when ATCHA was invited to return to extend the ropeline system. The ropeline team was led by Toshio Chino and another team, under the leadership of Koichi Ogawa, took with it a boat designed to cross powerful mountain torrents, utilizing the force of the stream's current alone.

The need for such a ferry had become evident to the villagers as well as to ATCHA. In the old days, when each community was self-sufficient, crossing the rivers was not essential to the people's livelihood, as it is in today's exchange economy. In 1952 the Swiss Association for Technical Assistance and the Nepalese government had begun constructing hanging bridges across river chasms, but in recent years construction costs had skyrocketed. A different technology was called for.

KAWAKITA had asked the Tokyo Institute of Technology Department of Control Engineering headed by Prof. Masahiro Mori to design a suitable stream-powered ferryboat for Nepal. The institute had produced a simple, lightweight craft with a rope anchored to one shore, and attached in a Y configuration to the sides of the boat. Thus the boatman could manipulate the angle of the rope so that the current would push the boat from one shore to the other. The model taken to Nepal to demonstrate the principle of operation was an air-filled rubber dinghy. If requested by the Nepalese government ATCHA is prepared to provide a lightweight but sturdy fiber-reinforced plastic that can be used for on-the-spot construction of boats according to the size required for a particular location. The boat building technique, KAWAKITA feels, is simple enough for the local people to learn.

Always ready for the future, KAWAKITA has also asked the Institute to construct a boat that can travel upstream against powerful mountain currents, using those currents for power. The system under study utilizes a one-to-three kilometer length of rope that follows the course of the stream, and a paddle wheel against which the water pushes to move the boat upstream. The adoption of such boats would enable the mountain people to use otherwise impassable rivers for transportation.

In recent years the disastrous ecological situation of the Nepal Himalayas has received extensive international attention, with the result that the United Nations established a new organization in Nepal for the protection and development of the whole Himalayan area. This organization, called the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, requested KAWAKITA to organize interested Japanese scientists as a support group. The result is the Japan Scientific Cooperation Center for the Mountain Area, founded by KAWAKITA in October 1983. Its members are specialists in a wide variety of fields, and all of them have had experience in the Himalayas. KAWAKITA expects productive results from this organization because it has opened lines of communication within the Japanese scientific community.

Other organizations of which KAWAKITA is an influential member include the Japan Creativity Society, founded in 1979 and composed of Japanese academics interested in research and development of creativity through such processes as the KJ Method; and the Japan Association for Future Research, created in the 1960s in response to an international movement concerned with the study of future society and culture. His other interests are reflected by his continued membership in the Society of Japanese Geographers and the Japan Alpine Club, and by his presidency of the Japan-Nepal Society which he founded on his return from Nepal in 1964. KAWAKITA has published extensively, with some 58 major scientific articles and books to his credit since 1949. The subjects have ranged from anthropological and ecological studies and the KJ Method of analysis, to alternative technology and international cooperation. He has lectured on the KJ Method in Singapore at the invitation of that government and has traveled in the United States under U.S. State Department auspices. In March 1984, as he approached the age of 64, KAWAKITA retired from Tsukuba University. His main task now, he feels, is to promote the use of the KJ Method, and this can best be accomplished from Kyoto, rather than in Tokyo. With this end in mind he expects to join the faculty of Chubu University (near Nagoya), and he and his wife will spend part of their time at their home in Tokyo and part in their second residence in Kyoto.

Slim and erect, JIRO KAWAKITA carries himself with immense dignity, whether clad in pullover and parka on horseback in the Himalayas or wearing the impeccably tailored suit of a Japanese businessman. His mien reflects his life's work of creating harmony from chaos, for beneath the precision of an immaculate appearance lurks a twinkle in the eye, a ready laugh—and a powerfully innovative mind constantly on the lookout for new challenges and new solutions.

September 1984
Manila

REFERENCES:

Kawakita, Jiro. Cultural Ecology of Nepal Himalaya. Tokyo: ATCHA (Association for Technical Cooperation to the Himalayan Areas). February, 1984.

______. The Original KJ Method. Tokyo: KJ Method Headquarters, Kawakita Research Institute. 1982.

______. A Proposal for the Revitalization of Rural Areas, Based on Ecology and Participation. Tokyo: ATCHA. February, 1984.

______. "Technical Assistance in the Himalayas," The Wheel Extended (Toyota Quarterly Review). Tokyo: Toyota Motor Sales Co., Ltd. Special Issue: Summer 1975.

______. "Technology with Environmental Conservation: The Sikha Valley Experience." Presentation to Group Discussion, Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Manila. September 1, 1984. (Typewritten transcript.)

______. Unpublished manuscript of a speech intended for Group Discussion, Ramon

Magsaysay Award Foundation, Manila. September 1,1984.

Mori, M., J. Kawakita and K. Ogawa. Natural Force Propulsion Boats. Tokyo: ATCHA. May, 1984.