A Meeting of the Japanese Radiological Society

Abstract

Tokyo, Japan Oct. 16, 1966 Editor, Radiology Dear Sir: At 8 o'clock on Tuesday morning, the 11th of October, I left Tokyo in the company of Dr. Shinpei Nakano, General Manager, Electro-Medical Division, Nippon Electric Company, Ltd., for Matsumoto, an agricultural, regional medical, and tourist (Japanese, not international) center, and a Meeting of the Japanese Radiological Society. In the welcoming committee at Matsumoto were old friends, Dr. Kempo Tsukamoto, Director, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Chiba (suburban Tokyo), Dr. Hisao Yamashita, Professor and Executive, Department of Radiology, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Dr. Shinji Takahashi, Professor and Executive, Department of Radiology, Nagoya University School of Medicine, Nagoya, and Chairman of the Symposium, “Significance of Supervoltage Radiation to Radiotherapy,” and Mr. Shiro Otani, Chief, Linear Accelerator Section, Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. It was Dr. Takahashi who had invited me to be the guest speaker at the Symposium. The auditorium was very modern with comfortable air-conditioning and, due to the genius of the Japanese for things electronic, superb acoustics. About 300 of its 1,000 seats were occupied. Things were going at a mile-a-minute pace with two projectors displaying two images simultaneously and the speaker carrying a tiny radio transmitter so that he was unencumbered by a cable trailing alongside. All the participants of the Symposium were assembled at a long table on one side of the stage, all together and already on the stage so that there would be no time lost in coming and going; all lantern slides were prearranged in magazines and controlled by the speaker so that he could run rapidly forward or, even, backward through them. The Chairman of the Symposium, Dr. Takahashi, and the Vice-Chairman, Dr. Y. Umegaki of the National Cancer Institute, Tokyo, were seated at a table on the opposite side of the stage keeping an alert eye on the clock and giving a red warning flash when the speaker overextended himself. This flash could be seen not only by the speaker but, clearly, by the listeners as well. Things were designed to move at a fast pace, and they did. The Japanese have learned that a fast pace is essential in a competitive world, and in no place is this more evident than in Tokyo, but they seem also not to have forgotten that there are a time and a place for reflection and repose, and I was later introduced to these elements of the Japanese life. The Symposium went like this: 1. A Comparison of Some High Voltage Machines. Dr. Kitabatake (Aichi Cancer Center) and Professor Takahashi (Nagoya) 2. Experiences With the Siemens 18 MeV Betatron. Dr. Sawada (Niigata Cancer Center) 3. A Small-Sized High-Energy Generator. Mr. Toriyama (Shimazu Company, Kyoto) 4. The Advantage of Large Field Irradiation With the Linear Accelerator.