Editorial Staff

PWRI Web Magazine Editorial Staff
P.R. Managerial Meeting
<Tsukuba>
General Manager: Dr.Kazunori Wada, Representative managers: Mr. Eiji Aoki, Ms. Harumi Moriki, Mr. Toshio Yarimizo, Mr. Masuo Kondo, Mr. Minoru Kikuchi, Mr. Makoto Kimura, Managers: Mr. Yoshiaki Sato, Mr. Takahiro Yamanashi, Mr. Akira Kamakura, Mr. Yoshinori Nonomura, Ms. Yuko Nagaya, Mr. Yuya Kato, Dr. Mamoru Suwa, Mr. Yuji Okayasu, Mr. Hitoshi Umino, Mr. Koji Ishida, Mr. Nobuharu Isago, Mr. Tomoyuki Noro, Mr. Yasushi Josen
<CERI>
Dr. Atsushi Yoshii, Mr. Wataru Suzuki, Representative managers: Mr. Osamu Hatakeyama, Mr. Masahiro Shibata, Managers: Mr. Hirofumi Kitsuta, Ms. Yuri Sakai, Ms. Maiko Kawanaka



Editor´s Note

Now that we have entered October, we can enjoy very cool and comfortable weather in Tsukuba City. Rice harvesting was mostly finished at the beginning of September and new rice is now being served in nearby restaurants, announcing the arrival of autumn when people have a good appetite. The Tsukuba Marathon will be held at the end of November, and we have often come to see people training at night. Autumn is a good season for sports as well.
I hear that marathons have become popular recently, and people have also been showing an interest in history owing to games set in the Warring States Period and movies on the History of the Three Kingdoms. The Battle of Sekigahara took place on Sep. 15th according to the lunar calendar, which is around Oct. 21st in the solar calendar: about this time of the year. In the Battle of Sekigahara folding screen, people and horses are carrying provisions in rice bales for the Eastern forces, but the depiction for the Western forces includes the threshing of rice reaped from fields. These are respectively depicted near Ogaki Castle and Tokugawa Ieyasu and this man's fan standard is arriving at the headquarters in Akasaka, which suggests that these scenes describe what happened on the day before the Battle. So rice was harvested at the time of the Battle in October. I wonder if this means that the present breeds of rice develop faster because of breed improvement and fertilizers.
In Japanese costume dramas often show tall thoroughbreds, even though they had not yet come into Japan at that time. For "Ran," a masterpiece directed by Akira Kurosawa, I have heard that American Quarter Horses were imported especially for filming but I do not see any clear difference from thoroughbreds with my untrained eye. It would be nice to see costume dramas that faithfully reproduce not only costumes and houses but also horses by using short domestic breeds such as Kiso Horses. Based on the exhumation of his ashes, Date Masamune is said to have been just 159cm tall. Kiso Horses may have been suitable for the sizes of Japanese in those days. According to the population statistics provided by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, the population of Japan in 1600 was 18 million and about 200,000 gathered at Sekigahara, which means 1 in 90 Japanese fought in the Battle of Sekigahara. An army of 15,600 strong led by Kobayakawa Hideaki at the age of just 19 was said to have turned coat and pounced on Otani Yoshitsugu's unit of 600 Western forces. If you are wondering how you would feel if a large army rushed toward you, you might want to go and see the start of the Tsukuba Marathon with 16,500 entries.
Changing the subject from history to civil engineering, full-scale experiments with data faithfully reproduced are conducted at PWRI and their results are reported in detail in papers as well as in the Web Magazine. To engineers and researchers who intend to actually test what has been studied while sitting at a desk, large test facilities located in PWRI's spacious premises are available for lending (However, Japanese companies have priority).

(Yoshiaki Sato)