Asahi Shimbun Morning Edition – March 20, 1999 A man in his forties, suffering from both mental illness and glaucoma, and who lost his hearing in an accident, persevered through rehabilitation and returned to society for the first time in twenty years. I was deeply moved when his elderly mother said with emotion, “He really did his best.” Of course, it wasn’t just the patient and his family who were encouraged by his story. The classic film The Miracle Worker  (1962, USA), wh

Asahi Shimbun Morning Edition, March 27, 1999 A woman, unable to withstand the stress of relentless letters and phone calls, being followed everywhere she went, silent calls, and constant, excessive proximity, fled the country fearing for her life. After finding a good partner and returning to Japan, she was confronted by the man with the question, “Why did you marry someone you didn’t even love?” This reignited her fear, and she began seeing a psychiatrist. “Stalk” means “to

Asahi Shimbun Morning Edition, April 10, 1999 “Why did you give birth to me?” a thirty-year-old male patient furiously confronted his mother. It was a form of dependency, blaming his miserable, unfulfilled life on his parents. The mother-child relationship is a constant source of stress until the child truly becomes independent. What’s more, the child has no way of knowing for certain whether the woman who gave birth to them is truly their biological mother. There is a film t

Asahi Shimbun Morning Edition – April 17, 1999 A certain university professor was extremely cautious when it came to fire prevention and locking doors—so much so that no one could surpass him. One day, in the middle of a lecture, he suddenly became anxious about whether he had locked his house. He rushed home to check, confirmed that the front door was indeed closed, and returned—only to find that his lecture had long since ended. His extreme caution stemmed from childhood tr

Asahi Shimbun Morning Edition, May 1, 1999 Air travel has a low accident rate, but when an accident does occur, the fatality rate is high. Even veteran crew members sometimes breathe a sigh of relief the moment the wheels touch the ground, especially after a turbulent landing. A salesman in his thirties was scheduled to fly to Kyushu for a business trip but canceled at the last minute, earning a severe reprimand from his boss. Three months earlier, while on a business flight,

Asahi Shimbun Morning Edition, May 8, 1999 It might be easier to replace a person with a clone that has no cancer cells than to treat cancer using gene therapy. The development of biotechnology, which brought forth Dolly the sheep—an identical physical copy of its original—carries with it a terrifying implication. The 1978 film The Boys from Brazil  depicted an evil doctor, played by Gregory Peck, who went into hiding in South America with the goal of resurrecting the Nazi re