‘GO PLACIDLY AMONG THE NOISE AND HASTE…’

‘…and remember what peace there may be in silence.’

This quote from an old text of dubious origin that I had found in an American magazine accurately descnbes my state of mind at the start of the New Year and for most of the months that followed. No doubt it was the long-term effect of living and working under the delineating rules and conditions of my host country that had slowly eroded my natural spontaneity, replacing it with an accommodating mentality that had learned to savour the introspective pleasures of life while going about fulfilling, along with the millions of diligent Japanese company men around me, the duties and obligations inherent in my place in society. None of the momentous events that were to mark this year would succeed in disturbing the strange calm that enveloped me.

The first part of the year was uneventful enough. I did a two- part radio program on Holland for the late-evening NHK program Shumi-no-techo, a major challenge to my limited command of Japanese. There was also a visit from David M. Kennedy, the former head of my Chicago bank, now a Special Ambassador in charge of the sensitive textile negotiations with Japan. This patrician gentleman had just stepped down as President Nixon's first Treasury Secretary after only two years in the job. His unexpected visit to me was purely sentimental – he still regarded me, I suppose, as one of his boys.

But May brought the disturbing news of the arrest of 12,000 antiwar demonstrators in Washington DC. Though most were soon released, the sheer size of the march exposed the widening rift in American society caused by the Vietnam War. It should have worried me, but in Tokyo I was gazing instead in wonder at the wide-leaf blue irises planted in a temporary rock garden laid out in the middle of the giant U-shaped conference table in the Takanawa Prince Hotel, where I attended an international business conference. On the opening day of the five-day event the irises were in bud. They opened gradually, and after a few days in gorgeous full bloom, closed again on the last day, turning their shrivelling but still blue petals inward in harmony with the conference proceedings.