Recollecting Robert Papini

In Memoriam

Robert Papini in meditation at Vaults & Garden cafe,
University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, 2007.

 

This is a belated tribute to Robert Papini, particularly for his contributions to interfaith, notably with the International Association for Religious Freedom.  I also include excerpts from his other activities, with a sprinkling of quotes to offer glimpses of his erudition.  I hope to highlight in these brief excerpts how he exemplified the voluntary and vocational nature of his work and reflected deeply.

Background

Robert was originally from South Africa, with Italian ancestry through his father who was originally from Florence.  Possessing an open and inquisitive mind, he developed an interest in people, culture and the environment, which he nurtured throughout his life.  His academic study included two degrees in the UK: a Bachelor’s in English and African & Caribbean Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury and a Master of Studies in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography together with Museology at the Department of Ethnology & Prehistory/ Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (as a member of Linacre College).  This led to employment as a Research Officer in the Local History Museums, Durban from 1989 to 2002.  Some fruits of his research are evident in papers on his Academia site.

Robert at IARF

About a year later, from November 2003, he started a new job in Oxford, as General Office Administrator at the Secratariat of the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF). IARF is one of the first international interfaith organisations, which traces its formation to 1900 and is a UN NGO with general consultative status, which means it can be consulted on any matter, not just religion.

Robert was soon immersed at his desk in a compact office space, within a series of rooms on the top floor of a corner block in Market Street, which also housed the World Congress of Faiths (WCF), the International Interfaith Centre (IIC) and, in little more than a storage room, Rissho Kosei-Kai (RKK).  There he started to familiarise himself with the organisation and the distinctive features of dealing with adherents of world religions and the complexities of faith-based issues.  There were numerous projects that needed planning and facilitating.  It was a demanding initiation into international interfaith work.

I had been a member of the IIC and kept in touch with the office, sometimes exchanging e-mails.  At the beginning of March 2004, I sent a note about a Dhammakaya meditation session that I was organising at the Friends Meeting House in St Giles, which was circulated internally.  Robert picked it up and was interested.  He had already practised Vipassana as taught by S.N. Goenka, but was open to exploring other methods. 

However, he was swamped by work.  It was not until June, when another series of classes was on offer, that he felt that he was starting to cope with his role and ready to attend, commenting early in June 2004:

Many thanks for this; six months on, & I'm a bit more on top of admin routines at IARF, so have some time for myself now. Am definitely there for the first & last of the dates mentioned...

Robert did make it, but only just, and couldn’t stay:

Very sorry to have had to walk out on the class - please excuse, I was just so shattered from the day's work, found myself dropping off as soon as the eyes closed, in spite of all efforts!

I need to have a good day at work first, I realise...

Robert’s exhaustion came from his wholehearted efforts and over the next years he continued to grapple with – what seemed to me – an exceedingly demanding job.  In typical corporate style, his job titles were frequently shuffled without a clear career progression; from Office Administrator, he became (in succession): Office & Research Co-ordinator, Executive Officer, Office Manager and later he signed off merely as Admin.

Occasionally, Robert’s dissatisfaction was intense (he once admitted to me that he had walked out on an important meeting), but by and large, Robert gradually found his way, managing the challenges more effectively.  One of his most impactful involvements was in human rights education, especially in India, resulting in numerous training sessions.

In parallel, with opportunities to explore near and far, he developed his leisure activities. He drew on a long-standing interest in photography that inspired the likes of High School students and photojournalists (archived), with camera in hand, he started to reacquaint himself with the geography of Oxford and the Thames, dutifully contributing photographs of historic landmarks to the Historic England Archive IOE Series.

In Osaka

His travel abroad provided an opportunity for him to apply his empathic approach towards different cultures and for others to experience his considerable writing skills, whether that meant capturing the zeitgeist in brief pithy comments or much longer, evocative narratives.  This was epitomised in an unexpected turn of events. 

By 2007, as documented in the annual report of 2008/9, IARF was suffering a crisis and underwent major organisational change with operations moved to Japan.  After holding the fort in Oxford, Robert, as the sole surviving staff member, was sent to Osaka in mid-December, to run operations out of IARF’s Japan office, assisted by unpaid volunteers.  At the invitation of Reverend Yoshinobu Miyake, he was hosted by the Konko Church of Izuo (of the Shinto tradition), one of the charity’s main supporters.

Robert was once again having to orientate himself in a new culture and, despite severe financial constraints, he embraced it with enthusiasm, vividly penning his initial impressions:

Getting back to UK end-2003 was a buzz, but this is another order of excitement. Always been hard for me to remember what it's like when you land blind in a totally new country where the script is a scribble to you, and a handful of words is all you have.

During his first week, his creative juices started flowing:

18/12/2007
OK, this should be on a blog, but gimme time - I just got here...!.

(How about 17 years or so?)

He could barely wait to describe his environment:

Evening of my third day as a transient of Izuo neighbourhood, Osaka – just got back from my first real solo sortie into the surrounds, & my virgin supermarket safari. Been itching to get reactions to file, so lucky i brought over the old Toshiba laptop from Oxford, as no office PC bought yet, let alone set up in the new IARF office, which is double ex-res rooms two doors along from my little living-cell here on level three, topmost, of the Izuo Konkokyo church residential block (From my window, that's filled with the watercolour-fine foliage of dwarf bamboo and looks directly onto the Ancestors' Hall, I can see the massive coped gable of the mighty temple's great tiled roof, which is steep & gold-monogrammed, and the antique pale green of oxidized bronze).

The loaded term 'cell' i mean in the fully positive sense – i'm sat tapping away right now on the beautiful fine-weave /tatami/ mat flooring that's integral to the traditional Japanese home, with enough room on one edge of the living space to have a mattress, on the other a thin futon for my morning & evening bodywork; no furniture, but a roomy built-in cupboard & wall-mounted heater/aircon. My tiny kitchenette has a sink, mini-fridge & single electric ring, which would be fine anyway (though you might think I look a bit outlandish looming over my wok in its recess) but there's a much bigger cooking space, with gas, in the office-to-be, where i'll likely do most feeding..

Robert proceeded to describe his use of the local public bath (for his ‘cell’ had no shower or bath) as very much a social activity, but a tradition in decline as a result of Western influence.  Then came further details of his residence,

So anyway – there it is, my monkish cell with its outhouse ablutions. In all it's small for a great lunk of a spotty barbarian like me, kinda 'cubicular' i guess, but perfect for your stripped-down living, your monastic aspiration, and i have near-perfect silence here. There's a little street goes down the one side of this long 3-storey residential block, but hardly any traffic, and it's utterly charming, in the way of everything i've seen so far in the neighbourhood: /so/ different from our innercity streetscapes, obv everything three-quarter size, yes, but in many other ways such an insight into pre-modern urbanity while being totally modern, and refreshingly non-postmodern in the human scale of it, the sense of neighbourhood & the diversity & almost hobbitonian individuality of structures, the mingling of small business with residential, the balconies, jungle of oldstyle wiring overhead through all the interlinked alleyways & arcades that make up our Izuo 'hood, in the district here of Sangenya Nishi, a ward of Taisho, one of the many areas of what is a truly huge, trade-grown megasprawl between distant coastal mountain range and bay, with a good part of it reclaimed from the sea (including the airport, built by infilling the bay with mountain-top) --- and much of that in centuries well before the Dutch began their much-celebrated polders.

Bringing his historical survey into present times, he paused again to reflect:

Not too hard then, wandering about, to sense for oneself how the cities of pre-modern Japan must have been before American bombs & the post-war boom ushered in the built environment we see now. And this Now itself is all very much of that era; what gives the charm is the 50s/60s retro feel in building design, kinda like visions of old-school futurists, now a little worn & dated, but very much inhabited & alive, & conforming well to a certain stereotype we have of Japan (or at least, that the sophisticated have; I'm disturbed to discover how crude were my notions of this country & culture - just as with everywhere unknown, you come to realise. Pious it may sound to ask again, but the old chestnut stands: When will we learn to attribute the very same full humanity to others as we do to ourselves & 'our own'? Travel the cure? Shame it has to be on fossil fuel).

And found other sites particularly striking for being of a certain period:

Took a wander around the neighbourhood this afternoon … Found my way into the Osaka Dome (Police & Bon Jovi to play soon), & it's so /very/ much of its time - 80s futurist, now beginning to wear a bit. This was the Wembley Arena of its day, and vast it must have seemed then. Still pretty impressive. They have some kind of snowmaking lark going on at the top level, & loads of young people were buying snowboarding & other gear at a big indoor market, then queuing to get in. All the rage, obv. Minded me of Dubai's snow mountain in the desert, & other insanities of the incipient anthropocene era of atmosphere-wrecking.

Back in the office, it was time to deal with some practicalities.

Izuo, Osaka

18 Dec 07

dears

First day spent assembling the few bits of office furniture, devilish diagrams but eventually got them figured & glued, banged & screwed all together, trala, with just one cockup, of slight consequence though odd appearance (I blame it on a skewhiffed hands-off education. Come naa then, Bob the Builder To Be, make yo papa's ghost proud...)..

He was seemingly adopting the famed Japanese work ethic, as exemplified by his distinguished host:

 … Tomorrow we go off to Kyoto again, this time to some of the great shrines, for a 'greeting'. And it seems there's a trip to Tokyo next week, for this G8 Religious Leaders thing of Rev. Miyake's. He richly deserves the honorific 'tireless' that's given him in the biography of his grandfather that i'm reading: having gotten back from Tokyo at 3.30am this morning, after three top-level meetings with cabinet secretaries, etc., he was up at 4.30am to hold a temple service, then hit the desk to complete a newsletter for a 11am deadline! Even with the flu that he's inevitably picked up (quite a few people going about in facemasks, as it's said to be bad this year), he remains cheerful as ever, happy to help me out, managing well enough without his office girls today (Tuesday is a day off around here).

After an eventful start, he was in good spirits, sending the following note to welcome the arrival of 2008:

Dear friends

This year I count myself probably the first of you to greet the new year, here in Osaka, on the western Pacific rim. Aah yes - to be first, for once... ;}

(Most of you at least nine or ten hours away from first continental landfall of Jan 1st. 2008, some much more. Shame... But the suspense is everything, right?)...

Enjoy it when it comes, & here's to the year -- hope you're facing it with courage & commitment.

As ever -  Life, Love & Unity  !

Robert was in his element on this sojourn.  With his stay being extended, his wife, Catherine, went over several times to join him.  After a successful spell that met the approval of his hosts, he returned towards the end of 2008 to establish a ‘virtual office’, subsequently returning to Osaka for shorter spells.  In the minutes of the IARF Council Meeting of March 2009, the Personnel Committee reported:

Guji Takahiro Miwa had supervised the Osaka Office and was pleased with Robert’s performance. From November 2008 Robert had operated a virtual office from his London home and this had worked well with appropriate cooperation from the Church of Konko, whose staff had checked the incoming post. The three months in Osaka and three months in London arrangement will continue during 2009. A motion of thanks to Guji Takahiro Miwa, Guji Yoshinobu Miyake and Robert Papini was passed by acclamation.

Through generosity and fruitful collaboration, IARF survived and was able to maintain a significant international presence, providing input on a range of issues that affected religious practice directly and indirectly.  Robert provided a continuous thread to all these activities, not merely in fulfilling his office duties in practical terms, but, more profoundly, by his sincere cultural adaptation, demonstrating a deep dialogue with the Japanese members who provided the main financial support.  He earned considerable respect and hence encouragement to keep going.

Laying Foundations for Digital Communications

IARF’s severely limited financial resources prompted the organisation to make increasing use of electronic means of communication, a direction already evident in Council Meeting minutes of 2009.

Robert was again instrumental in this development; the ‘IARF - RFYN Young Adults’ Human Rights Training, Kolkota: 2011’ report noted:

Mr. Robert the administrator-IARF has began with session where he has made us know actualization of HRD ie “Human Rights Defenders” He introduced us with the various sources from where we can began and channelize our revolution towards Peace. In his continuing session he has mention the various ways ie media, SMS, Facebook, and Twitter can play significant Role.

The IARF Website was intended to be central to these developments.  Unfortunately, it was not fit for purpose.  Navigating from the home page, one  encountered pages authored in 2009, in one design, and a presumably early 2008 design used for news in 2010.  The site also had a discussion forum that was swamped by spam, and with custom PHP coding that was not maintained, the security status was questionable.  And then there were the styling and presentation issues, the variability in layout, fonts, colour schemes.  All in all it was a mess.

So IARF sought a solution based on an established content management system and Robert was tasked with delivering it.  A tender was put out, to which several companies responded, but I suspect that the budget was not adequate for commercial rates – even after significant discounts.  It likely prompted a reassessment and a reaching out to existing contacts in the hope of finding someone with requisite skills (and a charitable disposition).  That let Robert to me.

At that time, I was employed half-time as Web Officer at the Museum of the History of Science, so I had some spare capacity.  And having developed and consolidated the museum’s web offerings in WordPress, I had some idea about content management.

On 11 May, following a face-to-face chat, Robert sent me their requirements document.  At the end of the month, after further exchanges, Robert wrote:

Apropos, this email is really to tell you some good news (well, I hope it's good for you! - i.e. that you're not committing out of any sense of obligation to the interfaith cause.  The consensus seems to be that our new site project is in better hands with you than with some anonymous vendor for whom we're just another client.

Agreement was reached, and I started the work in early June.

There was endless scope for design, but Robert kept things fairly simple - it would suffice to make the site resemble or, at least, be in tune with the United Nations(!).  At that time, the U.N. site was heavily information-oriented, with hierarchical navigation, which actually suited me because I tend to think that way and am not a specialist in front-end graphic design or user interfaces. I proceeded to customise an existing WordPress theme by Brian Johnson, a member of the IARF US Chapter, extending it to accommodate the wider remit of the parent organisation.

Robert was keen for the site to emphasise its global scope and for it to act as a conduit in both directions and he wanted visitors to be aware of this and hence the use of the Pulsemaps heat map WordPress plugin.  He also sought to offer various means for essential communication from those directly affected by religious persecution.  Hence the Skype contact and the brief contact form, encrypted in case of snooping, especially by state authorities.

The main work was completed in about six months, in time for Christmas 2011; the site was duly delivered on a new virtual private server with not insubstantial system resources allocated.  I provided various documentation and training with further consultancy in subsequent months, when I departed for Qatar to take up a full-time post at the Qatar Museums Authority.  I would come back periodically to the UK and as Robert lived near Heathrow, we met up a couple of times in Terminal 4 before my departure back to the Gulf.

Whilst laborious, the website re-development project consolidated Robert’s knowledge of the entire organisation in its various strands, right across the world.  The international scope was reflected in Robert’s promotion of IARF work on social media, establishing a Flickr group, which featured the Human Rights Education and Training Programme in India.

where he was also involved in panel discussions

With the projects being delivered, his contributions became duly recognised in various countries outside the UK, not just Japan and India.  For example, for his role in the founding of the Kenya chapter:

To IARF administrator brother Robert Papini, I thank him for all the support he has shown towards the formation of IARF Kenya chapter.”  (Rev. Lawrence Adera, Secretary General IARF Kenya chapter)
Midview Hotel, Nairobi, 20 July 2013

By 2015, the website was well established and in much better shape.

The international reach of IARF was evident in its member groups:

 

Having implemented these major deliverables, Robert decided that it was time he moved on and he retired from his post in June 2015. 

Vade Mecum

Over the years, we met up periodically for wanderings on foot, sometimes joined by Catherine; and after leaving IARF, he had more time to roam. For, Robert noted, “We 'obligate bipeds' are in prime health when doing around 20km per day!”

We met mainly in towns and cities, which served as sources of endless anthropological fascination as we navigated across centuries of development and bounced ideas off each other.  One such meander was in 2016, assisted by Designs of the Times: Self-guided walk through the Square Mile (archive).  Always with Robert, as an allotment holder, having an eye for uncovering green spaces (the so-called secret gardens):

Robert in Christchurch Greyfriars Church Garden.

 

[See also some photos on Flickr.]

The next day, Robert reflected:

a very promising beginning to possible probings of whatever may remain neglected & unilluminated in this breathtaking megalopolis.

And in response to a tentative proposal I had in mind for a “3D illuminations of neglected spaces (or similar)”, he was encouraging, clearly seeing a deeper potential:

I've been interested in Psychogeography for a while, though never had the chance to really go into it. Seems all a bit trendy at the moment, but nonetheless may have merit if it matures along with the kind of technology you're clearly thinking about applying.

[See, e.g., an explanation of the term by the Tate. ]

Occasionally, we met in more rural settings, such as Wytham, where we’d observe other kinds of wildlife going about their business.  But it didn’t really matter where we ambled for Robert was perspicacious in any environment.

Thursday’s Lotus

My own introduction to interfaith work, which led to my meeting Robert, was through my mother, the late Fuengsin Trafford, who worked for 10 years at the Multi-Faith Centre in Birmingham before it ceased operating in the mid-1990s.

Shortly after my mother passed away in 1995, I started writing her biography.  By the time Robert left the offices in Market Street, I had a complete draft and was getting editorial feedback with a view to publication.  Robert offered his services and agreed to compile the index, patiently and painstakingly using DEXter, a clever, but somewhat temperamental tool that provided wonderful automated assistance most of the time, but not always.  A little over twenty years after commencement, Thursday’s Lotus was finally published and I was pleased to present a copy to Robert. 

He graciously responded:

I do have to say, it's such a total pleasure to heft in one's hand the finished work -- thank you!  It's been a while since I was involved in anything that saw the solidity of bound paper.

To say it again, it's been a privilege to be associated with something out of the ambitious world of interfaith that has this much integrity & worth. So much of what I toiled at with IARF so often seemed futile, but your labour of love has gone quite a way to persuading me of the merit of its wider context.

I’m sure that if Robert had been writing to or about someone he worked with at IARF, he would have been more positive, for he appreciated his colleagues in the office; his frustrations were (I feel) to do with the organisation's corporate management.  At the same time, some of these comments came from a natural modesty and humility, indications of his own integrity, which were what encouraged him to persevere.  But also, in hindsight, these were signs of low self esteem.

Environmental Awareness and an unusual Anthropological Project

Robert’s connection with Nature was deep, informed by study of evolution and observation of the present.  In May 2020, the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, Robert drew further inspiration from cultivating his allotment plot to  fuel a passion for returning to a more sustainable living and community:

I've never been more physically exhausted in any Springtime of soil toil - but it's fantastic, a joyful weariness. The life of plants, I've come to realise, is an allure that beats any that comes out of a screen.

I'm investigating a place called Tinker's Bubble, down in Somerset. Check it out, there's a great video on Vimeo.

Tinkers Bubble is a small off-grid woodland community in Somerset.  This ‘back to basics’ lifestyle was, Robert mused, probably too radical for Catherine (or, indeed, most of the population used to their creature comforts), so he wondered about milder alternatives and, so, I suggested the LandARK.  Naturally, he had already come across it and considered its viability:

Thanks for reminder of this excellent venture, which I stumbled upon years ago, bookmarked, and had not revisited. The question would be, of course, where one might be permitted to plant one's little bubble. Might it help to be tugging one's forelock before the great & good one percent who own more than half this island?

We exchanged further speculative messages against a backdrop of a world in utter confusion, without any definite conclusion.

Meanwhile, at the writing desk, within a year of leaving IARF, Robert embarked on an ambitious writing project, a kind of anthropological novel describing Mesolithic life in Africa.  He was tentative about revealing it, perhaps fearing that it wouldn’t lead anywhere, but did share a few tantalising glimpses.  Robert first mentioned his ideas to me in a park café near SOAS towards the end of October 2017 shortly before I attended an evening meeting of The Biographers' Club.  Afterwards, I wrote to him to relate that there was reflection on how to 'enter' a different time and land; in all cases the key was immersion, directly or indirectly.

Robert responded:

 …  Interesting to hear that biographers do still cherish the credo that it's possible to immerse in another time. It undergirds the whole craft, I suppose, but as the tired saying goes 'The past is another country...they do things differently there'. So I propose to market my work as a satirical subgenre of Fantasy, so absurd do i find the proposition that a modern consciousness can evoke anything faintly approaching the conditions of life even a century back - let alone the millennia that 'prehistoric fiction' wades blithely about in...

Serious fiction is only ever contemporary.

But my hunch is that even as the globe shrinks & the old nomad wanderlust of our kind dies spatially, it will compensate temporally, and while the kids are hurtling off to fantasy worlds rich in dragons & elves, or fearsome deep-space aliens, the adult imagination will want inter alia to probe further & further back into our imagined past.

And what the market calls for, none shall gainsay! Hooray indeed. Long may huddled creatives continue to earn a crust down the 'satirical fantasy' alleyway... with cakes & ale to the trailblazers, of course.  ;)?

Gradually, having got to know about Robert’s project, friends and family became curious about his writing.  I was not alone in thinking that a publisher might be interested and, so, enquired about samples.  In March 2021, replying to a message which had started on zero emission zones, Robert was characteristically thoughtful:

Molweni, bra Paul (Gauteng-greets)

Thanks for asking about my long-ongoing writerly ambitions.
It's become more effortful as I've had to start infilling the structure with plausibly thought-out, anthropologically-informed pattern & process around the storyline.

I wish it were possible to offer some sample, as it seems most creatives are able to do even just a few months after conceiving a project (mine has been five years in the making so far). 

However it's a 'built world' I'm about, so even a short passage would demand of any reader an immersion into backdrop detail (I provide it in maps, timelines, synopses, etc.) which few are prepared to undertake, given the Titanic-scale 'raft of alternatives' on market offer any day of your life... (and all within a few seconds' whisper of your fingers' busy tap-tapping). 

That begs the larger question of whether readerly attention span nowadays has any inclination toward 'built-world immersion' (aka Fantasy?). Maybe the New Pandemia inclines the newly underemployed among them that way? 

I'm counting on a few other things to make the offer stand out - not least that Fantasy has always been hugely ethnocentric. Counting most riskily of all, though, on a readership that's able to slow down, in order make sense of language rendered faux-archaic.
Not much ask there! :)

He confirmed his commitment in further correspondence.:

I've come too far now to abandon it. Huge investment of time, and sacrifice of earnings. Sometimes I do wonder what can have driven me to it!

Sadly, he would never see its completion. 

Robert’s Passing

Robert Papini passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Saturday 23 April 2022 shortly after 3pm.  Whilst difficult to comprehend, there has since come to light much of biographical interest.  This post offers just a taste of Robert’s life, one that epitomised an enquiring mind and service to humanity. He worked hard, facilitated, inspired and did not seek credit.  It’s especially evident from his time at IARF, where he made a major contribution in delivering projects across the world, touching many people’s lives in a positive way. 

On the Yanaka Heritage Trail

I had a couple of free days whilst in Tokyo and was able to wander at leisure on the Sunday (3rd July). On browsing through the Lonely Planet guide to Tokyo, I found a section on walking tours that highlighted some earlier traditions and environs around Nippori, Yanaka and Ueno. So after breakfast I took the train on the JR Yamanote line towards Ueno. For convenience my academic hosts had suggested I use a SUICA charge card so that I didn't have to try and figure out fare stages indicated on the maps above the ticket vending machines. I found it convenient as it was accepted on all the train and metro services I used, but it doesn't provide discounts and so is not economical for large numbers of trips (see e.g. this helpful guide).

Still somewhat struggline with jetlag, I started dozing off on the train. Next thing I knew the train had stopped at Nishi Nippori so I jumped out of the carriage and exited the station, under the bridge and onto the western side. Once again I wasn't exactly sure of the route to take, so ambled along up an adjoining street:

According to a Japanese friend, the yellow sign means something like "Safety Street" - but we don't know if that's descriptive or prescriptive! Anyway, on I went and soon came to the corner of a park, which provides a pleasant natural environment with its shade very welcome at this time of the year.

This area is known for stray cats and we're not supposed to encourage them:

Perched on a small hill, Nippori and its surrounds have been attractive to settlers for many centuries. It's now a heritage trail, one of 23 designated historical walks in Tokyo.

Even today there are some good vantage points offering extensive views, which show carefully cultivated cultural areas merged into rambling urban landscapes:

The initial impression may be a bit disappointing - it may seem to lack overall planning (and made me wonder what kind of permission would be needed for development). However, on reading a little more about Tokyo's urban planning, I came across a plausible explanation which describes how the reconstruction of Tokyo after the Second World War was by necessity implemented at a neighbourhood level using the existing urban 'typology', covering the streets in rich areas and poor. Hence especially the populated inner city areas can appear as a whole rather higgledy-piggledy. I think this is conveyed well in a memo about urban development (Matias Echanove).

Along this trail one can find quite a number of temples and shrines dating to the Edo period and were (as far as I could make out) either Shinto or Buddhist. Many had connections with other more rural parts of the country, sometimes with connections to mountains. The following poster, for a Shinto shrine, is an example:

I know little about Shinto, and whilst sorting through my photos I've had to look things up. After a while I came to recognize a number of distinct features in common. For instance, in the poster you can see some jagged white strips of paper suspended from rope. You encounter these when passing through a Torii gate and shimenawa ring:

The zigzag strips of white paper are called shime 注連 or gohei, and symbolize purity. They look like lightning, which itself is regarded as holy (and, I expect, may be associated with insight). I saw some visual instructions as to the Shinto ritual for entering the gate: one passes through the ring three times - first moving round to the left, then the right, and then the left ring once more; at each stage, one bows before moving. Finally, one proceeds straight ahead to make an offering and a wish (for prosperity, health etc.). When making an offering one claps loudly to call the attention of the divine beings. There are many online sources of info on Shinto, such as a a shrine guide and Shinto symbols

Along the way, I bumped into two volunteers working on local history projects. They were carrying with them recording equipment and making a podcast for neoKITAKUMIN. Perhaps they interviewed someone at the 'Swiss chalet':

I then took a right turn down into Yanaka Ginza, a traditional shopping area with quite narrow streets.

Lots of little shops, many crafts on display, a good place for souvenirs

The dining places are unusual. I learnt via Google that the following is Iranian:

It was late morning, so I was actually having an iced coffee in a little cafe opposite. I had lunch later in an Indian restaurant owned by a friendly Nepali, who informed me he had arrived in Tokyo 16 years ago and now had 5 restaurants in the city. It had quite a mixed clientele:

Refreshed, I rejoined the trail and explored some Buddhist temples, including a few dedicated to Kannon Bosatsu (Bodhisattva Kuanyin):

Another Bodhisattva, who seemed to appear frequently was Jizo Bosatsu, who is especially a protector of infants. So parents traditionally make offerings for their own newly born.

Often there are 6 Jizo Bosatsus in a row, one for each of the realms of existence (often adorned with red children's garments, such as bibs).

Some of the wooden temple buildings - here at Kannon-ji temple - remind a little of structures in Thailand:

Not far away, outside another smaller temple, Choanji, I saw a peace pole with its message 'May Peace Prevail on Earth,' which originally came in an inspired moment to Masahisa Goi. They are now found all over the world and are very popular at interfaith gatherings.

It's not a large distance, but there are many interesting aspects, so it's best covered at a slow pace. I spent several hours in the area before accelerating towards Ueno and the Tokyo National Museum, to delve further into the cultural history of Japan.

A class in Game Theory for Management students

My host, Prof. Yukari Shirota, had arranged that whilst at Gakushuin University I would give an undergraduate class in some topic of mathematics to students in the Department of Management. For such a one-off, I had a fairly free hand as to subject matter; what seemed to be considered most valuable for the students was the (rare) opportunity to hear a native speaker of English (though actually I'm ethnically less than half English).

I chose Game Theory, the subject made famous by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern in their landmark work, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. I first came across Game Theory whilst at secondary school. In fact I became quite engrossed, venturing into Birmingham Central library to conduct research for an extended essay on a typewriter [yes, it was a long time ago]! I was fascinated by its confluence of mathematics, economics and psychology; the last of these particularly intrigues me. On this occasion my main reference was Games, Theory and Applications (1st edition) by Lyn Thomas, which I used during my own undergraduate studies at Southampton University. For anyone wanting to further their study, I would strongly recommend a textbook like this.

Would you like to explore this topic in this slightly extended post?

Good! So on a Wednesday morning I gave a class in the Multimedia Mathematics series to about 25 4th year undergraduates, kindly assisted by Prof. Shirota who gave explanations (sometimes in English, sometimes in Japanese) and encouragement. Normally there would be hands-on for students, but things were kept simple so that I only had to give a presentation with software demonstrations. I read somewhere some statistic indicating that the Japanese have more slides per presentation than any other nation, so I armed myself with 70+ slides. That's excessive, probably more suitable for 2-3 classes, but I had only one at my disposal and I wanted to share sufficient material to give a reasonable feel of the mathematical methods involved, including inductive reasoning and aspects of probability. I also included quite a few pictures and came up with simple examples to show how many situations in life can be treated as a game - such as growing tomatoes or commuting.

At the same time it was important for me not to rush delivery - speaking more slowly than usual, there was no way I would cover all this material in one go, so I just used a selection of slides, starting with the main concepts and proceeding via a few hops to a couple of famous non-zero-sum case studies, the Prisoner's [really prisoners'] Dilemma and The Battle of the Sexes.

I also had another prop with me - some reasonably authentic-looking notes in Pounds Sterling (Casdon PlayCash that I bought from the local Boswells store). I used it as an ice-breaker:

An introduction to Game Theory

View more presentations from Paul Trafford

(Thanks to the American Mathematics Society for this idea, which I first saw on 'Who wants to be a mathematician?' roadshow).

Yes, a £1,000 giveaway! Except it was a bit credit-crunched: as only £937 cash was in the bank, I tried to explain that the British banks are struggling at the moment and a cheque could make up the remainder, £63.

The students were divided into 6 teams, A-F, one team per island, each with a representative. Each team was a 'player'. Teams had to choose a number N>=1; a team that picked the highest number would receive a share of £1000/N. This game had two rounds as follows:

• Round 1 [slide 3 above]: no communication
  We should have collected pieces of paper; as it was, numbers went something like: 20,50,80,100,50,52.
  Team D won £10.
• Round 2 [see slide 4]: communication allowed
  Teams chatted about this and quite quickly came to a decision, yielding the optimal result: 1,1,1,1,1,1, so each team gained £1000/6!

I was struck by the smoothness in reaching this outcome (and lack of betrayal among the teams) and think this may reflect a general culture in Japan of collective action and perhaps conformity, something that has helped the country to become such a productive and powerful economy. Quite different from an individualistic view, where it would be seen as problematic. It was later related to me that when someone says, "Ne...?" ("Isn't that so?"), there is often a feeling of obligation to say, "Ne!" ("Yes, that's so."). This would tend to support a culture of opinion leaders and followers. Ne?

In terms of software demonstration, I used mainly two tools, both released under open source licenses. The first was Gambit, which is a dedicated Game Theory suite that provides for the analysis of non-zero-sum games in both normal and extensive form. It has options to carry out computation, particularly of Nash Equilibrium, though one of its current limitations is that it restricts itself to games where players have to choose their moves independently. The other tool was Maxima, a Computer Algebra System, which I used for the graphical visualisation of payoff regions. Maxima by itself has only a command line interface, but it can invoke gnuplot to render graphical output and there is a choice of graphical interfaces: in my case I ran wxMaxima. All these are bundled together in the distribution.

I find the topics of communication and cooperation to be of philosophical interest. A standard definition of a cooperative game is couched in terms of business contracts (in the UK we can think of the Co-op supermarket) and so in such games players are said to enter binding agreements. It is used accordingly as a basic binary categorization and its importance is evident in e.g. providing assurance for the mathematical calculations. However, it means communication becomes secondary and I'd argue that [human] communication is more fundamental - it's what made the huge difference in the giveaway of slides 3 and 4 and to my lay-person's thinking, co-operation was established through a collectively agreed strategy before it became binding. No ties are needed to work together! Communication doesn't imply cooperation, but it usually precedes it.

So, I should issue the caveat that my slides exhibit a natural personal bias to this voluntary sense of cooperation, illustrated, for example in the Battle of the Sexes, in which a young married couple have free time at the weekend for an outing. The only issue is that the husband prefers a sporting venue, whilst his wife prefers a concert (so the story goes), but the bottom line is that they'd both prefer to be together than go there separate ways - see slides 65-71.

In Gambit (using this source file), we can compute the Nash equilibrium points. If we assume x is the probability with which the husband choose the first venue and y is similarly the probability that the wife chooses the first venue, then the expected returns e1 and e2 are given respectively by:

• e1(x,y)=5xy -4x -4y +4 - (eq1)
• e2(x,y)=5xy -4x -4y +4 -(eq2)
• where 0 <=x <=1, 0<= y <=1.

For minimax we set both of these equations to equal the value of the game. Gambit can do the calculation for us. The following screenshot shows the matrix used and underneath three equilibrium points.

The first of the equilibrium points are the respective the minimax strategies. But a value of 4/5 seems rather poor and would suggest - if the payoff matrix is a true reflection - that both 'battlers' will reason that settling on any venue would be better. Indeed, underneath are two other equilibrium points that return expected returns of 1 and 4 and vice versa.

However, the computation of individual points doesn't give a full picture. Just a few lines of Maxima instructions enables us to compute the region covered by all mixed strategies. It generates a 3D parametric plot, and we can initially set the z-axis to be constant, so with a bit of dexterity, you can rotate it to show the following:

The x and y-axes denote the respective expectations for husband and wife. I'm fascinated by the shape: the attentuation to the corners (1,4) and (4,1) - this particular graph reminds me of someone sitting in a hammock! Note that the point (4/5,4/5), which is the expected value of the game under minimax, lies a long way from those corners and it's also nested deeply in the region. It's certainly not on the boundary since in equations 1 and 2 above, if we set x=y=0.5, we get e1(x,y)=e2(x,y)=1.25.

It's a graph that assumes no cooperation, which is not a very optimistic view of a newly wed couple. We'd expect them to work something out in the form of a cooperative strategy, pure or mixed, so that whenever they have an outing they will go to one of these attractions together. If that's the case, then we can simplify the equations so that the (0,0) outcomes are factored out. The resulting graph is a line, the convex closure of the original region:

(Incidentally, I wonder if there is some metric indicating how far one is from cooperation in choosing minimax, perhaps defined in terms of the angle created by the expected returns with pairs of 'pure cooperative' vertices - the smaller the angle, the greater the missed opportunity for cooperation...?)

In the case of the Prisoner's Dilemma there is no minimax strategy. Geometrically, if you plot that graph you get a triangle, i.e. the set of points in Euclidean space is already convex.

Student Response and Feedback

In the event the class listened attentively and concentrated well. The opening game helped to stimulate interest, which they seemed to sustain for the duration. I was informed that they could understand most of what I said, which was a relief since preparing this class felt a bit like navigating in the dark. Certainly a few of the students gave responses that indicated they understood particular concepts. Although I didn't receive questions at the end (same kind of traditional response as Thai and other oriental students), facial expressions were not blank or bemused. This may have been helped in no small measure by Prof. Shirota, who produced (in one evening/night!) a translation into Japanese of some (possibly all?) of the slides. This would also encourage students in further reading and assist them in an assignment - a write-up about the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Whilst at Gakushuin, I also met Prof. Jun WAKO, who is a specialist in Game Theory. I hope he would approve of my presentation, but at least he may now have a few more enquiries from interested students...

Responses to the Japan Earthquake

Ever since the earthquake struck off the East coast of Japan in March, thoughts have been with the people of Japan. Whilst the loss of thousands from the tsunami was already a great tragedy, the factor of uncertainty surrounding the problems precipitated at Fukushima nuclear power plant seem to have cast an even darker cloud.

From my remote vantage point in the UK I naturally wondered about the situation ahead of my visit in July. I didn't really consider the risk until a native resident in Tokyo warned me not to travel, citing various sources that indicated dangerously high levels of radiation. For me to cancel a one week visit whilst 30 million residents had to stay seemed somewhat selfish, but I felt obliged to undertake the research. So I set off trying to understand a bit of theory, with the aid of sites like the ABC's of Nuclear Science, dipping into radiation readings (sometimes accompanied by a chart on levels exposure), and periodic visits to some official sites such as The World Health Organisation's FAQ on Japan's nuclear concerns, the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office advice on travel to Japan, and similarly the US Department of State.

I dipped into the arguments and counter-arguments from nuclear analysts. Among those conveying considerable concern I found Greenpeace and Arnie Gundersen at Fairewinds. I can't really assess his analysis, but he seems generally level-headed, particularly in the way he discussed the delapidated state of each reactor building. At least from this I could be informed about the main concerns: radiation leakage into water supplies (and hence the food chain) and the ingestion and inhalation of tiny radioactive 'hot particles' or 'fuel fleas' ejected into the atmosphere. For these to be valid concerns there would need to be reliable readings and research establishing the linkage in terms of carcinogenic effects. I couldn't find anything conclusive - both are subject to much debate - at least judging by one Google-chosen thread at the Department of Nuclear Engineering, UC Berkeley.

Having read, watched, and pondered, I cannot say I really know. In the event I assessed the severity of the situation as somewhat higher than TEPCO has described, but the risks for my particular visit as relatively low and I actually had some moral feeling that I should go. When I was in Japan I could see how deep the disaster has impacted on society: a particularly poignant aspect has been the departure en masse of people from overseas shortly after the disaster, which was regarded with sadness and disappointment. In practical terms, there's been huge changes in working practices: in order to reduce especially peak energy consumption employees are arriving at work earlier or working at the weekends, air conditioning units are being used sparingly, lifts are reduced in number, many services having to economise. In parallel to this, there is a huge amount of contingency planning - offices and meeting rooms are being cleared out and refurbished so as to install new safer furniture. Japanese people are already used to reconstructing and redefining, but the challenge of this disaster have been particularly severe.

Against this challenge, I would like to highlight the response from Prof. Shirota, the host for my research visit. In her home page for this year, she has written a message for her students, urging them to study hard in the safe environment of Gakushuin. On that page you can see as an immediate response, Prof Shirota is promoting a campaign to send salt supplies to horses abandoned in Minamisōma, Fukushima. In the long term, she is dedicating her life to education and research, motivated by the observation (to paraphrase), "Japan lacks natural resources; to recover from this catastrophe we can only enhance our human resources." I find this really admirable.
 

Facing life-critical moments become a matter of personal world-view or beliefs. For myself, I try to reflect on the law of Dependent Origination, which gives us karma and rebirth and Buddhist notions of protection. These are fundamentally internal methods of mind-heart development, which can maintain stillness and peace in the face of impermanence. But it may be harder than contingency planning as it needs constant practice.

Research Visit to Gakushuin University

Located towards the northwest of central Tokyo, Gakushuin is a private academic corporation that comprises schools and colleges as well as a university that currently has 9000 students. It is famous in Japan because of its historical connections with the Imperial Court. When I arrived a couple of weeks ago, I found the Mejiro campus spacious and verdent, surprisingly so given its centrality; I was informed that among the universities inside the JR Yamanote loop, it's the second largest after the University of Tokyo.

The present campus, like much of Tokyo, has seen many changes, but among the modern blocks there still remain a few of the older buildings, a little over 100 years old:



The modern multi-storey block on the right (East building no. 1?) obviously offers more capacity, but in the distance are some well-maintained old classrooms, cherished by staff and students even today. To the left is the former library building, now housing the Museum of History, graced by a venerable old tree in front of a small pool and foundation:


However, I wasn't here to be a tourist (although during my week's stay I did have a chance to wander), but rather to explore aspects of e-learning. The opportunity had arisen following earlier exchanges of ideas in the UK: in 2005, Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS) received a visit from Professor Yukari Shirota of the Department of Management, Faculty Economics, Gakushuin University. I arranged for her to give a presentation on some interactive software she had developed that guided students through the study of some topics in mathematics. The system's architecture was based on solution plans to word problems and delivered using an intelligent agent (animated by the Microsoft wizard).

Prof. Shirota is a computer scientist of long-standing - for instance, she co-authored an introduction to UNIX in 1984. During the past decade, Prof. Shirota has been developing e-learning systems to aid in the teaching of mathematics to her Management students. Inspired by George Pólya, her research has been focused on problem solving, invoking techniques in A.I. and especially visualisation, to help make sense of how the formulae and equations are used in word problems in Economics. I was particularly struck by her idea that A.I. might be able replicate the rhythm of instruction from teacher to pupil, quite similar perhaps to the rhythm of communication between a mother and baby. I hadn't come across anything like this thinking in the UK.

More recently, Prof. Shirota's research has concerned the provision of integrated tools that enable academic staff to create a range of online materials to direct students step by step in tackling certain types of questions, particularly in the field of bond mathematics. These systems are typically Web applications with scripts that invoke computer algebra systems such as Maple and Maxima to deliver step by step instructions. Some recent examples of this work are evident in overview of activities for 2011.

With regard to the financial mathematics, Prof. Shirota and her colleagues have used a conceptual approach based on entity-relationship diagrams to relate variables to formulae and equations. So the tasks of understanding may be characterised by being able to visualise and understand this map and its relations. How may that process be best aided online? In its entirety, the complete diagram is too extensive and detailed to show all at once, so any online implementation will need navigation - to focus on particular formulae and relations, but also to 'zoom out' and see the model as a whole. So does this suggest navigating it like, say, Google Earth or some other way based more closely on the relationships?

It's in addressing these considerations that I have been offering some input with my background in mathematics, somewhat distant now, and more recently e-learning and Web development, gained mainly whilst in the Learning Technologies Group at OUCS. Determining effective solutions is a multi-faceted task: its design, especially in terms of user interface, should be soundly rooted in principles of cognition. As I am not trained in educational psychology, I have to deal more with the nuts and bolts of the learning context itself, primarily in terms of the current and emerging technologies. In this regard, I'd say that whilst the emphases in pedagogy vary from country to country, the predominance of personally own computing devices has presented new variables to factor into the education at all levels. It's particularly this phenomenon, which I tend to call mobile and ubiquitous computing, that I was encouraged to explore ahead of my visit in the form of a survey paper on e-learning systems for mathematics, with particular reference to business and economics.

To give some structure in this rather broad landscape, I initially made reference to some recent features of e-learning in the UK. There's a strong focus on learner-centred education; within that I'm particularly interested in processes of deep reflection, stemming from the RAMBLE project I led in mobile blogging and learning environments. I'm not sure about the merits of focusing so much on individual predispositions, but I felt that the work on open educational resources and podcasting as a delivery mechanism was a useful vehicle to illustrate how learning has emerged from being concentrated in a classroom or workshop and flowed out into less formal environments. It was with this image in mind that I developed a thread to show how computer assisted learning for mathematics has similarly emerged from the laboratory into the open and is now squarely aiming at handheld tablet and multi-touch devices.

The paper, whose full title is 'Ubiquitous e-Learning: Designing Web Systems for Economics and Business Mathematics', has been published in Gakushuin Economic papers and is now available online - in HTML and PDF formats.

Arrival in Japan

This month I had the opportunity to spend a week in Tokyo (1-7 July), my first time in Japan. I came on a research visit kindly arranged by Professor Yukari Shirota at Gakushuin University. I'll describe the research aspect in a later post, but here I'll just share some initial impressions on my arrival.

Japan has a very distinct cultural identity; it's one of the few countries that retains - at least in many people's perception - a uniqueness that has persisted in spite of its immersion in modern industrialisation and particularly global markets and consumer products. It's famed for its etiquette and politeness and it was as though the whole trip was couched in such ethos from the moment I dropped off my bags at Heathrow, where I had a friendly conversation with the staff of Virgin Atlantic.

We know Japan as 'the land of the rising sun', which is a translation of Nippon. It is fitting in many ways; the heat and humidity in the summer months is quite palpable, certainly sub-tropical, feeling not much different from Thailand. (I feel sympapthy for 'cool biz' workers who have to trade in their jackets and ties for reduced air conditioning, with the government advising units to be set to a minimum temperature of 28 degrees. Even in a land used to construction and reconstruction, there's been a lot of discomforting changes, faced with admirable forbearance.) But it's particularly as the emergence of the hi-tech society, that the sun it such a resonant symbol. It wasn't long before I was struck by its manifestation in rail transport.

On arrival at Narita Airport, there are many options to proceed to the centre of Tokyo. With the aid of a Lonely Planet guide, I had perused various routes to my destination of Mejiro and settled on catching the fastest train service available, the Keisei Skyliner, which can whisk you into heart of the capital in under 40 minutes, followed by a trip on the circular JR Yamanote line. So after collecting my baggage (probably the shortest wait I've had), I bought a ticket for the Skyliner, complete with a seat reservation, another one for the local service, and made my way down to the platform. The train duly arrived:

As this is the terminus, the train is cleaned before boarding, but there is also a wait for something else: the repositioning of the seats. Just like synchronised swimmers, every passenger seat is rotated in unison, through 180 degrees to face the direction of travel. Once on the train, pre-recorded announcements are given in Japanese (in a singsong voice) and more regular US English. The driver(?) makes only occasional announcements to inform passengers of the location of toilets and where to find refreshments - not the buffet car, but vending machines!

My train was surprisingly not on time. There had been an incident on the line causing congestion, but I was in no hurry, and there was no visible response from the other passengers. I disembarked at Nippori station, (mis)fed my Skyliner ticket into a turnstile, plucked out the other ticket and after enunciating "Me-ji-ro" to a couple of station staff I found the right platform. Shortly before midday I emerged from Mejiro station, into broad daylight and my first steps on Tokyo soil outside the transport system!

Initially a little disorientated, I established my bearings once I spotted the Northwest entrance to Gakushuin University.

This made me feel I really had reached my destination. With the aid of a map and directions from the porter at the gate, I subsequently made my way to the Faculty of Economics, met Prof. Shirota, and was later shown to the guest accommodation.

Time for a bit of rest, before the preliminary discussions later that afternoon...