Toad in Tsukuba

Shiroku-no-Gama

Keiichi Aoyagi Executive Director, Real World Computing Partnership

I'll turn 50 this year. In Japan, 60 is a "marked" kind of age; it is customary to celebrate your 60th birthday as "Kanreki" in Japanese because the Japanese ancient calendar system comprises a cycle of 60 years, and so age 60 successfully completes the cycle. It is also the retirement age in most cases. In contrast, 50 is not so remarkable. We do not have a traditional celebration. If you consider carefully, however, you'll find quite a few historical events and old sayings regarding the age 50.

For example, there's the episode of Oda Nobunaga, the conqueror of the Japanese civil war period in the 16th century. Legend tells us that when he was attacked by one of his generals while he was staying at a Buddhist temple "Hon-no-ji" in Kyoto, Nobunaga realized his last moment was approaching. And he chanted and danced his favorite Noh song. Its lyrics went:

"Life is merely 50 years Looking at things under heaven Everything is nothing but dream and illusion"

Nobunaga was 48 when he was assassinated. From our point of view, a life of less than 50 years seems pitiful and makes us feel the uncertainty of life. Considering the poor sanitation of his days and the raging wars, however, a life of 50 years was probably above average.

Today, people live much longer than in the days of Nobunaga. Yet, the age of 50 is still a great milestone in life as the Japanese idiomatic expression says, "crossing to the other side of 50." Probably, people reach the peak of their life's passage and look back on the route that they have come. Reflecting on the past, you'll find the meaning "When you are 50, you'll find your faults of the past 49 years." (Huai-nan Tzu) Also, 50 is the age at which you understand your life's mission, as Confucius said in the Analects, "Stand independently at 30, Never be irresolute at 40, and Know your life's mission at 50." I'm amazed that the Chinese philosopher was so spiritually aware at my age! But of course, I haven't found out what my life's mission is and am still at a total loss. Also, there are those age-old adages, "Never too late to le arn" and "Start learning late in life." It is our mission in life to keep the will to learn as we did when we were young.

So, I am now learning about personal computers to become the "Master of PC." Since the RWCP is engaged in studying the most up-to-date computing technology for the 21st century, ill-shod shoemakers are not allowed inside. PCs enable us to communicate with outstanding experts all over the world through the Internet. It's quite exciting to see your small local world growing larger and larger. I sit in front of my PC at home, hoping that it will be my "life-after-fifty" hobby. In the RWCP, active projects are going on to translate documents into HTML format, transmit contents through the Internet, and construct LANs for Windows/Macintosh combined environments. This movement of the RWCP encourages me in my PC training. I'm looking forward to that day in the future when I will be able to use a comfortable PC with all RWC technologies installed.

The other day, I had an interesting dream about the near future. I dozed off when I was lying back in a chair at my favorite barbershop in the neighborhood .... When I woke up, I found I was in a room where masters were playing "go" for the grand championship. It was probably a virtual world of the early 21st century. What's more, it was the world of go, my favorite game. With the go board in between, Chi-Hun Cho, the Grand Triple Crown holder of "Kisei," "Meijin" and "Hon-inbo" titles, is sitting against a "Shiroku-no-gama" or four-fingered and six-toed toad (a legendary creature said to live around Mt. Tsukuba, and it is believed that medicinal grease can be produced from the sweat of the toad). I took a closer look and found that it was a three-dimensional image created by 3-D computer graphics technology. It was so realistic and meticulously reproduced. Then, I found the real opponent of Cho was a supercomputer named "RWC Toad." Based on the PC cluster technology produced by the RWC Project which already ended a few years ago, a venture business developed this desktop supercomputer with 10,000 CPUs connected in parallel, and installed a host with the latest real world intelligence programs in it. And then, a national laboratory which has been qualified as an independent administrative agency, input all the game records of go masters of all times and countries to make it the strongest go machine that the world had ever seen. The 3-D toad image was of course created by the supercomputer.

In the world of chess, the supercomputer "Deep Blue" defeated the human world champion and caused quite a sensation in 1997. The occurrence was like a dream because it was believed that computers would never reach the level of human masters in go or shogi (Japanese chess), which are games of limitless intricacies. Back in the go room, the toad placed his stones in a broad arrangement and Cho the Grand Triple Crown started attacking into an enemy territory in his usual style. A breathtaking close game was going on and no one could predict whether the black or white stones would win. Looking at the toad, beads of greasy sweat were trickling down from its head like a real toad. It was fantastic computer graphics technology.

At that moment, a news bulletin ran across the TV: "A great discovery has been made! As a result of analysis which took several months on the super high-speed bio-computer "Neo Papia", it has been found that toad grease, which has long been believed to have medicinal benefits, can destroy prions, the cause of mad-cow disease." A pretty female newscaster who was also a CG image was reporting in an excited tone. Since "Neo Papia" could calculate 1,000 times faster than any existing machines, the analysis would not have been completed in my lifetime if it had been done on an old machine.

"Thank you very much." All of a sudden, the barber's voice wakened me up.

Now I have a secret plan to go to Tsukuba some weekend and catch some 4-fingered, 6-toed toads. I recently bought a program for keeping electronic pets. I'm going to raise toads according to the software instructions in preparation for a toad grease business, a very promising venture.