98 | December 2021 www.facs.website many enjoyable things, like singing in the mountains, so everybody wanted to join the chemistry club. Mr. Fukuoka later published a book on the Alpine flowers. EK: It sounds like a dream school. I can hardly think of a teacher in Israel who could have the liberty and talent to conduct such extraordinary programs. From your description, it sounds like the ideal chemistry teacher. EN: Yes, we had several other ideal teachers besides the art and chemistry teachers. We also had an exceptional music teacher featured in a recent movie, “A Scientist and a Musician.” Mr. Tada is the first-generation professional recorder and baroque flute player and the best throughout the 1960s and 70s. He regularly gave public concerts and invited his pupils to attend them. As a result, a few of my classmates eventually became musicians, including the professional harpsichord player Yoshio Watanabe, one of the movie’s heroes. Although I kept playing music in public for nearly 40 years, only now to commemorate our 70th birthday, Watanabe and I played together for the first time. It was recorded in the movie. In junior high school, we had two classes with 40 students in each, and when we continued in the senior high school, 160 students split into four parallel classes. The Komaba school still exists, affiliated with the President Office of Tsukuba University. EK: As a private school that selects its students, I assume it does not need to report to the Japanese Ministry of Education. EN: No, it is a National School under the control of Tsukuba University, which is a State University. The school is like an independent university department. It is not under the control of a municipal government or local educational committee, so the teachers had complete liberty to teach whatever they wanted. It is an autonomous operation, which gained a steady reputation over more than 50 years as the best school. EK: So, how does the school attract such high-quality teachers? What is the incentive for new teachers? Does the school offer them high salaries or something equivalent? EN: The salaries are comparable with the teachers’ salaries in ordinary schools. The incentive for good teachers has never been money but outstanding students. The school carefully selects the incoming students, which is still the same today. The school is relatively small but has produced a number of leaders of society and academia. The teachers tell the junior high students and parents not to study hard the school subjects, but to find what they are good at. Yet, many of them end up at the University of Tokyo. EK: You have touched upon Japanese cultural issues, and I wish to follow up on that. On many occasions, I had opportunities to discuss Japanese culture and science. Western scientists tend to stereotype Japanese scientists as focused technocrats. Many perceive them as highly efficient but conservative professionals who prefer to narrow down their field of expertise rather than develop a broad perspective. They do not look at other fields or non-scientific disciplines, such as arts, literature, and music, and you don’t fit this stereotype. I remember someone at Columbia University referred to you as “banana,” which means yellow outside and white inside. Do you consider yourself a non-typical Japanese scientist or, perhaps, the stereotype outlined by many Western scientists is inaccurate? EN: My grandparents used to do business in the Japanese territory of Dalian and survived the anarchy in the city after the end of the war. They respected Eiichi Shibusawa, the father of Japan’s modern economy, whose name was given to me by Shibusawa’s grandson. In 1971 when I decided to visit Israel for the summer internship, no one opposed it. It was a year before the Lod Airport massacre. Visiting Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Greece, Turkey, and Israel at the age of 20 changed my perception of the world. EK: This does not seem to f it the Japanese stereotype. EN: I agree. Professor Mukaiyama was not an average Japanese. When I joined his group as an undergraduate student, he always demanded in every group seminar to come up with a reasonable Arbeitshypothese and a new theory. He impressed me very much with that approach, and so did Prof. Kuwajima, a Mukaiyama student. I ampleased that most of the things I’ve done in my early career align with how Mukaiyama thought about chemistry. For example, during the second year of my graduate studies, I hypothesized that a fluoride anion might attack silyl enol ethers to generate a reactive enolate. I assumed that creating a bond between silicon and fluoride would release much energy to form a reactive enolate anion. I checked this idea, and we published it in JACS in 1975. When Prof. Noyori saw our paper, he was already working along the same line and proposed to Kuwajima to continue this research together. Noyori and Kuwajima have been good friends who worked together in Corey’s lab. So, the collaboration came naturally. I worked with Prof. Noyori for two years on fluoride activation of silicon compounds, reinforcing my conviction that a hypothesis-driven, rational approach is the way to do science. EK: What about modeling molecules and chemical reactions in those early days? EN: In those days, I was not satisfied with the available molecular models such as the Dreiding Model, always trying to find better ways to explainmechanisms. As a graduate student, I participated in several summer schools and had a chance to network with eminent chemists. For example, I spent a week with Hisashi Yamamoto when he was very young andmet Donald Cram just at the beginning of his recognition chemistry. He extensively used CPKmodels to explain the chiral environment of binaphthol and other molecules. I wrote him a letter indicating that molecular models were not helpful in my chemistry studies. But Cram wrote back that CPK models represent reality, telling us exactly what’s happening, and they can predict the outcome of chemical reactions. I still remember his words: “I have considerable faith in CPK models for their predictive power.” EK: So, your frustration with the molecular models had eventually led you to pursue computational chemistry? Did you consider that time studying the complex mechanisms of organocopper and other organometallics reactions? From the movie “A Scientist and a Musician.” ©MONTAGE INC. 2021
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