President's Welcome (SUMS)

Welcome Message
from President Tadao Bamba
(Shiga University of Medical Science)

I am delighted that 13th International Conference on the Literature of Region Nation is being held beside Lake Biwa, the biggest lake in Japan, organized by Professor Reiko Aiura of Shiga University of Medical Science. I, as president of SUMS, would like to welcome you all heartily from all over the world to the conference which is held in Asia for the first time. Lake Biwa, being one of the ancient lakes in the world, was conformed about 3,000,000 years ago as a fresh water lake. The lake has more than 50 kinds of fish of its own in the relations with water foul and they are registered in the Ramsar Convention list. Recently contamination and pollution of the lake once became problematic, but with the collaborations of residents of Shiga and the local government, the situation has got much improved. With the influence of global warming it has become apparent that the lake's natural vertical circulation has almost stopped, causing Oxygen supply to the lower layers of the lake's floor. We will have to prevent this kind to go further with wisdom and collaboration of the world widely. Now is the time we need to know more and more about other countries and their people to communicate better in as many ways as possible. Literature is one of the biggest ways to know about human kind. Speaking of our local capital, Otsu , the city where our school is, was once an ancient capital of Japan from 667 AD for several years, and it has been important traffic point of Japan, which was often depicted in Ukiyo-e pictures of the 53 inns of Tokai-do. I would like you to feel both Japanese traditional culture in Shiga and Kyoto, and at the same time to be aware of modern ecological problems we face nowadays. I hope this conference will be a great success and help you to research human nature and to understand it better under the symbolized topic of "West meets East" in a global scale.