Spirit of BU
Yeast Consortium Fellow, Ohsumi Frontier Science Foundation andKochi University of Technology, Department of Life Science, School of Environmental
Science and Engineering
Professor Kojiro Ishii
About six months ago, I was fortunate enough to be selected as a Yeast Consortium
Fellow for the first term by the Ohsumi Frontier Science Foundation.

I am very grateful tohave received this research grant when I needed some financial support.

First of all, I would

like to express my sincere gratitude to the foundation.
I moved to Kochi University of Technology, School of Environmental Science andEngineering just this spring.
environment.

It inevitably takes money and time to adjust to a new

Even now, every day feels like a fresh challenge.

Kochi University of Technology is a public university located in Kami, a small city ineastern Kochi Prefecture with a population of less than 30,000. The campus is surroundedby abundant nature and peaceful countryside, and my daily morning commute path to work
lasts along a riverbed and the beautiful rice paddy fields.
I was born and grown in the countryside, and the path to school during my junior andsenior high school years was also along a rice paddy field. And perhaps it is because I amgetting older, or maybe it is because of the TV dramas I am watching now, but I feel very
familiar with the farmers’ works along the daily morning path, which did not even catch myeye in my school days. More precisely, I often think that I would become such a farmer. Iwonder how I would deal with the fickle weather of Kochi, what I would feel during thetyphoon which often hits Kochi, what kind of certainty would make me decide the harvest
date of my precious chives and ginger, how anxious I would be about crop damages;...... Then,I further project myself in reality into that imagination and explore the possibility of whether
the skills, experience, and knowledge I have cultivated so far in my experimental research on
chromosomes could help the farming business somehow. And then I realize. My current
research will not be of help anywhere in the short run.
This contemplation has floated back and forth repeatedly on my way to work.

It is asimple thought and contains no disappointment. But the realization of this discrepancy thenbegs the question, who am I from the farmers’ perspective? At first, I convinced myself that I
might be an equivalent person who would be in charge of the arts and entertainment, or a rolesimilar to that of a person in charge of the skills. However, the creativity of basic science is ofa slightly different kind, and I could not shake off the feeling that something was not right.

Then, very recently, I began to think that it was the samurai. It may sound conceited.
However, I have no intention of discussing the hierarchy of positions.
great Shogun but, at best, a small country samurai.

My samurai is not a

But I believe that there are many

common aspects in terms of our mentality, our awareness of competing with competitors
worldwide, and the content of our current daily work which is deeply involved in education.
Above all, I firmly believe that I came to Kochi to become a lord of the land no matter how big
it is.
I have rambled on and on about sentences that have nothing to do with my research, butthere is a bit of foreshadowing in the content and structure of this article. This time, as a Yeast
Consortium Fellow, I received a request from the foundation to write an essay. And it wasexplicitly to say that the essay was expected to be similar to what each Fellow had written in
the free-entry section of the "Attitude toward basic research" section of the grant application,
which was excellent.

However, what I had written in that column was, to put it simply, alitany of resentment, resentment toward the research budget applications and position
searches I had done up to that point.

It was not something that could be summarized in anessay, even if I could candy-coat it significantly thick enough.
Then a ray of light came from my hobby.

I am an American football fan and enjoy

watching games on TV. This season of 2018 has been engaging with the emergence of newyoung playmakers, and one of the topics has been the resurgence of the traditional Chicago
Bears. Matt Nagy, who was 39 years old, was hired as the new head coach this season, andthe Bears has been brilliant so far. And importantly, the motto that Nagy used to control thehearts and minds of the team has also hit me as I am struggling.
"Be You.″
Nagy was reported to write these words in large letters on the meeting room wall at thebeginning of the season and strongly encouraged all players to express their natural andunforced individuality and humanity. This is it. This is precisely the beautiful expressionthat sublimates all the exasperation of the experience I described in my application for theFoundation's grant. It also represents the exceptional nature of the Ohsumi Frontier Science
Foundation that I could complete application honestly without having false myself explaining
the applied aspects of my research. Or it symbolizes the fact that the false myself did notwork in my job-hunting. The attitude of "Be You" and the pride of "Be You" were the spirit
and message I found in the Ohsumi Frontier Science Foundation which were delivered to me
all the way.

And they support me to stand on my own feet in the land of Kochi. I am very

grateful for that.
Of course, I had a hunch that the essay could not be completed simply by explaining thespirit of “Be You”. However, the moment I changed the notation of Be You to B U, everything
synchronized in my mind: it is entirely the spirit of “BU” which is equal to samurai spirit, assolid “bu” is a paraphrase of samurai in Japanese.

Everything can simply be based on thesamurai spirit, which is all genuine and unique to Japan. The heart of samurai convinces me
the relationship with farmers, whether or not my research is helpful in short-circuiting, myself-discipline in seeking the way, and my sense of battle and pride as a researcher.
Individuals may perceive things in a thousand different ways.

But, as a basic science

researcher, I will nobly continue to cherish the spirit of BU in the future.