Sazanami No. 34 (Special Issue)“40 Years of History”

40th Anniversary Commemorative Register

Sri Lanka's Nature“Why do we keep losing the forests for
Elephants?”
by Nilmini Ikemoto / Amarasinghe

September 2015
The Nature Conservation Society of Nishinomiya

1Sri Lanka's Nature“Why do we keep losing the forests for Elephants?”
Nilmini Ikemoto / Amarasinghe
Japan-Sri Lanka Friendship Association, Kansai“Ayubowan!”“Hi, everyone!” In the language of Sri Lanka,“Ayubowan!” means“May you be blessed with long life!”
I say it again.“Ayubowan!” Now, everyone, please repeat
it after me,“Ayubowan!”Thank you! We say it all the timein the morning, in

Fig.1

Nilmini Ikemoto / Amarasinghe

the afternoon, and in the Myevening.
Beloved Husband
We say it clasping our both palms together in front of the chest just like the way
you Japanese do before having each meal. To tell you the truth, I am really delighted tohave this wonderful opportunity to introduce to you my home country, Sri Lanka,
commemorating the 40th anniversary of The Nature Conservation Society of Nishinomiya.
As you know, Sri Lanka is an island nation located in Southern Asia, which is 1.5
times as large as Japan's Kyushu island, and 0.8 times as small as Hokkaido island.
The population is 22 million.
Do you know Wicky san, Mr. Anton Wicky. Yes! He was
loved by a lot of people. Because of the TV program,“Wicky san’s One-point English Conversation, whichbegan in 1979, and it ran for fifteen years. He is from
Sri Lanka too.

Fig.2

Sri Lanka

And here’s my mother, Ms. S. Wickrama
Arachchi,she is 70 years old now,” I am
My Beloved
Husbandreally grateful to her! I would not be here today without
her! And this is my husband. Yes, he is Japanese. When I say
that I am married to a Japanese, many people often ask what
my husband is like. He is a man just like this. He really loves
fishing! He fished up a big fish called “opaleye”

Fig.3

My Beloved Husband(Fig. 3) , which is the third biggest one at the record of that time in Japan. And
on a fine day, he again fortunately fished up a real big fish, 165cm long in the Indian
Ocean. Can you guess what kind of fish it was? It was a mermaid. Yes! It’s me! Hefished me up, not a fish, and I was very happy to get fished up by him. Of course,
I believe he was much happier than I. Now we have two children, the older goes to college
and the younger goes to junior high school.

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Sri Lanka is located 6,800km remote from Japan. It takes 9 hours
to get there by plane. We have direct flights from Tokyo.The timedifference is minus three and a half hours. Sri Lanka is really
beautiful，which is called “Pearl of the Indian Ocean.” Colombo
was the capital before, but now Kotte is the official capital.
Its formal name is Sri

Fig.4

Sitting President Maithripala Sirisena

Jayawardenepura Kotte. It is the longest name among the capitals in the world.
We changed the government this January. We have 8 world
Heritage sites in our country. The new President, whosename Maithripala Sirisena, is from an ancient city,
Polonnaruwa, which is one of the world heritage sites. He grew
up in a farmer family and he is going to make much of
agricultural policies.

Fig.5

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa

Sri Lanka also made the first female Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike in theworld, which was in the year of 1960. The gentleman dressed in white(Second from theright) is former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is very popular. He ended thecivil war which had been fought for 26 years. I am not so sure, but it may be in September
last year that Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Abe visited our nation. Former President
Rajapaksa made much of tourism policies, building highways and others, but the lifeof ordinary people did not get better off. That is why he lost the last President
election this January.
Sri Lanka used to be Ceylon. It is widely known for thedelicious tea, Ceylon tea. I am sure that you know‘Gogo no Kocha,
Tea in the Afternoon.’ In Japan, they use 100% of Sri Lankan tea
leaves. I often visit and teach children at many schools in Japan.
They are happy to hear this tea story and cannot help crying out
with joy. Yes, they really scream happily like this,“That is tasty!
I am a big fan of it! I really didn’t know at all that theFig.6 Tea Production areas
tea is from Sri Lanka!” And they get to love Sri Lanka as well as me.
Now, I am going to talk about the places producing the famous tea. The central partof the country is 2,000 meters above sea level and it is cold throughout the year,
the weather is just like Japanese autumn.

On the other hand, the places along thecoast, it is very hot like summer all the year around. The temperature is around
30°C. Sri Lanka is a small country. We can get to the mountains by train from theseasides just in 4 hours. So we need to prepare summer clothes as well as winterclothes for the trip. But please give it a try, it’s worth it! You can view truly

3wonderful and beautiful scenery.
There are mainly six principal regions planting tea – Nuwara, Eliya, Dimbula, Kandy
Uda Pussellawa, Uva Province and Southern Province. The Fig.6 is marked by different
colors. The tastes are subtly different with unique flavor in each place. The
leaf-picking work is done by women. Many of them are Tamils. There are two types ofTamils. Ones of them are those people brought in from India by England to cultivate
tea during the colonial era and the others of them are natives there. I am Sinhalese,
we are the majority of Sri Lankans, 70% of the whole population.
The export quantity of tea is the biggest in
the world. In fact, the quantity of productionin China or India is bigger than that of us, butthere is much more consumption in their own
countries.
As I said before, we have 8 World Heritage Sites
in our country, and they are loved by many people
within and outside Sri Lanka.

Fig.7

Sigiriya Rock Fortress

The very most famous one is “Sigiriya, a fifth century AD Fortress,”which is atremendous huge rock, 200 meters in height. It is said that long ago, there was aking who built a palace on the top of this rock and decorated its sides with colorful
frescoes. On a small plateau about halfway up the side of this rock he built a gateway
in the form of an enormous lion. The name of this place is derived from this structure-- Sihagiri, the Lion Rock. Sigiriya today is a UNESCO listed World Heritage Site.
It is the most visited historic site in Sri Lanka. We can find many paintings ofbeautiful women on the surface of the rock.
Sri Lanka is a nation that used to have a lot of kings. The Buddhas' images andtemples are registered as World Heritages, which were made after the introduction of
Buddhism. They are as huge as the pyramids of Egypt.
Dambulla cave temple also known as the Golden Temple of Dambulla is a
World Heritage Site(1991) in Sri Lanka, situated in the central part of thecountry. It is the largest and best-preserved cave temple complex in Sri Lanka.
There are more than 80 documented caves in the surrounding area. Major
attractions are spread over five caves, which contain statues and paintings.
These paintings and statues are related to Gautama Buddha and his life. There area total of 153 Buddha statues in those caves.

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Polonnaruwa, the second most ancient kingdom of
the country is one of the World Heritage Sites. And
the Gal Vihara is a rock temple of the Buddha situatedin the ancient city of Polonnaruwa in North Central
Province, Sri Lanka. The central feature of thetemple is four images of Buddha, which have been
carved into the face of a large granite rock.

Fig.8 Reclining Buddha's Image

The images consist of a large seated figure, another smaller seated figure inside
an artificial cavern, a standing figure and a reclining figure. Reclining image
represents the peacefully dying Buddha attaining Nirvana. Standing image represents
Buddha who is praying under the Bo tree after he attained enlightenment.
Sri Lanka used to be a colony of several nations for around 450 years since 1505
AD. First, it was that of Portugal, Netherlands and then England. It achieved its
independence in 1948. The name of it was changed to Sri Lanka, a Sanskrit word, meaning“The Sacred Island” from Ceylon in 1972. The English called the island as Ceylon.
In 1985, a very beautiful House of Parliament and a general hospital were built
in Kotte thanks to the ODA of Japan. And then, this city became the official capital.
The civil war for 26 years was ended in 2009. My sister's husband died during thewar. He was a colonel, working as a commander for the intelligence headquarters. Still
now, there are a lot of land mines buried in the northern part of the country and they
are deadly dangerous. So the Tamils originally living there still cannot go back totheir home. Japanese government sent 164 million Sri Lankan rupee in order to remove
those land mines this March.

Fig.9

The 2nd President Jayawardene

Do you know this gentleman?(Fig.9)

Fig.10

Dividing and Governing Plans(in 1945)

He is Mr. J.R. Jayawardene, one of the Sri

Lankan Presidents. It was thanks to him that Japan was not divided and governed. There
was a plan to divide Japan into several parts and govern it like the Fig.10 just after
the WWⅡ. Sri Lanka was air raided by Japan army in April, 1942 at Colombo andTrincomalee where Britain's army base was. The war World WarⅡ was ended on August
15th, in1945.

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Japan would not be prosperous and peaceful as today if it had been divided andgoverned like the many other countries. When the peace treaty was held in 1951,
the then Ceylonese Finance Minister J.R. Jayawardene participated in it and made areally important and helpful speech to the then Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida. A major
player in providing support for a post-war free Japan was the delegation from Ceylon.
Mr. Jayawardene spoke in defence for a free Japan and informed the conferenceof Ceylon's refusal to accept the payment of reparations that would harm Japan's
economy. His reason was "We in Ceylon were fortunate that we were not invaded,
but the damage caused by air raids, by the stationing of enormous armies under
the South-East Asia Command, and by the slaughter-tapping of one of our maincommodities, rubber, when we were the only producer of natural rubber for the
Allies, entitles us to ask that the damage so caused should be repaired. We do
not intend to do so for we believe in the words of the Great Teacher, Buddha,
whose message has ennobled the lives of countless millions in Asia, that
“Hatred ceases not by hatred, but by love.”
Minister Jayewardene's speech was received with resounding applause. Afterwards
the New York Times stated, "The voice of free Asia, eloquent, melancholy and still
strong with the lilt of an Oxford accent, dominated the Japanese peace treaty
conference today." And then, Sri Lanka and Japan built a good relation the following
year. Since then, we have been helping each other for these 63 years until now.
By the way, there is plenty of nature in Sri
Lanka. Now, I would like to introduce it to you. I havealready introduced our delicious tea, so now, let’stalk about jewelries. We have 70 famous jewels in ourcountry. These people are Britain's Royal family
members and they wear the jewels of blue sapphire from
Sri Lanka.(Fig.11)

And my name is Nilmini,

Fig.11

Royal Family Members“Nil” means blue, and “Mini” means jewel, that is to say, the name of “Nilmini”
means “Blue Jewel,” which is Blue Sapphire. To tell you the truth, I am reallydelighted and grateful to my mother for giving me such a beautiful and elegant name.
Next thing to introduce to you must be a variety of delicious
fruits. Bananas, Mangos, pineapples, papayas, avocados,
durians and rambutans etc. Even bananas, we have twenty kindsof them. To talk about palm, the coconut, we always use coconut
milk for cooking and also drink them. It has liquid inside
tasting like POCARI. We can make Sri Lanka

Fig.12

Variety of Delicious Fruits

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Curry by using soft meat inside it. It is said that coconut oil is effective to control
and Alzheimer’s disease.
And comes next, Sri Lanka is the kingdomof spices.(Fig. 13).
There

are

a

varietyofherbs,

ofcourse! These spices are very good to ourhealth. Ayurveda is known as a new
medicinal science, but to tell you thetruth, it is a traditional therapy
originated from 5,000 years ago. This isa method of treatment using medicinal

Fig.13

Precious and Useful Spices

spices and herbs and getting us relaxed mentally as well as physically, which attracts
many people’s attention all over the world.
In

Japan,

becausemany

people

want

to

get

skin-treatment,anti-aging,

fatigue-relieving, stress-reducing and so on, Sri Lankan cuisine and Ayurveda cuisine
are getting loved and more and more popular.
Now to talk about animals, we have the biggest animals
both on the land and in the sea. Yes, they are elephants
and blue whales.(Fig.14) I think that there are no othercountries than Sri Lanka where we can see both the biggest
animals in a country. The whale can be watched between
in November and April in the southern ocean area.
The whales are 30 to 33m in length, weigh 200 to

Fig.14

Blue Whale!

220t. Their blood vessels are big enough to pass the body of an adult human being
through, and more surprisingly, their heart is as big as a compact car. Other thanthese animals, you can see leopards and peacocks too! Peacocks are so many as well
as monkeys. There are many kinds of them.
However today's main theme I want to talk about must be elephants. There are 40,000
Asian elephants in the world, and we have 6,000 of them in Sri Lanka. The survey in2010 shows that there are 8,500 of them, it seems that they are increasing a little
more. In Sri Lanka, elephants have been living along with Buddhism culture, so the
Buddhist activities cannot be carried out without them.

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They train some of them and use them for the
ceremonies. Adorning them with some gorgeous
garments and light them up, and parade 80 to 100
elephants along with drums or flutes music.(Fig.15
Perahera festival) People from all over the worldcome to Kandy City in the central area to view andenjoy it. Especially, once in a year, they show

Fig.15 Perahera Holy Festival
the Sacred Tooth Relic of Lord Buddha, they choose the greatest elephant and carry
the image on its back. And other than that, a lot of elephants are used for tourism
business.
And you know what? We built an orphanage for elephants in Pinnawela for the firsttime in the world. They take care of baby elephants that get hurt or get lost in thewoods. There are a lot of tourists visiting the orphanage. The orphanage is taking
care of 70 to 80 baby elephants and can be seen the scenes of them coming friendly
near those tourists. You can even bottle feed baby elephants with milk.
In Yala National Park, you can view the wild life of elephants. There are 24 naturalparks in Sri Lanka. The tea farm lands are 500,000 acres, Botanical gardens covers
2,500,000 acres, and there are also 350 waterfalls and 25,000 lakes. There are a lotof lakes, which is because kings made a lot of them in order to produce a lot of crops.
There are 16 rivers more than 100km long, the longest one is 335km which is 16%of space of the nation. Yala National Park is located on the southern end. The tsunami
caused by the earthquake off the coast of Sumatera Island, Indonesia in 2004. It is
4,000km remote from the seismic center. But many any tourists coming to the park werevictimized, 19 Japanese died too at that time. And there are many leopards in the park.
4% of the forests disappeared these 10 years.
It may be necessary if we need to develop
economically but I cannot help feeling a little
sad. I hope that we can develop economically andprotect our precious nature at the same time .
Elephants live in the dried areas and go to thenearest rivers or lakes. They enjoy playing withwater and washing their bodies too.

Fig.16

Enjoying Bathing!

They sometimes smear the mud to protect their bodies or skins from the heat of thesun. So they cannot live on without water. In Sri Lanka, there are a lot of elephants
and in fact they are good friends and helpful partners to us. They live together withpeople and help people with agricultural and religious activities.

8Unfortunately, we are experiencing severe
trouble recently. The Fig. 17 shows two elephants
are nosing in a shop that I think is a mobile phone
shop, and I don't think that they are buying
phones there.
There are more and more people. They cut down
the forests, build their houses and cultivate

Fig.17 Elephants Shopping?
lands around them. Elephants are losing their place to live, cannot get their food,so they have no other way but to come to the places people changed into crop fields.
And they get into trouble to come across with the people. There are some people who
even take up the guns to shoot these elephants. It is a truly sad thing. And there
are some elephants that eat garbage get sick.
There are railways from the mountains to the seasides, but there are no fences toprotect elephants or other animals. They walk across anywhere and often get hit by
the trains. One or two of them are killed each month. And some of them fall into thetraps for catching wild boars and get hurt heavily and die. There are also baby
elephants fall into the holes here and they cannot climb out. Usually, there are no
one near around and they cannot be saved. If fortunately the holes are large, theirparent elephants come and save their baby elephant.
During the civil war, The terrorists composed of the Tamils occupied one third of
the country and they control almost the whole forests. So there are a lot of land mines
there. Elephants don’t know about it. They step on them and get hurt and killed.
A greater problem,
one that also exists inJapan,

is

the

rich

livingabroad

that

order

ivory

for

high-end piano keys,
Fig.18
Encountering
an poorelephanton the way
to school– safer on a bus!
name seals, and more.
This
causes theto believethat
if

they only kill an elephant, they can receive large sums of money. Now there are evenpeople who capture young elephants and sell them. For this kind of business, oneelephant can sell for 50,000 to 170,000 rupees within the country. In some cases,
hunters kill the parent elephants in order to capture these young elephants. Becausemuch of the country is forest, there are roads that cross through the forests connecting
the various villages. Young children travel these roads on the way to school, sometimes
encountering wild elephants; occasionally the elephants attack.

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Recently, one organization has bought buses to provide safe transportation forthese schoolchildren (Fig.18). We ask for your support in order to carry out more ofthese sorts of projects. Although they are very big, elephants are actually delicate
animals.
They often die, for example, when being transferred from one place to another; wehope you will support efforts to procure trucks better able to transfer them. Despite
efforts, however, 30,000 elephants are killed for their tusks each year around theworld – it is a tragedy. Also, in Sri Lanka, 80-100 humans and 200-250 elephants dieeach year due to accidents involving human-elephant interaction. We want to eliminate
these needless deaths.
Some regions have begun building electric fences (Fig.
19) to prevent elephants from leaving the forest. There arealso recent efforts to plant thorny trees, such as lemon andbougainvillea, to act as a natural fence. In the northernpart of Sri Lanka, such natural fences cover 33 km andsurround 10 villages. Elephants can also sense durian Fig.19
trees, Installingand stay awayfrom fencesthem.
electric
The smell might be part of the reason, but the fruit is also spiny; if one falls on
the elephant it will hurt even the thick skin of an elephant. Because they never comeclose to these trees, we expect the natural fences to be effective. Hopefully they
will help …
Elephants can perform art. There are places where they perform in circuses or draw
pictures. But these are not natural behaviors of elephants; they are learned. The
teaching methods, however, can go so far as to be considered abuse. In Sri Lanka, too,some tourism operators force elephants to walk up to 7 hours a day with 8 people on
their back at once. We must put a stop to this, and I would like to put in place somemeasures to help do so. If you research elephants, you’ll find lots of sad and painfulstories. We must take action.
Former President Jayewardene helped bring peace
to Japan. When he died at the age of 90, he donatedhis corneas; one went to a woman in Nagano
Prefecture, and another to a Sri Lankan citizen.
Following in the footsteps of the former president,
I too hope to continue friendly relations between
these two countries.
Fig.20

Leaflet asking for donations of glasses

10Sri Lanka donates more blood than any other country. There is also a National Eye
Bank, which donates more corneas than any other country. More than 59,000 have been
donated to countries around the globe, including almost 5,000 corneas to Japan alone.
Whenever I give a talk or presentation, I always ask everyone to donate glasses (Fig.
20). The glasses I collect are given to Megane no Miki, a company that supports us
by repairing and washing the glasses before they are sent to those in need throughour Japan-Srilanka Friendship Association. I am so happy to be receiving so many
donations today. I had a great time speaking to everyone today. Thank you.

Nilmini Ikemoto:Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Came to Tsurumi Ryokuchi, Osaka in 1990 to work as acompanion at the International Garden and Greenery Exposition. She married a Japaneseman she met there, and has lived in Osaka for 23 years. She is also a mother of two.
Nilmini teaches English at local kindergartens and elementary schools and Sinhala at
the Asian Library in Awaji, while also serving as civil ambassador for the Takarazuka
International Friendship Association. She has plans to teach Japanese people about
spices through e-learning methods, and introduce Ayurveda treatment to them as well.
Please feel free to contact her if you are interested.
http://you.gr.jp/nilmini/index.html
A thank you to those who donated glasses
In 1952, the then Finance Minister of Ceylon (and later Sri Lankan President) J. R.
Jayewardene cited a Buddhist saying: “Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by
love.” This year marked the beginning of diplomatic relations between Japan and Sri
Lanka as the Sri Lankan government relinquished their right to demand reparations fromJapan. One of the results of this new partnership was that Jayewardene donated oneof his corneas upon his death to a Japanese recipient; this tradition continues today
as many corneas are sent from Sri Lanka to recipients around the world each year. As
Sri Lanka is still a developing nation, many of its citizens cannot afford glasses
for their own eyesight. With this in mind, I kindly ask you to donate any unused glasses
you may have – any pair will do for those who are in need. I extend my deepest gratitude
for your heeding our call and responding with generous donations.
Nilmini Ikemoto11

Thank you so much!
We put out a call for donations of unused glasses to our organization and the Koshien
Rotary Club in order to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Society. Many people
responded and we were able to collect 416 pairs of glasses that were then given to
Ms. Nilmini Ikemoto. With corporate help we will have them cleaned and repaired before
being sent to the people of Sri Lanka. We are very humbled by your generosity and areglad that a few more people will experience a better quality of life as a result. Thankyou very much for your contributions.
The Nature Conservation Society of Nishinomiya

Donated Eyeglasses!

Truly Heart-Warming!

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Sazanami No.34 (Special Issue)“40 Years of History”
40th Anniversary Commemorative Register
Published September 2015
by The Nature Conservation Society of Nishinomiya
e-mail: sxmm27582@iris.eonet.ne.jp
Website: http://nisinomiyasizen.jimdo.com/
Printed by Wakakusa Printing Inc.
3-1-8 Komatsu Minamimachi
Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture
Tel: 0798-48-3419
FAX: 1798-46-4525

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Fig. 14

Blue Whale!

Fig.
Bathing!
Fig.1617 Enjoying
Window-Shopping？
Fig. 15

Perahela Holy Festival

Fig. 8

Reclining Buddha's image

Fig. 13

Precious and Useful Spices

Fig. 12

Variety of delicious Fruits

Fig. 11

Royal Family Members

Fig. 10

Dividing and Governing Plans

Fig. 9The 2nd President Jayawardene
Fig. 7Sigiria Rock FortressFig. 214

Fig. 6

Tea Production areas

Fig. 5Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa

Fig. 4Sitting President Maithrpala Sirisena

Fig. 3

My Husband!

Fig. 19

Installing electric fencing

Fig. 20

Leaflet asking for donations of glasses

Fig. 18

Encountering an elephant on the way to school – safer on a bus

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