Prof. Yoji Totsuka, Director General of KEK

When you need to make a decision, it is useful to have advice from influential people whom you trust. As the Director General of KEK, this was what Yoji Totsuka did to lead the future of high energy physics in Japan when ICFA announced the technology choice for the ILC. He set up a private ad hoc committee at KEK to discuss how Japan should play a major role in this international scientific project at an unprecedented scale.

The committee first met on 25 February 2005 and was chaired by Hirotaka Sugawara, executive director of the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI) and former director general of KEK. The rest of the initial eight members included Akihito Arima, nuclear physicist and the chairman of the Japan Science Foundation, also former minister of MEXT, Yoshitaka Kimura, accelerator physicist and professor emeritus of KEK, Takeshi Komura, governor of Development Bank of Japan and former high-ranking official of Ministry of Finance, Takeshi Sasaki, professor at Gakushuin University and former president of University of Tokyo, Seiichi Takayanagi, techonogy advisor of TOSHIBA Corporation, Yuichi Takayanagi, director of Tamarokuto Science Center and former science commentator of NHK, and Muneyuki Date, president of Foundation Advanced Technology Institute. Starting with the fourth meeting on 11 July 2005, Motoyuki Ono, president of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and former vice minister of MEXT joined the committee.

As Totsuka's term as the director general will end this month, the committee issued an interim report as a summary of their discussions on 2 March 2006. One of the recommendations to add an Asian sample site for the technical and cost evaluations was already met on 4 March, and the report has been submitted to the Change Control Board for BCD.

Read the Interim Report

-- Youhei Morita