Introduction

　 I taught Biology at a high school for more than 30 years. In the 1960s the study of biology at the university level had progressed only to molecular biology. After that, biology research developed greatly and eventually the gene was deciphered. I understood such biology and I have researched into visual pigment (Rhodopsin) on a molecular level.
However, I never felt fulfilled. The biology which I wanted to be devoted to was the "research of Japanese monkeys", which is currently the focus of a researcher at Kyoto University, and "research of honeybees", which Frisch was doing in Germany in those days.
Even when I was a high school teacher, I not only taught the then current knowledge from the textbook, but I would rear creatures in my room and carry out the lesson of Biology directly, and always kept and reared MEDAKA (Oryzias latipes), KAIKO (silkworm), and SYOJYOUBAE (Drosophila). I have asserted that teaching biology is "Living thing education".
Now, in the 2000s, I have the impression that some research fields of biology may also have changed. How many living things are on the earth? What is the structure by which many are useful and how has their lives changed? This is the big subject of researchers. I could observe the Japanese honeybee and think how to live with living things.

Encounter with a Japanese honeybee

These honeybees were found making a nest under my family gravesite in the spring of 1994. Because I had wanted to keep honeybees I bought some apiculture books and read them, shortly after moving the bees of this grave to a hive.

Grave of my home	The entrance of a nest at the grave

However, the honeybee which lives in this grave was not the Western honeybee, which is used for most apiculture, but instead it is a Japanese honeybee which lives in the Japanese Islands. Shamefully I did not know of the existence of this Japanese honeybee until I had meet the bees of this grave. I was self-confident since I had eagerly listened to biology lectures at the university.I have eagerly attended university lectures, but the Japanese honeybees was not described in the lecture which I heard. The books which I have so far read, were not written about Japanese honeybees either, although in Kuwabara's work "an animal and solar compass", there was a section on them.
Then, I investigated the Japanese honeybee, and I became interested and read carefully Okada's primary work "Japanese honeybee ". In this book, I found the statement that the "Japanese honeybee is in a crisis of extinction", and it became my volition that the Japanese honeybee breed should be increased.

What do we see through a honeybee?

I think that the best way in order for us to live and to know of life, is to pursue thoroughly how one species lives. The Japanese honeybee is optimal for such an objective. This is because the bee has lived together, and has been maintained by man.
In traditional apiculture, people take in swarms from nature and extract honey. The colony which swarms from the beekeeper's colony, returns automatically to nature. In recent years, such a bee's life will be lost by decreases in the population of rural areas and by mountain afforestation. There was a fear of extinction of this species. However, the honeybee was increasing in the city area. The reason is not truly clear. However, I think that it is surely related to the life of people. Thus, one species prospers or comes to ruin with regards to the life of people. I think that to get to know the life of the Japanese honeybee may be a good example in considering the extinction of many species which are now living on the earth.

Knowledge is established by research.

I continued to teach high school for as long as 30 years. I might think that from the beginning, when I became a teacher, that it is a small thing, that I have to do　science research personally. While learning science, I was most impressed that it was a time of hearing the talk of those who are actually personally doing science research and a time of reading books written by people who had personally done science research. I thought that difficulties, a flash of ideas, and failure in research is understood only by the person who has done science research.
Research of visual pigment which I tackled first, or research of the Japanese honeybee which I am tackling now, also has many failures and successes by the time one new item of knowledge is acquired. I think that this is very important for scientific study - following the footprints of others in such research and to the person who is studying. I will be very happy if this homepage can contribute.