Cross-cultural communication （112）　

112) Surprise and Inspiration from Reading “The Diary of the President of Bank of Rwanda”
From around the spring of 2021, the ‘The Diary of the President of Bank of Rwanda’ Chuko Shinsho in Japanese started to stand out in newspaper book advertisements. I saw it and bought the book in May 2021. When I think of Rwanda, I vaguely remember that the ethnic conflict between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes in the mid-1960s made international headlines, but that's about it. Other than that, I only know that it was a former Belgian colony where French was the official language.

The Diary of the Governor of the Bank of Rwanda is the account of the struggles of Masaya Hattori, who was seconded from the Bank of Japan to serve as Governor of the Bank of Rwanda in the newly independent Republic of Rwanda, which is located in central Africa, in 1965. Hattori served as Governor for six years, returning to Japan in 1971, and publishing this book as a Chuko Shinsho the following year in 1972. Mr. Hattori passed away in 1999, but this book continued to be reprinted steadily, and in 2021, 22 years after the author's death, it became a bestseller..

To be honest, I was continually surprised, and after reading the book I was filled with admiration for Hattori's guts. When he was appointed to the position, it was 1965, and Japan was still in the early stages of its high-growth period, just 20 years after the end of World War II. Even though he was being sent to a small African country, he was the governor of its central bank. He must have felt like he was jumping off a cliff when he made the decision to take up the post. Everyone, please think about this for a moment. Even studying or training abroad in a country where you can't use Japanese is bound to be quite nerve-wracking. When I started my residency in America at the age of 28, I experienced a level of nervousness that made my stomach hurt. And now, all of a sudden, he's the governor of an independent country's central bank. Rwanda was formerly a Belgian colony, so the official language is French. So all information exchange at work and when travelling abroad is in French. Mr. Hattori graduated from Tokyo Imperial University with a degree in law, and after serving as a naval lieutenant in the Navy Reserve during the Pacific War, he was engaged in code-breaking, and then went on to work at the Bank of Japan. I think he probably studied French with great enthusiasm during his time at the old high school system and at Tokyo Imperial University before the war. However, after joining the Bank of Japan, he must have spent nearly 10 years during and after the war unable to work or study properly. This book taught me that even among the Japanese people, who were devastated by the war, there were elites with such pride.

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