Cross-cultural communication （22）　

22）Memories of British doctor B
Dr. B, who I became friends with at CFK, came to Japan under a Japan-UK agreement established during the premiership of former Prime Minister Fukuda, and was a doctor who could provide medical care mainly to his own countrymen in Japan. He was a still active British gentleman in his mid-70s when we first met in 2000.

When we first introduced ourselves to each other, we discovered a surprising coincidence. Dr. B had trained at the American Hospital of Paris (AHP) when he was young (in the 1950s). AHP was, of course, the hospital where I had been renting a consulting room and practicing medicine for two and a half years since 1995. I said, “So we are both alumni of AHP. he said, “No, no, I was a resident at the time, and Dr. Kido was a full-time practitioner of internal medicine. So you are much more highly ranked than I am.” He was modest in the Japanese way. From there, the two of us talked about Paris, a place we both had fond memories of. Dr. B was married to a French woman at the time. It is said that his French improved dramatically after he started living with his French wife.

In the 1970s, Dr. B was selected as one of five British doctors who were able to practice medicine in Japan under a Japan-UK agreement, and he opened a practice in Kobe. He had divorced his first wife, who was French, and remarried a Japanese woman, and they lived in a stylish house in the hills of Kobe. I was invited to a few of the home parties there. At the time I got to know him, he was not doing much in the way of daily medical practice, and was only doing honorary work such as being a medical advisor to the French Consulate and Air France. He also taught medical English at the Osaka City University School of Medicine, and he was popular with medical students who wanted to study abroad. In terms of languages, in addition to French, he also had a deep knowledge of Latin. I knew a woman who was a friend of CFK's and who had studied Latin with him.

When Dr. B was over 80 years old, he became ill and asked me to take over his work related to France. So I took over as the doctor for the French Consulate and Air France. (The Air France position was taken over by another doctor first, and then passed to me a few years later.) I heard that Dr. B passed away in his mid-80s in 2012.

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