●　the International Workshop,
　　“Radiation Diplomacy”: The History and the Present

　　The workshop will be held at the main campus of Kyoto University in the city of Kyoto, Japan, on November 3, a national holiday in Japan, 2018 year, sponsored by a research project financially supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the subject of which is devoted to the study on the “History of Radiation Effects Research and Protection Standards”（JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP16H03092）with the auspices of SOKENDAI (The Graduate University for the Advanced Studies) and the research seminar, "Exploring Life and Creation: The Studies of Umwelten," the Institute for Research in Humanities of Kyoto University.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　The Organizing Committee: Yasushi, KAKIHARA (Chair)
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Hiroshi, ICHIKAWA (Secretary)

　　on November, 3rd, 2018. 10:00～17:00. Entry — free.
　　at Kyoto University, Zinbunken, No. 101. Language – English.


　　On March 1st, 1954, the crew of a tuna fishing boat, Daigo Fukuryû-maru (Lucky Dragon No.5,) the crews of other vessels sailing around the same area, the native residents and the U.S. soldiers were exposed to heavy radiation caused by a hydrogen bomb test conducted by the U.S. troops around the Bikini atoll in the Marshal Islands. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effect of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) was established by a resolution of the United Nations general assembly in 1955, midst the intensification of peoples’ criticism against the hydrogen bomb tests raised all over the world. In 1958 and 1959, UNSCEAR became an international arena, or, rather, “a battle field” for a heated dispute upon the effects on living bodies of ionizing radiation between the delegates of the USA, the United Kingdom and other countries, evaluating the radiation effects not so serious, and those from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, insisting on the serious danger of radiation effects and the total prohibition of nuclear explosion tests. The proposal of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia was rejected in UNSCEAR, in spite that it helped UNSCEAR be more cautious of the effects of fallout on human health. Eventually, the Soviet Union and its allies accepted the standards of “Permissive Dose” or “Dose Limit” established on the initiative of the USA, the UK and their allies. Today, while UNSCEAR, only reluctantly, but, approved of the causation between the increase of pediatric thyroid cancers in Ukraine and the neighboring areas and the radioactive matters scattered by the Chernobyl catastrophe, it objectively provides some ‘authority’ for the Abe administration’s policy to cancel the governmental directions of emergent evacuation from the heavily exposed areas near the 1st Fukushima Atomic Power Station. Nowadays, a variety of countries accept the recommendations on radiation protection proposed by an international civil organization, the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP) which utilizes the scientific data and reports provided by UNSCEAR. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has also developed its safety standards of radiation exposure associated with the industrial and medical use of radiation. Thus, UNSCEAR, ICRP and IAEA form an international framework on the evaluation of radiation effects and the standards of radiation protection.
　　It is often suggested that UNSCEAR, ICRP and/or IAEA have played some “political” role based on the interests of the countries holding nuclear armaments and promoting nuclear power generation. Some kinds of “negotiations” are, indeed, necessary for the matters in the realm of “uncertainness,” whichever it is caused from the nature of the matter itself, or artificially from some “national interests.” Here, we shall call such an aspect of the history of radiation protection “Radiation Diplomacy.” Our international workshop will be devoted to the study on such “Radiation Diplomacy.”

　　The main topics of the workshop are
(1) To make clear the historical factors behind the establishment of the international framework of radiation protection, and the roles such framework has objectively played.
(2) To analyze critically the experiences and/or the indigenous contexts in some countries, including Japan, in which each country developed radiology and/or radiation biology (medicine) in inextricable connection with the international organizations, the foreign scientists, and/or other countries’ governments, and the way how each country established the standards for radiation protection under the influence of the international organizations.

　　 In each case of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bikini and Fukushima, perhaps except for the Chernobyl catastrophe, the Japanese people were threatened by the danger of radiation exposure. It shall be of great significance that such a workshop is to be held in Japan.

　　The program of the workshop is as follows;

1.Hiroko Takahashi (Nagoya University),
　　　U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Establishment of UNSCEAR (the United Nations Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) in 1955. [abstract]

2.Maria Rentetzi (National Technical University, Athens),
　　　Building up the "Global Experiment": IAEA’s Early Attempts to Standardize Radiation Dosimetry. [abstract]

3. Hiroshi Ichikawa (Hiroshima University),
　　　The "Unsurmountable Wall": The Radiation Effect Study in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and the Early 1960s. [abstract]

4. Hsiu-yun Wang (National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan),
　　　The Making of Nuclear Medicine in Taiwan, 1950s—1980s. [abstract]

5. Kenji Ito (SOKENDAI),
　　　Nishina Yoshio as a Biologist: One Origin of Nuclear Biomedical Research in Japan and its Transnational Context. [abstract]

6. Maika Nakao (Nagasaki University),
　　　Conflict, Collaboration and Diplomacy: American and Japanese Scientific Investigation of Nuclear Survivors in the 1950s. [abstract]

7. Yasushi Kakihara (Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology),
　　　Origins of Radiation Effects Research Community in Postwar Japan: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Fukushima. [abstract]

8. Tomoya Yamauchi (Kobe University),
　　　Excess of Childhood Thyroid Cancer Indicates UNSCEAR 2016 White Paper is Out of Science. [abstract]

9.Mariko Komatsu (The Graduate School, Hiroshima University),
　　　Citizenship in the Face of Disaster: A Case of Fukushima. [abstract]