Just four days before that, I had received an e-mail from him in which he sounded pretty positive, so the news was a great shock. Looking back, it was about a year ago (July 23rd, 2010) that I

was humbly allowed the opportunity to present an address of congratulations to him, as an old friend. We were gathered to celebrate the Professor, who was basking in the glory of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 2nd Class. This is the highest honor granted to civilians by the Cabinet Office, Government of Japan. Later, last May, at the 53rd General Assembly of the JSCN in Yokohama, an emergency Forum on “What we learned from this major disaster, and what we can draw on in the future” was held to discuss the role of child neurologists in facing with unprecedented selleck chemical devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant explosions in Northwestern Japan last March. The Forum was planned jointly by JSCN and the Japan Foundation of Pediatric Research, the latter of which is a new organization PLX3397 purchase created by Japan Pediatric Society (JPS). As the chairperson, Board of Trustees, JPS, Dr.

Kamoshita had been dedicated himself to establish the Foundation. Thus, he delivered a closing remark at the aforementioned Forum. On both occasions, his complexion and tone of voice were quite normal, so I did not have the slightest anticipation to receive a news of his passing so early. His death is a great loss not only for our JSCN and other many medical societies around Japan, but to the entire nation and society of Japan. The late Professor Kamoshita was born in the Muroran City, Hokkaido, Japan in 1934. He graduated from the Faculty Orotic acid of Medicine, University of Tokyo in 1959, and completed postgraduate study at the same University, majoring in pediatrics. His subsequent career is summarized in Table 1. He was also

active on numerous committees of the governmental, ministerial and public organizations (Table 2). In addition, in the capacity of the chief of the 7th Section (Life Science), Science Council of Japan, he issued a series of recommendations/expert opinions to the public on various contemporary controversial problems in life science and biological ethics, low fertility societies, assisted reproductive treatment, including surrogate motherhood, and so on. As a committee chairperson of the Social Security Council, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, he advocated an introduction of regionally autonomous, patient-oriented healthcare system, proposing a promotion of patient’s solidarity and information dissemination to broaden patient’s choices. Moreover, he played a pivotal role in numerous policies dealing with national and social issues such as medical education, health care systems, life ethics and children’s rights. He authored a number of influential books on fundamental mentality and thoughts, including biographees of modern great Japanese such as Inazo Nitobe [1], Shigeru Nambara [2] and Tadao Yanagihara [3].