- Masahiro Morioka

International Research Center for Japanese Studies
3-2 Oeyama-cho, Goryo, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto 610-11, JAPAN

have if I find someone used the ideas that I had advocated earlier in a Japanese article. Probably I would have uneasy feelings, and try to find the possibility that the author read my paper or had a chance to hear my ideas in seminars, meetings, conferences and so on.

Similar ideas often come to some people's minds simultaneously. We cannot think completely alone. We discover newideas through communications and interchanges with our colleagues, friends, and readers of our writings. We unintentionally borrow someone's words, copy someone's ideas, and mistakenly believe those to be our own discovery. This is usual among us.

So, the important thing is to respect the author who created the original ideas if we find them after our writing the same expression, and to try to go further toward a place where the author couldn't reach at that time. While giving due credit to those before, progress is our obligation.