Here we present the words chosen by two young men, Masato Tamaki and Yuki Yokogaichi.
They do know the burden of suffering, and they want to do something for the people who are
suffering in the Tohoku area that was struck by the earthquake and the Tsunami. They have
suffered Duchenne muscular dystrophy since they were very young, and the condition of health is not well now. So it is impossible for them to visit the region personally.
Therefore, they decided to choose Japanese words that express hope and compassion, and
publish them in an iPhone software as their prayer for the people.
These words are accompanied by Japanese calligraphy, and we hope that people who love
Japanese culture will appreciate this software.
The words chosen by them are very simple, but we hope these words will convey the sincere
and innermost compassion of these two young men.
Shigen Kawasaki, Masanori Fukui and Ryohei Miyadera
The managers of this project.
Acknowledgement of gratitude
Many people showed willingness to help them publish these words.
Hideko Kofuku, Koichi Takuma and Chisato Soma who are former teacher of these two young
men at Kwansei Gakuin High School visited these young men to discuss the project and help
them choose words.
Kentaro Murasawa and Issei Sakamoto chose words and translate them into English.
Madi Abelson and Chloe Kibble (founders of the club), Natascha Heckera, Jonathan Leeper,
Alison Zhong, Crystal Kao, Chantal Striepe, and Michael Grimes who are the members of
the Asian Culture Club in University School of Nashville checked and brushed up the
English.
Ryo Hanafusa designed the interface of the software.
Kazuhiro Nakata wrote the words in beautiful Japanese calligraphy.
This is a joint project of two high schools, University School of Nashville in the United
States and Kwansei Gakuin High School in Japan.
We are going to improve the software little by little, and we hope to collect donations for the
handicapped people who are suffering in Tohoku in the next version.