SECTIO PRIMAWas born November 1932, in Taipei.
He was named HIRANO, Hideaki. Properly written in his mother tongue, it appears as the signum on the top right.
In his childhood, he mostly lived in some adjacent rural areas of Taipei, where it was hard for him to find many friends of his age.
At the age of four(probably), he was shaken by an image of a girl of an itinerant circus team. She was in spangled light green tights.
Her exquisite curvature was the first revelation of the world's wonder to him.
SECTIO SECUNDA
Otherwise, his regular friends were ducks, fish, frogs, locusts and dragonflies.
He became very good at climbing trees, carving a bamboo piece with a knife, etc.;
Also good at breaking and fixing back (in secret) his father's watch, clock, or electric-fan (maybe expensive for it was rarity at that time).
SECTIO TERTIA
Stayed there until 1946 when he was fourteen, and repatriated.
His most often pass-time during the high school years was reading math and physics.
Upon his father's wish, he entered into preliminary course of a medical school in Tokyo, which he spontaneously abandoned after two years and switched to sociology.
The reason of the switch-off was quite simple. Sociology seemed to him the best and the surest path in understanding history. (Whether it was true or not still remains to be sought).
SECTIO QUARTA
Appointed as an assistant professor, Hosei University in 1966.
Promoted to professorship at Hosei in 1971.
Somewhere in the middle of 1960s, he was shaken again by an avant-garde jazz player. The horn left subliminal image of the wilderness.
This lead him to his serious evaluation of the counter-culture movements in the United States during the so-called Sixties; eventually he wrote a couple of books concerning with it.
As the books been published, he became already fed up with the Japanese intellectual climate which helped to see the movements as just young people's frenzy, and either commercially or politically utilizable fad.
SECTIO QUINTA
Flew to the United States in the early 1979 through courtesy of UC, Berkeley and Professor Todd Gitlin. Stayed there until August 1980.
At the very beginnig of the stay, he got two-minded whether to explore the Bay Area where the movement first started, or to explore the western desert beyond Sierra Nevada.
He took little time to decide for the latter. You will see the photos in the gallery in this URL are the gift of the West.
He learned how to operate a motor-vehicle and got a driving license for the first time. Became good at driving a car, and good at fixing one too.
SECTIO SEXTA
He bought himself a used Pinto (Ford's now discontinued compact car) for $2,000 (at the exchange rate of 260 yen to a dollar). He drove it 40,000 miles trekking across or staying in every states west of the Mississippi, and a few more beyond it.
The western desert was another enchantment for his life. He never felt enough in sitting cross-legged on painted rocks or sagebrush dotted fields watching the sun painting clouds as it went down below the horizon.
Among the places he admired were Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Dakotas, etc.. He also met with good people in many small towns with no name.
A few weeks before his coming back home, with his beloved Pinto being sold for $1,000. He felt as if nothing more was left to do in the United States, and sad.
It was at that time he for the first time learned to play tennis and found it interesting.
SECTIO SEPTIMA
Later in Japan, he learned skiing and found it also enjoyable.
He belongs to the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Hosei University.
His campus is located at Machida-shi: the furthest part of the western greater Tokyo area, which is usually called Tama.
SECTIO OCTAVA
Tama is a name originally taken from a river: the word means "crystal" in Japanese.
He teaches "comparative study of cultures", "sociology" and "computer programming".
He studies G. W. Leibniz these years. Leibniz was the rarest figure in Europe, at least in the 17th century, who firmly held cultural pluralism. He will tell you some more about it, when you get to the page.
SECTIO NONA
He was endowed the title Professor Emeritus from the department of Hosei University in March, 2003.
Since then, he does not stay in the campus as frequently as he used to. Still, he can be reached at the same address posted below.