On the last blank page in my copy of the Japanese edition of "The Ambidextrous Universe," there is a postcard pasted. It was sent to me by one of the translators, Tsuboi, former Professor of the University of Tokyo, politely to say thanks to me for telling him about three or so of errors in their translation. --Now my story has just deviated from Feynman, but it naturally and quickly goes back to him.-- Tsuboi was also the translator of "Feynman Lectures on Physics (Mechanics)."

All the errors in translation happen because of difficulty in understanding a different culture in its broadest sense. I feel happy therefore to find some errors in a book and write about them to the translator to make his bridge across two cultures a solid one. Pointing out errors not only in translation but also in original writing has become one of my hobbies. On one occasion, again by Yukawa's mediation, this hobby led me to an episode about another photograph in which we find Feynman. I will write the episode later. Here I like to mention that this continued hobby of mine was stimulated by my pleasure of receiving Tsuboi's postcard.

Similarities between Schwinger and Tomonaga were described in a memorial address dedicated to Tomonaga. In the address it was referred that not only their scientific lives had had much in common but also their names included common meaning. The first Chinese character of Tomonaga's first name, shin, has the meaning of "to shake," and the first syllable of Schwinger's last name, Schwing, has the same meaning as this in German. Therefore, the address was entitled "Two shakers of physics."

I read the record of this address some years ago, and remembered only its title vaguely. To write about it here, I looked for the record in some of my collection of books for quite a while, thinking that the speaker had possibly been Freeman Dyson, who also made as important contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics as those made by the three Nobel-Prize physicists. The speaker was however Schwinger. (The record is given in "The Birth of Particle Physics," eds. L. M. Brown and L. Hoddeson, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 354-375; the address was delivered in Tokyo in 1980). One of the "two shakers" was the speaker himself! Only a super-scientist can use such a title.

I learned the publication of Sykes's book from "Reader's Catalog," to which I had just subscribed. For the sake of finding something to write about in this essay, i.e., to increase what little I can talk about Feynman in a manner like locking the garage after the car having been stolen, I ordered a copy of the book to be sent by airmail.

The book on Feynman's unfulfilled adventure, "Tuva or Bust," gave me a feeling that the passion of the author, Ralph Leighton, is in the foreground rather than that of Feynman. In Sykes's book, on the other hand, Feynman himself talks about his eagerness for traveling to Tuva. Near the end of Chapter 9 Feynman says as follows:

Many explorers like to go to places that are unusual, and it's only for the fun of it, and I don't go for any philosophical interpretation of "our deeper understanding of what we're doing." (Cited from C. Sykes ed., ibid.)

"This is Konuma of Keio University speaking. Did you send a letter to Professor Brown of Northwestern University around the middle of this month?"

He was a well-known theoretical physicist, Professor Michiji Konuma. Saying, "Yes," I was anxious about his next words. He might scold me for my sending a rude letter to Laurie Brown. However, he said,

"I have just been to his laboratory. He was very glad to receive your letter, and told me to tell his thanks to you on returning Japan.

I was quite soothed to hear this. In my letter to Brown, I had pointed out many translation errors and misprints in the book, "Hideki Yukawa 'Tabibito' (The Traveler)," translated by him and R. Yoshida. Konuma told me the following: Brown had been studying the history of elementary-particle physics in Japan, and made one of his students, Yoshida, translate "Tabibito" into English to use it as one of important sources of his study. Hearing about this, Konuma recommended Brown to publish the translation.

Yoshida possibly moved to U. S. A. in his childhood, or had interest neither in the geography nor in the history of Japan. Thus he gave wrong reading for many geographical and personal names. Brown improved English in Yoshida's translation, but naturally could not correct errors in the reading of Japanese proper nouns. I do not wish to disgrace Yoshida, who played a big role of introducing "Tabibito" to the world together with Brown, but would like to mention a few examples of errors, only to show the difficulty of reading Japanese proper nouns correctly.

In his autobiography, Yukawa mentioned about a priest and poet from Heian to Kamakura era, Saigyo-hoshi (1118-1190), a diplomat of Meiji era, Jutaro Komura (1859-1911), a philosopher of modern era, Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945) and a city in China, Tenshin. Yoshida wrote these names as Seiko-hoshi, Ikataro Komura, Ikutaro Nishida and Amatsu. Except the second, these are surely possible pronunciations. There may be some of you who thought that Yoshida's reading was correct in one or two of these.

In the recollections of his childhood, Yukawa wrote about street-stalls at a fair. He mentioned utsushi-e as well as ground-cherries and Kintaro wheat-gluten bars among those sold there. In the English version of "Tabibito," utsushi-e was translated as "shadow pictures." I told Brown, " Utsushi-e means both shadow pictures and transfer pictures, but shadow pictures are played rather than sold." I am however not confident about this. In my childhood transfer pictures were surely popular among children. In the days when Yukawa was a child, however, sheets for shadow pictures (the equivalent to slides of the present days) might have been sold, and they might have enjoyed a picture show by passing lamplight through them.

In another place of the English edition, I found the expression, "Schroedinger's unified wave theory." Concerning this, I wrote Brown something like this: Schroedinger considered that between the contradictory wave and particle natures of photons the former, reflecting the continuity of the natural world, was more basic, so that hado ichigen-ron here should be translated as "wave monism," which is to be contrasted with the wave-particle dualism that came later. It is rather strange that such an error remained after the check reading by Brown, a historian of physics.

Some days after I got his phone call, I had a chance of visiting Konuma at his laboratory. Then he told me that Brown would attend the International Symposium for celebrating the jubilee of the meson theory to be held in Kyoto in the summer of that year. He told me also that a German professor who stayed for many years in Japan was preparing a German version of "Tabibito."