Happy New Year from CRN!
We thank you for your continued support and would like to ask for your further assistance in this year. May the year 2017 be a fruitful one for you too.

The year 2016 was one of immense changes around the world. The rift-inducing withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, once considered a groundbreaking experiment in a world of endless conflict and war, has stunned not only countries of the EU, but people around the globe. Then in the United States, the outcome of the presidential election was a result quite different from what many had expected.

We are in constant pursuit of the new, and yet we shrink from sudden change. We advocate innovation, but detest the destruction of nature and support the preservation of endangered species.

Not only do our social and natural environments change, but we ourselves also undergo change through experience. Child abuse in Japan is increasing annually, and bullying and school non-attendance continue to rise, creating a troubling situation for parents, caretakers and educators. I am sure I'm not the only one to be concerned about the future of these children.

But even as the causes for concern multiply, there are those who do not change for centuries or millennia. Who are they? Where do they live?

They are the little children all around us.

Whatever their birthplace, irrespective of nation or family environment, human infants approach the world they are experiencing for the first time full of the curiosity. Regardless of the family into which they were born, they form a strong attachment with the person who takes care of them.

While more and more adults accumulate memories of unhappy experiences, infants are given new life and born into this world fresh and innocent. In this sense, the world is reset continuously at the micro level by the birth of infants.

2016 was a year of many changes, but I am reminded once again of the power of infants to purify the world and would like to reflect on the meaning of CRN's founding principle that "children are our future."