*Editor's Note: Professor Yoichi Sakakihara passed away in March 2025. This blog post was originally written in Japanese in November 2024.

As stated in the previous blog, I am approaching the end of my career as a physician. Recently, I closed my outpatient department at a hospital in Tokyo where I treated patients for nearly thirty years. The reason was that I had already exceeded the hospital's mandatory retirement age.

In the final appointments with patients, many expressed their gratitude, and I also received cards from children.

One young girl in elementary school who always talked to me about various topics during her short appointment gave me a card that she had illustrated with a cute cat, saying it had been fun talking with me during the examinations (actually, I had been busy communicating with her mother). I felt ashamed about my lack of consideration and not having communicated with her more. At the same time, I felt that I had responded to this child's feelings, however slightly.

I also received a letter expressing gratitude from a mother who, over ten years ago, trusted my casual response when I told her, "It will get better with medication," after her child was diagnosed with ADHD. She wrote "The ten years were a long time, and during this time, my child became an excellent high school student."

Reading over the letters at home, I feel the warm memories coming back, knowing I was able to empathize, even a little, to the feelings of such children and their parents.

Then and there, I understood. There is a saying about the role of doctors in society: "The great physician treats the state, the mediocre physician treats the people, and the inferior (basic) physician treats diseases. If possible, aim to be a great doctor." Up to present, I realized my goal has been to be a basic physician and that has been my purpose of life. I have pursued being a basic doctor, and have been well supported and rewarded by having such a goal.

Fulfillment of this purpose in life as a pediatrician is somewhat linked to pride in having helped others in the world a bit, but there may have been times when this pride expanded and became a slightly arrogant feeling. As a clinical physician, confidence in knowing the child and parents well may have contributed to the criticism I have written in this blog towards the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) and the medical world and at times, it may have sounded like an arrogant viewpoint.

Dr. Noboru Kobayashi, the founder of CRN and the Japanese Society of Child Science and most importantly, my mentor, was someone who never exuded arrogance. Even now, the following memory is inscribed in the back of my mind.

After Dr. Kobayashi entered a residential aged care facility, I visited him with several CRN staff members and reported on the recent work and activities of CRN and the Japanese Society of Child Science. Dr. Kobayashi stared deeply into my eyes and mumbled, "Have I done anything positive for society?" I shuddered to hear such words coming from a person like Dr. Kobayashi.

For someone like me who still speaks of my own pride, it is a state of mind that is still far beyond my reach.