Immediately after the spring break at the start of my junior year, I happened to notice a listing for the conservation laboratory in the new campus phonebook that had been delivered to my department's office. I asked our department's research assistant where the program's office was and what it dealt with, but the research assistant didn't know. The program was almost completely unknown around the school. It had been opened two years previous by an assistant professor of oil painting and a research assistant. Six months earlier, the research assistant had left to study abroad; and the program had just reopened with the addition of three students in the oil painting course. I visited the professor to ask about the program and after listening to what I had to say, he invited me to join them. He then added that "for you to come here because you are feeling unsettled will be problematic. So you should get the approval of your department's chairperson and then come back." The chairperson thought it would be fine since the university's objective was to offer education in both theoretical and practical matters and he wrote me a formal letter of introduction. This was when I changed my major.

At the time, only universities from the old system had graduate schools. However, as part of the transitional process leading toward also establishing them at new universities, it became possible to create specialized two-year programs and so the university started to put together such courses of study. The thinking at the time was that if there actually were a student of the sort being sought, creating a conservation and restoration science program in the painting department would do. Therefore, simultaneous to my graduation I became the program's first student. I have heard that it was the encouragement of the Council for the Protection of Cultural Properties, which today is the Agency for Cultural Affairs, which helped bring about the program's establishment. At the point that I finished my two-year program, the two-year specialized study program was abolished and the graduate school established, so I was the first and last student in the program.

The background of the professor who created the program was in art practice, so afterward scholars from the Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties' Department of Conservation Science and the National Research Institute of Police Science gave me lectures in the natural sciences. The Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties was small, with only three chemists, two physicists, and one biologist; and classes were held quite irregularly because they had to oversee all of the country's national treasures and important cultural properties. I started my studies, and by time I entered my fourth year had begun to understand quite a lot of things. When I became more serious about my studies, the professors could not provide good answers to the questions I started to present. This state of affairs could not be helped since here were very few specialists in this field.

I worked as an assistant for a year and a half after graduation, but then I passed an examination to study abroad and in autumn 1964 went on a scholarship from the Belgian government to become a research student at the Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique (IRPA).The institute's then-director, Dr. Prof. Paul Coremans, was also a specialist board member in the Division of Cultural Heritage of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He accepted research students from around the world at the IRPA on a yearly basis and trained them. There were 15 of us during my first term, with my classmates coming from 13 countries: two students each from Germany and Spain; and one each from Austria, Brazil, Cuba, France, Iraq, Mexico, Peru, Sweden, Thailand, and Yugoslavia. In addition, Prof. Tomokichi Iwasaki at the Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties came as a visiting scholar for six months and fell in with the research students. I believe that Professor Iwasaki, too, got a handle on the totality of preservation science during this period. During my second year, there 16 research students people from 11 countries: in addition to myself there were three from Yugoslavia; two each from India and Peru; and one each from Brazil, England, Ghana, Iraq, Japan, Nigeria, Norway, and Thailand. No students were taken during my third year there and I was the only one who remained, having been given a part-time researcher position. My two years at the IRPA turned out to be the key that decided what I would do later. At the time, most countries other than those of Western Europe were still developing. Through my friends of the time, I became intensely familiar with the problems that enveloped developing countries and their ethnic and racial difficulties.

Another thing I learned was how interesting joint research could be. Brought together at the IRPA were more than 80 people in the natural sciences, art history and archaeology, and photography, as well as conservators of all stripes. A variety of pieces to be repaired were brought to the institute from around the country. Monday mornings were the time for public inspection meetings in the institute. On these occasions, people would discuss conservation policies and present progress reports on their work. Over the course of several weeks we'd look into the historical background of pieces that had newly arrived at the institute, as well as past restoration work undertaken on them, the materials and techniques used in their creation, and the suitability or lack thereof of the materials to be used in the restoration. Each section in the institute would offer reports and then everyone together would examine them. At the end, Professor Coremans would appoint a supervisor for the project, but anybody could participate in the course of the investigation. From time to time, people would whisper to us research students about some of the problems being anticipated with a given project. The implication was that we should conduct some investigations of our own beforehand. I learned the significance and value of collecting information from across a broad spectrum in order to do better conservation work.