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As a lot of us know, you have been interested in Greek culture in recent years. Can you talk a little bit about your interest in Greek culture and all things Greek?
It started when I got the Humboldt Fellowship from the German government. It is not something you apply for; Gerd Hansen of Kiel and Reinhard Hujer of Frankfurt recommended me. I went to Germany twice for three months, once in 1988 and once in 1990; on my first visit, I thought I should study the history of Germany, how the nation started. It goes back to the so-called German race moving from the north to the south, but I was wondering how people went to the north to begin with. So I found out about the movement of the Indo-Europeans, which originated somewhere between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea; they started moving, some toward India, some toward Europe, about 4000 b.c. In about 1600 b.c. , they invaded Greece and established so-called Mycenaean culture.
In Greece there was already a very important culture called Minoan culture, but the Mycenaean civilization conquered the Minoan civilization. Mycenaeans started their own script, but this script was not very suitable to write down the Greek language; each letter is either a vowel by itself or a combination of consonant and vowel. This is actually the way Japanese letters are written, which is one of the connections between Japan and ancient Greece.
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You told me earlier that some of the connections were with mythology or the religious structure.
The reason I initially started getting interested in Greece was that my interest in the history of Germany went further and further back, but after I started studying Greek culture, I got more and more interested because of similarities with Japanese culture. Both Greek and Japanese religions have many gods, who very much behave like human beings, and there are many other similarities between the two religions. Another similarity is that there is no clergy in either religion, nor any theology; it is almost like part of daily life. There is no metaphysical foundation for Greek theology, like there is for Buddhism and Christianity. There is no regular service,...