Dear Friends: I came to know Professor Michi Soga through our shared interest in international affairs at WMU. Michi’s willingness to work for international understanding full-time after he retired from teaching physics has brought incalculable benefit to WMU and especially to our fortunate students, and now to the increasing number of colleagues who specialize in studying Japan. Mrs. Ryoko Soga shared his concern for deepening mutual understanding between Americans at WMU and counterparts in Japanese universities. As Michi told me more than once, she eagerly used her important contacts to further our University’s relations in Japan. Throughout my career—both here and in China—I have never met anyone who has had a more profound an impact on the relations between an American university and counterparts in another country. Personally, I especially cherish in memory the wonderful two weeks in 1993 during which Michi allowed me to accompany him in visiting WMU’s Japanese partner institutions in Japan. No trip has been both so pleasurable and so educational for me. None has been so easy for me, either. Michi’s thoughtful grace and foresighted attention to all of the details of our travel made it such a joyous trip. I will never forget his special kindness in arranging an evening in a village that is famous for its unagi, one of my favorite dishes. Nor will I ever forget the many lessons that I learned. It was he who explained to me the origins of the Keio-WMU relationship and how a terrible tragedy had yielded a full generation of close friendship between two institutions. It was from him that I learned of the problems for higher education (especially the private sector) with a declining college-aged population. It was with Michi that I had the chance to meet the then President of Keio University and hear a candid account of his establishing a second campus away from the historic Keio home to foster the launch of new major subjects which the extant faculty of the time could not imagine introducing into the curriculum. On that trip Michi told me how he decided to leave Japan because of the negative effect of the student uprisings in the early 1970s. He recounted his first three years at a very prestigious college in the East, but at which he felt he would never feel at home, and his decision to accept Western’s invitation because he sensed that he and his family would end up truly belonging here. The Soga Center will remain as a tangible monument to Michi’s remarkable impact on this institution in which he found a home. An equally enduring monument lies in the hearts and memories of those of us who have had the honor and pleasure to work with Michi Soga and the privilege of calling Michi Soga our friend. With best regards, Dr. Timothy Light
Emeritus Professor of Comparative Religion
13