A Message from DG
- from the speech given at New Year's Party on January 7th -
 
Happy New Year to everybody! I am very glad to be able to present my penultimate new year's message to you. We have a lot to expect in the year 2002.

First of all, we can expect new physics results from our B-factory after the 100 fb-1 of new data, preferably towards the end of this summer. We hope to achieve this goal together with our competing and collaborating laboratory, SLAC.

Secondly, K2K experimental group is certainly facing a crucial year. How fast it can understand the cause of the last year's disaster and how fast it can restart the experiment demonstrates the ability of thegroup and will determine its future.

Thirdly, JHF will enter into the second fiscal year of its construction. Our collaboration with JAERI must become more mature. We should also be prepared to help JAERI as a good friend in its reform process. We all know that the success of the JHF project will be judged by how many excellent scientific results it will produce and, perhaps, how fast. It is, therefore, very important that we set clear priorities at this stage and design the organizational and the technical systems to support these priorities.

Fourthly, our AR radiation facility is now ready to resume its operation. Together with the 2.5 GeV photon factory we are certainly one of the world centers in this field. The last frontier of material science, i.e. the study on living forms, has just begun. We must strengthen our activities in this field and reform our organizational and technical systems towards this goal.

In addition to these positive challenges the year 2002 will also be a difficult year. There are at least three very difficult decisions to be made. KEK must choose a new leadership team.

KEK, together with other inter-university institutes of Japan, must choose what sort of an independent agency it will become. KEK, together with the world community of high energy physicists, may have to decide how to proceed with the linear collider project.

First, let me make just one recommendation about the new leadership of KEK. Choose a young person who can serve for approximately 10 years, just like the Fermilab director or the SLAC director. If she or he has breath and depth of vision, she or he will need that much time to realize it and it is definitely wrong to choose a person without future vision. Personally, an old soldier like myself, should start preparing to disappear. An old soldier has been wounded, becomes tired, and feels he can no longer perform his duty joyfully; then he makes up his mind to fade away.

Next, let me touch on the issue of the governmental reform of national institutes into an independent agency. It is a political issue, and as is always the case with political issues, we have passionate people and apathetics, agitators and followers, reformists and oppositions, genuines and phonies, officials and officials' pets, opportunists and enthusiasts, etc. etc. We must constantly ask ourselves what we are and what we want to become.

Finally, let me mention my thoughts on the linear collider project, briefly. I believe that the selection of the technology is still premature, although some people, especially those in DESY, may not agree with me. But, quite independently from that, we may be able to agree on the organizational structure of the project. We all seem to agree that the project must be the global effort. The organizational structure, therefore, must also be global. We have many models to learn from: the CERN model, the ESRF model, the United Nations University model, etc. etc. It will be wonderful if I were able to report to you on the agreed-upon structure in my (last) new year's message next year. Thank you.

January 7, 2002

Hirotaka Sugawara, Director General of KEK