The main purpose of this short essay is to mitigate harsh debate about ‘comfort women.’ Although it is not expected to be resolved in the foreseeable future, understanding the structure of the problem based on the fact-finding and legal analysis would enable the two peoples to seek a better solution. The author claims that: (1) although some of the historical facts remain unclear, and some people tend to focus too much attention on fact-finding, from the viewpoint of international law, sufficient evidence has been revealed to confirm Japan’s responsibility for its conduct in the Second World War, and Japan does not and should not deny the relevant historical facts; (2) Japan was absolved of its responsibility by the 1965 Agreement in a legal sense; and (3) having said that, this case reveals the limits of the positivistic legal approach, and the Asian Women’s Fund can be one legitimate way of dealing with this problem.

The waste substrate from sawdust based cultivation of Heicium erinaceum was reused. This process was conducted three times. Even when the waste substrate was reused at three times, the yield of fruiting bodies was equal to that of fresh medium. However, the yield of the 1st-waste substrate was the best of all waste substrate media and the yields of waste substrate media deceased with recycling times. The yield of the 1st or the 2nd waste substrate medium increased by 1.3-1.4 times compared with that of the fresh medium. The content of low molecular α-glucan and β-glucan of the 1st or the 2nd waste substrate medium increased and C-N ratio of the 1st or the 2nd waste substrate medium decreased. These results suggest that low molecular glucan and N sources contribute to increasing fruiting bodies. It was clear that the 1st and the 2nd waste substrate were useful for the cultivation material of Heicium erinaceum.

We reported a P/M soft magnetic material with core loss value of , which is lower than that of 0.35mm-thick laminated material, by using high purity gas-atomized iron powder. Lack of mechanical strength and high cost of powder production are significant issues for industrial use. In order to achieve both low core loss and high strength by using inexpencive powder, the improvement of powder shape and surface morphology and binder strength was conducted. As the result, the material based on water-atomized powder with 80 MPa of TRS and 108 W/kg of core loss (W10/1k) was achieved.

For pure Molybdenum carburized in mixed gases of argon and carbon monoxide, microstructural observations were carried out. X-ray diffraction analysis for carburized specimens revealed that brittle - layer hardly formed in the case of low carbon monoxide concentration. Fracture strength of the specimen carburized at 1673 K for 16 h is about 550 MPa higher than that of the un-carburized specimen. SEM observation revealed that with increasing carburizing temperature, the region demonstrating a transgranular fracture mode progressed towards the center of specimen. This result means that the grain boundaries were strengthened by the grain boundary diffusion of carbon and the strength of grain boundaries exceeded that of grain itself.

The mechanical properties of ceramics materials can be tailored by designing their microstructures. We have reported that development of texture can be controlled by slip casting in a strong magnetic field followed by heating even for diamagnetic ceramics such as alumina. A strong magnetic field of 12T was applied to the suspension indcuding alumina powder to rotate each particle during slip casting. The sintering was conducted at the desired temperature in air without a magnetic field. C-axis of alumina was parallel to the magnetic field. Bending strength of textured alumina depended on the direction of oriented microstructure.

The behavior of hardmetals under cyclic loads is investigated. Unnotched specimens were employed to obtain practical information regarding fatigue in hardmetals. All the tested hardmetals exhibit an increase in the number of cycles until failure with a decrease in the maximum stress, i.e., the hardmetals exhibit a high fatigue sensitivity. The fatigue strength increases with the cobalt content. Although distinct fatigue limits, as observed in metals, cannot be observed, the calculated fatigue limit stress at cycles is found to be approximately 70% of the flexural strength, and the stress value exhibits a linear relationship with the flexural stress.

High functional micro devices are demanded in a variety of fields. For realising such demands, development of high-precision micro-components installed in the devices are needed. To achieve high-precision in the mold processing of micro-components, the development of mold materials, i.e., the development of WC-Co hardmetal with higher hardness and fracture strength is essential, together with the developments of processing technology of high precision mold and mold-forming technology of high precision micro-components, etc. The role of development of the finer submicro-grained hardmetal in a NEDO national project aiming the integrated development of these all technologies and some results are mainly explained.

WC/WC interface in VC mono-doped WC-10mass%Co submicro-grained hardmetals of was investigated together with WC/Co interface by using HRTEM and XMA. The thickness of V-rich layer and the analytical value of V at WC/WC interface were almost the same as those at WC/Co interfaces. These results, etc., suggested that the V-rich layers at both interfaces were not generated by an equilibrium segregation mechanism in the sintering stage, but generated by a preferential precipitation mechanism during the solidification of Co liquid phase in the cooling stage. Based on this suggestion, we succeeded in developing a nano-grained hardmetal with 100 nm .

During the sintering of powder materials, many these are microstructural phenomena are caused by atomic diffusion. (1) neck formation and compact densification, (2) grain growth, i.e., growth of matrix grains and dispersed grains, (3) alloying or generation of compound, (4) generations of peculiar and hard layers near sintered compact surface, etc. The studies of the present author and co-workers on these phenomena which were carried out during 40 years are briefly introduced.

Hard materials such as hardmetal, coated hardmetal, cermet, ceramics and diamond or c-BN sintered compact are a kind of grain-dispersed alloy with high volume of hard particles. These are used for cutting tools, wear-resistant tools, rock bits, high pressure apparatus, etc. The annual production in Japan is about 1.7 billion dollars (200 billion yen). This is greatly owed to the development in science and technology which has been accomplished by applying new concepts such as fine or uniform grain microstructure, orientation of crystal grains, functionally graded material, artificial lattice and coherent bonding in recent years. In this review, the development in recent years in Japan is briefly summarized.

The characteristics of various important microstructural factors of WC-base hard- metals (cemented carbides) such as the amount of Co metal binder phase, the carbide grain size, the microstructural defects acting as a fracture source, the solid solubility of tungsten in the binder phase affected by the carbon content, the precipitation of , the domain size of binder phase, the formation of layer or Co-rich layer and CVD or PVD coated layer, and the effects of these factors on the flexural strength of the hardmetals are reviewed.

Har dmaterials such as cemented carbides with or without coated layer, cermets, ceramics and diamond or c-BN high pressure sintered compact are used for cutting tools, wear -resistant parts, rock drilling bits and/or high pressure vessels. These hardmaterials contain not only hard phase, but also second consituent as the element for forming ductile phase and/or sintering aid, and the mechanical properties of each material depend on (1) the amount of the second constituent as well as (2) the grain size of the hard phase. The hardness of each material mainly depends on these two factors. The fracture strength, however, largely depends on other microstructur a1 factors as well as the above two factors. For all hardmaterials, the fracture strength is consider ably affected by (3) the size of microstructur a1 defect which acts as the fracture source. In cemented carbides, the following factors which are generated mainly due to the addition of the second constituent are also important; (4) the variation of the carbon content in the normal phase region free from V-phase and graphite phase, (5) the precipitation of during heating at about ,(6) the domain size of binder phase, and (7) the formation of -free layer or Co-rich layer near the surface of sintered compacts. For cemented carbides coated with thin hard substance, the important factors are as follows; (8) the kind of coated substance, (9) the formation of -phase layer at the interface between coated layer and substrate, (10) the type of residual stress (tension or compression) in the coated layer which depends on the kind of coating method (CVD or PVD), and (11) the properties of the substrate, and (12) the combination, coherency and periodicity of multi-layers. In the lecture, the details of these factors and their effect on the strength will be explained.