New English Edition
Artificial Intelligence in Horticulture
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
Across five chapters and ten sections, this book examines computer vision for crop diagnosis, harvesting robots and autonomous field systems, smart greenhouses and digital twins, precision irrigation and supply-chain quality control, high-throughput phenotyping, and predictive breeding.
New English Edition
Artificial Intelligence in Food Crop Agriculture
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
Across six chapters and eighteen sections, the book examines digital agricultural infrastructure, remote sensing, crop diagnosis, yield forecasting, precision irrigation, genomics, molecular breeding, agricultural robotics, climate-smart agriculture, and global food security.
New English Edition
The Future of Forestry and Agroforestry
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
Driven by Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation
Across five chapters and fifteen sections, the book follows satellites, drones, LiDAR, digital twins, forest-specific language models, wildfire and pest forecasting, forestry robotics, agroforestry, timber traceability, and forest carbon markets.
New English Edition
Smart Livestock Farming: AI Enters the Barn
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
Sensors listen, cameras watch, and artificial intelligence helps farmers decide.
Across five chapters and fifteen sections, the book follows precision livestock farming from animal health and reproduction to robotic milking, virtual fencing, digital twins, methane reduction, welfare, and data ownership.
Table of Contents
Han Dong-hoon, Busan Buk-gu Gap: A Record of the 100 Days Before and After the Election (Mar. 26-Jul. 3, 2026)
Kim Kyung-jin
Table of Contents and 13 sections
From March 26 to July 3, 2026, this record follows the spring after expulsion, the Busan Buk-gu Gap by-election, victory as an independent, and the first bill submitted in the National Assembly.
Table of Contents
Artificial Intelligence and Medicine
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
AI in clinical care, hospitals, education, and research
AI in medical imaging, risk prediction, treatment planning, hospital operations, education, and research, with patient safety, privacy, and accountability.
[AI Library] Chapter 2: The Winds of Unebi (畝傍)
Beyond the Glass Ceiling
Part 1: Roots — From Nara to Washington
Chapter 2: The Winds of Unebi (畝傍)
Kim Kyung-jin
To the south of Kashihara City lies a low, rounded mountain. It stands at 198 meters. Too low to be called a mountain for climbing, yet far too impressive to be dismissed as a mere hill: this is Mount Unebi (畝傍山). Legend says that Emperor Jimmu, Japan’s first emperor, was buried on the eastern side of this mountain, and his mausoleum is still managed by the Imperial Household Agency (宮内庁) today. In autumn, the pampas grass bows to the wind; in spring, wild cherry blossoms cover its slopes. It is a mountain where thousands of years of time have settled into the earth.
At the foot of that mountain stands an old school: Nara Prefectural Unebi High School (奈良県立畝傍高等学校). It opened its doors in 1896, the 29th year of the Meiji (明治) era. In 2026, it will celebrate its 130th anniversary. The main building standing on the campus was constructed in 1933 and is a historic structure that preserves the architectural characteristics of the early Showa period. The Agency for Cultural Affairs designated this building as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2012. It is a school where the very space in which students study their textbooks is a piece of history.
Sanae Takaichi entered this school in the spring of 1976—Showa 51. Having finished junior high school, the fifteen-year-old girl chose this school despite it being a much longer commute. Or, more accurately, she chose it together with her parents. The reason was clear: at the time, it was one of the top-tier public high schools in Nara Prefecture in terms of academic performance. A prestigious academic institution. Even today, the school is designated as a focus school for higher education, with over 70 percent of its students taking the Common Test for University Admissions.
The problem was the commute. To get from her home to Unebi High School, she had to take a bus and transfer between trains. Calculated as a round trip, it took six hours every day. This number would later become a symbolic figure used to describe her, alongside her commute to Kobe University. By typical standards, this is difficult to comprehend—commuting a distance comparable to traveling from Seoul to Suwon every single day for three years of high school. And doing so voluntarily.
There are no direct records of how those six hours were filled. However, considering the sheer volume of reading and depth of thought Sanae Takaichi demonstrated later in life, it is clear that those commuting hours were not wasted. She likely read the newspapers. The mid-1970s was a politically complex time in Japan. Post-war high economic growth had just passed its peak, and the chaos following the 1973 oil crisis had not yet subsided. The Lockheed bribery scandal involving former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka (田中角栄) was being fought in court. Corruption in Japanese politics dominated the headlines. If a fifteen-year-old girl was reading those newspapers on the train, what thoughts might have crossed her mind?
Unebi High School was not a place for academics alone. A term often used to describe the school's culture is Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道)—the tradition of valuing both literary and military arts, or study and sport, equally. The school held many events, and club activities were vibrant. The list of famous alumni from this school includes politicians, scholars, and business leaders who represent the era.
One particularly notable alumnus is Seisuke Okuno (奥野誠亮). Born in Nara Prefecture in 1913, he graduated from Unebi High School and the Faculty of Law at Tokyo Imperial University before starting his career as a bureaucrat and eventually rising to become a senior figure in the LDP. He served as Minister of Justice, Minister of Home Affairs, Minister of Education, and Director-General of the National Land Agency. Between 1976 and 1979, while Sanae was attending Unebi, Okuno was a serving cabinet minister. The fact that an alumnus from the same school was at the heart of Japanese politics—it is impossible to know what seeds this planted in the young student's mind. However, it is a fact that such a precedent, the knowledge that 'someone from this school does those things,' places a point on the map of possibilities.
The drumming continued. The hobby she had started in junior high school followed her into high school. In the late 1970s, rock music was intensely popular among Japanese teenagers. Records produced in Britain and America were imported and spread through cassette tapes. The genre Sanae fell for was heavy metal: Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath. A heavy, fast, and complex sound. It was not common even then for a Japanese high school girl to listen to such music—let alone to play the drums for it herself.
To play heavy metal drums properly, your two hands and two feet must move independently of each other. The right foot on the kick drum, the left foot on the hi-hat, the right hand on the cymbals, and the left hand on the snare. Each of the four maintains its own rhythm while collectively creating a single groove. This is what students of drumming describe as the most difficult part: the brain must manage multiple channels simultaneously.
It is an interesting perspective to see that training as a clue to understanding Takaichi the politician. she is known as a politician who handles multiple tasks at once. During her time as Minister in charge of Economic Security, she simultaneously pushed forward semiconductor industrial policy, supply chain security, and data regulation bills. As Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, she handled broadcasting policy, local administration, and telecommunications regulation all at once. Multitasking. The 'muscles' developed while learning the drums may have manifested in a different form. This is, of course, speculation—but it is a compelling speculation.
Three years from 1976 to 1979. Not many episodes are known regarding Sanae’s time at Unebi High School. Moving schools, playing the drums, and the six-hour commute—those few facts alone cannot fully reconstruct those days. However, the things those years created can be read in the way she conducted herself afterward.
Patience. A person who continues a six-hour commute for three years develops a certain muscle for endurance. The ability to turn a long journey into a habit. The attitude of accepting discomfort as a given condition. It is not an unreasonable interpretation to see this as linked to the grit of a politician who does not give up despite repeated election losses.
Independence. Traveling alone for six hours a day creates a habit of managing one's own time. Spending long hours away from home. Leading oneself in a space outside the gaze of parents. This becomes the origin of a political style where she maintains her own position even while acting as a non-mainstream figure within the party.
In the spring of 1979, she graduated from Unebi High School. That year, she took the university entrance exams. It was later revealed that her grades were sufficient to pass into prestigious private universities in Tokyo, such as Keio (慶應義塾大学) and Waseda (早稲田大学). Stories are told that she received acceptance notices from both schools.
However, her parents did not permit it. There were two reasons: tuition at private universities in Tokyo was expensive, and she would have had to live alone in Tokyo. At the time, many Japanese households did not allow their daughters to live independently at such a distance—especially for a daughter, even if they might have for a son. That was the reality of Japanese society in that era, and Sanae’s household was no exception to that reality.
What emotions that decision stirred in the daughter is not recorded. Whether there was regret, whether she accepted it, or whether she had already settled on another choice in her heart. She later spoke of this period, saying that constraints created the path. Kobe University was a national university within commuting distance from Nara. That constraint took her to Kobe, and her major in Management Mathematics at Kobe University contributed to making her the policy-expert politician she became later.
On the morning of the graduation ceremony at Unebi High School, a wind would have been blowing over Mount Unebi. Since it was spring, it wouldn't have been cold, but the winds in Kashihara are strong. A wind that sweeps across the Yamato Basin (大和盆地). In that wind, a girl walked out of the school gates. From Nara to Kobe, from a land where history sleeps to a port city. That distance was the boundary line that closed the time of Unebi and opened a new chapter.
Perhaps those six hours were what made her. Reading books on the train, thinking, and cultivating her inner world. What three years at Unebi High School gave her was not just academic knowledge. It was the patience instilled by a long, daily commute. The ability to fill her own time by herself. The training to stand on her own in an environment where no one would help.
That training was repeated in her later political activities. In the 1993 election, she ran her campaign alone, without the party's support or the shadow of a senior politician. Perhaps the commute to Unebi High School was the warm-up for that.
Unebi (畝傍). A name called a sacred mountain in ancient Japanese mythology. After spending three years at the school bearing that name, the girl departed for Kobe in 1979.
Unebi High School was founded in 1896. it is one of the oldest and most prestigious public high schools in Nara Prefecture. Every year, it produces many successful candidates for the nation's top universities, including the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, and Osaka University. Choosing this school despite the three-hour commute (each way) shows the values of that household regarding education. An investment in academic background and ability. That was the most certain gift a middle-class Japanese family in the 1970s could give their child.
There is no record of who had the greatest influence on her during her three years of high school. However, we can know what kind of atmosphere Japanese society held at the time. The late 1970s was a period when the social advancement of Japanese women was slowly expanding. In 1975, the United Nations proclaimed International Women's Year, and in 1979, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was adopted. In Japan, instances of women becoming business managers, civil servants, and members of parliament were gradually increasing. It is unknown how Sanae, during her years at Unebi, perceived this trend. However, the path she chose later would not have been unrelated to the winds of that era.
At the time of graduation in 1979, Unebi High School was a place where tradition and change coexisted. Inside a Meiji-era building, students of the late Showa era dreamed of the future. Underneath Mount Unebi, where hundreds of years of history lie dormant, a girl finished her preparations to write a new history.
References
- Nara Prefectural Unebi High School Official Site: https://www.unebiko-h.ed.jp/ - Sanae Takaichi Wikipedia (Japanese) — Career: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%AB%98%E5%B8%82%E6%97%A9%E8%8B%97 - nippon.com, "Sanae Takaichi: A Timeline to the Presidential Chair": https://www.nippon.com/ja/japan-topics/g02425/ - Mount Unebi — Wikipedia: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%95%9D%E5%82%8D%E5%B1%B1