Shibasaburo Kitasato — Winning Abroad, Sidelined at Home, Building Anyway

Shibasaburo Kitasato, the face of the new thousand-yen note, lifted Japanese medicine to world level.

In Germany he achieved the world's first pure culture of the tetanus bacillus and established serum therapy, a new concept of treatment, becoming a candidate for the first Nobel Prize in medicine — among the first Japanese scientists to compete at the world's summit.

Yet on returning home he was frozen out, partly for having contradicted his alma mater's theories; a world-class scientist with no place in his own country. Yukichi Fukuzawa intervened, founding an infectious disease institute with private funds and entrusting it to him.

Kitasato answered that debt with his life: he built it into a world center, identified the plague bacillus, raised successors — and after Fukuzawa's death, repaid the kindness by founding Keio University's medical school without salary.

World-beating ability; composure under cold treatment; kindness repaid as investment in the next generation.

What do you work for?