May 27: A departure today from poetry to write a non-fiction piece about a remarkable man. The information about this extraordinary medic is based on an article in The Japan Times by Judit Kawaguchi.

A Japanese doctor called Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara, turned 101 on 4th October 2012. He has worked as a medic at St Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo and taught at St Luke’s College of Nursing since 1941, and he still is! Since the age of 75, he has published some 15 books, one of which, ‘Living Long, Living Good” has sold in excess of 1.2 million copies and he has founded the New Elderly Movement, to encourage others to live life to the full by leading by example.

His philosophy? That we should follow the inspiration of Robert Browning’s poem Abt Vogler, a poem that Hinohara’s father used to read to him as a boy. In it, the poet exhorts us to create big art, not small. As Hinohara says, “It encourages us to draw a circle so large that we cannot finish it whilst we are alive. So huge that we cannot see the beginning or end of it, just an arch in space, but the rest is there, but beyond our vision, it is somewhere in the distance…”

A few other choice things Dr Hinohara is quoted as saying:

Energy comes from feeling good, not eating well or sleeping a lot. We all remember as children, when we were having fun, we often forgot to eat or sleep. I believe we can have that attitude as adults too..

Share what you know. I give 150 lectures a year, some for 100 elementary-school children, others for 45,000 business people. I usually speak for 60 to 90 minutes, standing, to stay strong.

To stay healthy, always take the stairs and carry your own stuff. I take two stairs at a time to get my muscles moving.

Pain is mysterious, and having fun is the best way to forget it. Hospitals must cater to the basic needs of their patients. At St Luke’s we have music and animal therapies and art classes.

Hospitals must be prepared for major disasters. We designed St. Luke’s so we can operate anywhere: in the basement, in the corridors, in the chapel. Most people thought I was crazy to prepare for a catastrophe, but on March 20, 1995, I was unfortunately proven right when members of the Aum Shinrikyu religious cult launched a terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway. We accepted 740 victims and in two hours figured out that it was sarin gas that had hit them. Sadly we lost one person that day, but we saved 739 lives.

Science alone cannot cure or help people. Science lumps us all together, but illness is individual. Each person is unique, and diseases are connected to their hearts. To know the illness and help people, we need liberal and visual arts, not just medical ones.

It is wonderful to live long. Until one is 60 years old, it is easy to work for one’s family and to achieve one’s goals. But in our later years, we should strive to contribute to society. Since the age of 65, I have worked as a volunteer. I still put in 18 hours seven days a week and love every minute of it.

Find a role model and aim to achieve even more than they could ever do. My father went to the United States in 1900 to study at Duke University in North Carolina. He was a pioneer and one of my heroes. Later I found a few more life guides, and when I am stuck, I ask myself how they would deal with the problem.

What better role model could any of us find than this extraordinary man? His is a life truly well lived.