Meeting again after nine years

In Japan, the MVFHR speakers are at Kobe Gakuin University today and then at Doshisha University tomorrow. The report I've gotten from the first of the three university presentations -- Friday's panel presentation at Toyo University -- was very positive. They spoke to a packed and even overflowing room:



One particularly interesting note is that the Toyo University symposium's moderator, Professor Kaori Sakagami, had first heard Bob Curley and Bud Welch speak in Boston in 2001, at the "Healing the Wounds of Murder" conference. That conference was the first public occasion at which Bob Curley had expressed his opposition to the death penalty, and Professor Sakagami had been so impressed and moved by the occasion that, when she returned to Japan, she wrote an article about it -- which she had now brought with her to show Bob. Nine years later, introducing Bud, Bob, and the other MVFHR speakers who have come to address Japanese audiences, Professor Sakagami told this story. It made for a powerful introduction.

I'll post more reports as I get them.