Kottayam: Prof. Nobuyoshi Fukuhara, 73, Professor Emeritus of Semitic studies at the University of Osaka in Japan, has come to Kottayam to study Syriac language. He is doing it with help of the teachers at the St Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute (SEERI). When DC met him, he was trying to read the Syriac scripts with a help book in Japanese. He is sharp in his memory though slightly deprived of his hearing faculty. After retirement, Prof. Nobuyoshi had worked as a volunteer of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) at Damascus, Syrian capital, from where he got the idea to learn the language.
“Though I have been at Syria for a few years, I was not able to study the Syriac language since there are no teachers of it. Even those priests don’t know how to read or write the language. There are also no institutes in Japan which can teach it. Hence I decided to visit the state”, he told DC. This is for the first time that he is visiting the state though he had come to northern India three years back. Prof Nobuyushi said that he would like to read the vast treasure of literature in the language and will join a full time course here soon.
