It has been more than twenty years since Anne passed away. The university I work for has undergone countless changes. Both in name and reality, the number one experimental animal facility in Japan is in operation there. Not only is it the largest, it is also managed in accord with many aspects of animal welfare practice, such as air-conditioning, adequate staff, thorough educational curricula for students and researchers, and so on. At present, I am not in this department anymore, but every time I go past this facility, I always think if only Anne could have seen it.
There is no memento of Anne left in this new facility, but her spirit lives on. This is true not only in this university, but also in universities around the country. In experimental guidelines now, the words “animal welfare” are always used. However, almost none of the current personnel know that an English woman came to Japan long ago, to ease the animals’ suffering, and that experiments were done under barbarous conditions. They have worked in a clean environment from the beginning, and thus think that it is a normal thing. Perhaps it is fate that the sorry history of experimental animals, the sordid side of medical progress, together with Anne’s epitaph in katakana, might be forgotten by the Japanese people.