I am Dr. Nobuaki Shime from the Department of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Hiroshima University.
On March 4, 2026, I was honored to be appointed as the 7th President of the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine.

I was nominated only two days ago and am urgently drafting this message in response to the Secretariat’s prompt request. I am in Yokohama, and beyond my window the layered skyline of Minato Mirai stretches out, with its skyscrapers aglow and its giant Ferris wheel shimmering in rainbow colors.

“The city lights are so beautiful, Yokohama...”

The lyrics of Ayumi Ishida’s song, which I listened to repeatedly as a child, somehow come to mind.

“Blue Light Yokohama” was a hit in 1969. At that time, these lights did not exist, and this country had no intensive care units. The Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine had not even been founded.

More than fifty years have passed since then. The city lights shine brighter, and intensive care medicine has advanced tremendously. This progress is the result of the tireless struggles and dedication of the many predecessors who paved the way before us.

Reflecting on this reminds me once again of the meaning of “value”. We must consolidate the valuable legacy of intensive care that our predecessors built and pass it on to the future. This is no easy task. In a shrinking and increasingly uncertain Japanese society, preserving this value requires extraordinary effort and energy.

Moreover, true value cannot simply be created by declaring, “let’s make it,” nor discovered by proclaiming, “it exists.” It is not something that an academic society, a board of directors, or even a president can distribute.

Value is built by each and every member. The accumulation of each individual’s daily and painstaking efforts in clinical practice, research, and education ultimately forms the value of intensive care medicine. We recognize that the role of the Society is to support these efforts as much as possible, to bring them together, and to articulate and establish the value of intensive care medicine as a unified presence within medicine, the healthcare community, and Japanese society.

Let us make this gathering valuable.

Nobuaki Shime, MD, PhD
President
The Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine