LETTER : Kobe alliance

RICHARD Lloyd Parry's fine article on Japan, "The year of living dangerously" (Review, 6 August), makes one error. After Kobe, the Japanese authorities admitted more than blankets and Swiss dogs; one foreign search and rescue team got in. It was the International Rescue Corps, one of the Pathfinder disaster relief group. As a result, plans are afoot to create an Anglo-Japanese disaster partnership with the new Japanese Thunderbirds.

Hugh Hanning

Leonard Cheshire Association of Pathfinders

London EC1