Ambition can sometimes be measured by the amount of deference paid to the established order, so the recently published book "Genpatsu Kiki to Todai Waho," which irreverently analyzes the "parlance of the University of Tokyo" as it was utilized during the early days of the nuclear crisis in Fukushima, delivers even more of a surprise when the reader realizes it was written by a younger professor at that august institution.

Ayumu Yasutomi was born in 1963 and specializes in a field he calls "social ecology," but the purpose of his book is to explain to laypersons the special mode of speech developed by professors at the University of Tokyo and which he says has contaminated discourse in the media.

As indicated in the title, he uses as his main illustrative model the explanations that were offered by nuclear energy experts, many of whom teach at Todai, on television in the months following the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant a year ago. He singles out one professor, Naoto Sekimura, who appeared often on NHK, where he couched his lectures in "optimistic language" and avoided committing to any suppositions of what might actually be happening at any given moment. Sekimura did this by using special terms, in a condescending fashion, that viewers and even reporters couldn't understand.