September 7, 2013September 8, 2013March 12, 2002
Since March 2002 the Members' Section of the Far East Lodge No. 1 website has provided a comprehensive source of useful information for members of the Lodge.
The aim of the News Section was to keep Brethren living abroad, or unable to attend meetings, up-to-date on the Lodge's activities.
The creation and maintenance of this News Section was labor-intensive. For technical reasons, each page had to be hand-coded and photographs cropped and adjusted manually. The text of each page was written by the webmaster within 24 hours of each meeting. The webmaster took most of the photographs appearing in news items. On the rare occasions when the webmaster was unable to attend lodge, MWB Watanabe kindly provided photographs and sent summaries of the meetings.
With the retirement of MWB Watanabe from service as Secretary, and the lack of cooperation from his successor, it is no longer possible to provide regular, speedy news updates.
Furthermore, the marked change in the make-up of the Lodge has made the News Section irrelevant. Most of the Lodge's members are now Japanese nationals with a weak grasp of English. Many of the degree conferrals are conducted in Japanese because the candidates cannot understand English. It is only to be expected that such Japanese-speaking members should show no interest in an English-language website. Some of them, it appears, have created Facebook pages to exchange Lodge news and information in their native tongue.
With interest and support for this News Section non-existent, the time has come to close it down.
The problems described above also apply to other sections of the Members' website. The archive of Lodge Minutes is an example. The earliest minutes in the archive were scanned manually by MWB Watanabe and converted into digital format by the webmaster. From the mid-1990s, digital copies of minutes were sent directly from the Secretary to the webmaster. These files were then converted into HTML web pages. This HTML conversion took up so much time and effort that in recent years the Secretary's minutes have been preserved as-is, with no editing or corrections.
This regular flow of minutes from Secretary to webmaster ceased with the retirement of MWB Watanabe. Since his departure, the webmaster has received no updates to the information in the Member Directories.
The creation and maintenance of both the untyled public website and the Members' Section represent an investment of thousands of man-hours and a significant financial outlay to cover the cost of hosting, domain registration, and software upgrades. This voluntary donation of time and money is no longer justified. A few members have reported making use of audio clips to help in pronunciation, and a few have acquainted themselves with the history of the Lodge through the website. Most members, however, make no use of the Members' Section or remain unaware of its existence.
The present website represents a valuable archive of Lodge material and will be preserved online as long as possible. Should it become necessary to take the material offline, it will be transferred to DVD or whatever medium is considered most durable and compatible at that future time, and stored in the Secretary's office in the Temple.
The webmaster of the Far East Lodge No. 1 websites, both public and private, has resigned from the Lodge and is no longer connected in any way with either Far East Lodge No. 1 or the Grand Lodge of Japan. He would like to thank the many Brethren who have supported him for over thirteen years, especially MWB Kazzy Watanabe, without whose help this website would not have been possible.
The future of this website rests in the hands of a new generation of members.