Matsukata Kōjirō was a Japanese businessman who, in parallel to his professional activities, devoted his life and fortune to amassing a collection of Western art which, he hoped, would become the nucleus of a Japanese national museum focused on masterworks of the Western art tradition. Although his plans were not realized in his lifetime, his vision is realized in Japan's National Museum of Western Art in Ueno Park, central Tokyo. Where part of his collection is exhibited. Born in Satsuma, Matsukata was the third son of the early Meiji period Finance Minister and genrō, Matsukata Masayoshi. After being educated in the United States at Rutgers Preparatory School and Rutgers University Kōjirō Matsukata became president of Kawasaki Shipbuilding Company in 1896, he went on to become head of Kawasaki Dockyards from 1916 through 1923, the group's main company. As such he led the expansion of shipbuilding activities, both commercial and military, created various other businesses, including a major shipping line, Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha known as K Line.

These companies progressively evolved into a major global engineering and industrial conglomerate, which took the name of Kawasaki Heavy Industries in 1969. The financial success he enjoyed in the early part of the century was affected adversely by economic downturns in the 1920s and 1930s. Masukata invested his significant personal fortune in the acquisition of several thousand examples of Western painting and decorative arts, he collected these art works throughout Europe, but in Paris. Mutsukata bought the Rodin masterpiece, "Gates of Hell", to be seen at the Rodin Museum in Paris. In the end, he hoped to see his collections in an art museum in Tokyo where visitors could come into direct contact with Western art. Matsukata is famous for his collection of ukiyo-e woodblock prints, scattered throughout the world; the 1925 exhibition of the woodblock prints Mtsukata collected abroad is thought to have been the first of its kind in Japan. Today about 8,000 ukiyo-e prints from the Matsukata collection are housed in the Tokyo National Museum.

Matsukata was well known as a good friend of Claude Monet. It has been reported that once, when Monet offered him the opportunity to buy whatever he wanted in the studio at Giverny, he purchased 18 paintings, his other artist friends included Frank Brangwyn, who assisted Matsukata in the acquisition of his collection. Brangwyn designed a gallery, the so-called Palace of Shared Pleasure, which Matsukata intended to build in Tokyo, he had intended to bring all these artworks to Japan, but he balked at the 100% tax imposed on imports. Much of what was stored in Britain was destroyed by fires during World War II; the combination of factors which kept so much of his collecting activities intact was only seen by the Japanese public for the first time in 1959 when they visited the museum he had envisaged. Among these works collected by Matsukata, those known today as the NMWA Matsukata Collection were stored in French museums under the supervision of the famous French art museum curator Léonce Bénédite.

They remained in France until after World War II, and, as part of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, they were confiscated by France. The French government decided to give back the majority of those artworks to the Japanese government as a sign of the renewed amity between the two countries, except for 14 valuable paintings by Monet, Van Gogh, Courbet, Cézanne, others which were retained to fill in gaps in the French national collection.. The remaining objects in the Matsukata collection totaled 370 works, including 196 paintings, 80 drawings, 26 prints and 63 sculptures—including massive public statuary by Rodin which now grace the landscaped area in front of the entrance to NMWA; each of the Rodin sculptures in the NMWA collection were cast from the original molds. In fact, as it happens, Matsukata was the one who paid for the best Rodin castings in France today, but he didn't quite manage to bring them back to Japan, how they fell into French hands at the end of World War II; these artworks, designated as the Matsukata Collection, were returned by France to Japan in 1959, which led to the opening of the National Museum of Western Art.

Checkland, Olive.. Japan and Britain After 1859: Creating Cultural Bridges. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1747-1 Greenfield, Liah.. The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00614-3 Michener, James A.. The Floating World. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-0873-8 National Museum of Western Art website

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Medical Laboratory Assistants prepare, in some cases process samples within a pathology laboratory. They utilise pre-analytical systems in order for biomedical scientists or Medical Laboratory Scientific Officers to process the biochemical tests requested on the sample; the majority of an MLA's time is spent in processing specimens. As such, the MLA has to have excellent knowledge of their particular sample acceptance policy, whilst obeying the data protection act, patient confidentiality, COSHH and the Caldicott rules. Other duties an MLA may undertake include, setting up blood analyzers, running Quality Controls and manual controls prior to a BMS undertaking analysis on samples. Maintenance and decontamination is essential for the function of the machinery therefore MLAs carry out this role on a weekly or monthly basis. A typical method of sample acceptance is as follows: Sample is received. Sample is checked. Patient's details matched on both form and sample. Sample and form labelled with unique identifying number.

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