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We described a 26-year-old man whose brother has a mottled fundus. Many maternal relatives suffer from myopia and heart disease, and one cousin has arachnodactylia. The patient is very tall and shows various abnormalities such as arachnodactylia, highly arched palate, funnel chest and scoliosis. He also shows hyperextensibility of joints, inguinal hernia, dissecting aneurysm of ascending aorta, dilatation of aortic ring, aortic and mitral insufficiency, myopia and striae distensae. These findings are that of Marfan's syndrome. At the same time, we noticed yellowish papules on the neck, axillae, inguinal region and inner aspect of thighs. Brown patches were found around umbilicus. These skin lesions as well as angioid streaks of fundus are typical for pseudoxanthoma elasticum. This case should be an association by chance of these two genetic affections.

The Japanese orthography has some unique characteristics. Two types of Japanese characters, kana (phonetic symbols) and kanji (semantic and phonetic symbols), are used in combination. Although kana has simple forms and a limited number of characters, and kanji has complex forms and an infinite number of characters, Japanese aphasic patients often have trouble using kana characters properly. In the present case of crossed aphasia of a right-handed Japanese man due to a large hypertensive intracerebral hematoma in the right side, we also observed the impairment in kana processing. He could neither speak nor read aloud, but on multiple choice examinations, he could point to pronounced kanji letters. Although he could point to pronounced kana words, he could not point to kana letters. We will review some tachistoscopic studies of recognition and comprehension of the lateralized visual informations of kana and kanji for normal Japanese and for Japanese patients with disconnection syndrome. And we will discuss the right (minor) hemispheric ability to recognize kanji letters and kana words, and we will also talk about the restricted capacity for transcallosal transference of the visual language informations.