A snapshot from the history of cosmic ray research: a Japanese scientist view

This short note describes the history of cosmic ray research. A part of this document was presented orally at the international conference of CRIS 2010 held in Catania, Italy. The document is written being based on the English translation of a Japanese article entitled "One Hundred Years of Research on Cosmic Rays". The document was published in 2008 by the Japan Astronomy Society as a series of books on "Modern Astronomy" (Volume 17).