Congratulations to every one of you receiving a degree from the University of Tokyo today. Your hard work and growth are a source of great pride for all of us on the faculty and staff. I wish to convey my most sincere praise to you and offer my gratitude as well to your families who have supported you.
In this era of hundred-year lifespans, maintaining our curiosity, constantly learning new things, and deepening our explorations are becoming increasingly vital for making our long lives meaningful. As you prepare to walk out through the gates of the University of Tokyo and embark on new challenges, I would like to talk about the importance of continuing to learn together with others.
The evolution of learning is closely related to the development of technology. One example is the invention and establishment of movable type printing by Johannes Gutenberg. In her book The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Elizabeth Eisenstein, who studied the history of Western printing, shows how the large-scale output facilitated by this reproduction technology lowered the price of books in Europe, making them widely available. That advance in turn gave birth to many academic disciplines of the Renaissance, including philology, which closely compares and collates texts. By enabling the reproduction of accurately printed illustrations, the technology also led to dramatic developments in the quadrivium, that is, the four liberal arts of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.
With the 20th century came advances in broadcasting technologies like radio and television. While they played a role in disseminating knowledge and information more widely, those mass media also made the one-way transmission of information more dominant. This changed significantly, however, with the spread of the Internet, which opened a bidirectional flow, enabling individuals not only to receive information but also to participate actively in two-way communication. Technology has thus transformed the time and space in which humans live, resulting in significant changes in the processes and environments of learning.
What matters here is the purpose of learning, the ideals we strive for, and our sense of ethics. Technology is a tool, and humans must decide how to use it and where to apply it. Generative AI will provide immediate answers to our questions, but it is only doing calculations based on the vast amounts of data it was trained on and the text that was input into it; what humans perceive as biases, misunderstandings, or incorrect assertions can also be output. Hence, our critical thinking and careful judgment remain indispensable. Remember, it is not technology like AI itself that will shape our future but rather our vision, ethics, and intentions in using it. We must strive to use it ethically and responsibly, while also exploring ways to maximize the positive potential of technology to enrich humanity and contribute to the progress of society. Continuing to think about how to engage with new technologies from multiple perspectives will enable us to create a better future.
Two people who have studied human learning are Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. In their book Situated Learning, they explain that learning does not occur solely within the minds of individuals; rather, it arises through interactions among people working on common goals and interests. Their theory shows that new knowledge and innovation emerge from spaces of collaboration among people.
Collaboration is also important in academic communities. In anthropology, for example, it was once mainstream for an individual researcher to conduct fieldwork in a different culture and then write an ethnography alone. Recently, however, team ethnography has gained attention. This approach leverages the experiences and analytical perspectives of researchers with different attributes and specialties. Through the comparison and discussion of data collected by each researcher, team ethnography enables multifaceted interpretations, new insights, and more vivid descriptions of the research setting.
Of course, collaboration is not easy. But crossing the boundaries between disciplines and thinking and learning together with others in unfamiliar places can lead to self-transformation and innovation.
My own career has had no shortage of cross-border experiences and learning with others. After earning my Ph.D. in underwater robotics, I served for a while on the faculty of UTokyo’s Institute of Industrial Science. But then I took a postdoctoral position at RIKEN. There, as I shifted from robotics to the completely different field of biology, I thought about how I could apply my expertise in robotics to biological research. The ideas that emerged led to breakthroughs in my later research on microfluidic devices. Through that experience, I was able to learn firsthand how crossing domains can yield new combinations of knowledge and technology, thus leading to innovation, as those breakthroughs were sparked through dialogue with many other researchers at RIKEN.
Through your own graduate education, I am sure that each of you has acquired deep knowledge and skills in your field of expertise. I hope that you will not stay confined to that field alone but will cross the boundaries of disciplines flexibly and continue to learn in new communities. At UTokyo, we value the idea of crossing the boundary between the humanities and sciences, and we have been creating spaces where people from diverse positions can learn from each other through collaborations with private companies and civil society. As you face challenges in the future, I hope that you will also cross the boundaries of disciplines and organizations, engage in dialogue and learn together with diverse people, and thus discover your own originality and make great strides ahead.
The difficulty of collaboration is the difficulty of putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes and thinking about things from their perspective. In particular, when our own lives are fulfilling, we tend to have fewer opportunities to imagine the position of socially disadvantaged people or to listen to their voices.
Someone whose writings provide deep insights on the perspectives of the disadvantaged is Kenzaburo Oe. Last September, the University of Tokyo launched the Kenzaburo Oe Library, making a digital archive of approximately 18,000 of his handwritten manuscripts and nearly 4,000 related materials available to researchers. Oe’s works empathize with the pain of people with disabilities and the victims of war, emphasizing the importance of showing imagination toward socially disadvantaged people and overcoming the tendency of our culture to focus on the mainstream. In Hiroshima Notes published in 1965, for example, Oe listened to the voices of atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and explored deeply the pain and sense of alienation from society that they experienced, making an appeal to the world about the threat of nuclear weapons, the horror of war, and the importance of realizing a peaceful society.
As shown by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the tragedy in the Gaza Strip, conflicts are continuing in many parts of the world. Although it may be difficult for us to truly understand the suffering of people living under the extreme conditions of war, we can take the perspective of the socially vulnerable as we try to grasp why such tragic events occur and how we can eliminate such tragedies from the world.
This past January, many people were impacted by the Noto Peninsula Earthquake. Some are still forced to live in difficult evacuation conditions. We must think about what we can do for those who have suddenly been deprived of their peaceful daily lives and then turn our thoughts into action. There is much that we can do, including donations, volunteer support, and political participation. The important thing is not merely to observe the misfortunes that occur in places away from our immediate surroundings, but to exercise imagination and empathy toward those in vulnerable positions and take action for social justice and peace. This is the duty and responsibility required of us as creative global citizens.
The future is, by its very nature, invisible and not present in front of you. Rather, it will be created through the choices you all make. There are no simple correct answers, but we can think and talk together about what is truly desirable. After you receive your degrees from the University of Tokyo today, please remember to listen to the voices of the socially disadvantaged with the empathy of a creative global citizen. Looking at the world from multiple perspectives and utilizing technology through a vision for the public good are also keys to sharpening true intelligence. Step out of your comfort zone and experience what it is like to cross boundaries. It is often when you are an outsider that you realize your own originality and become able to work for others. The experience of creative, collaborative, and empathetic learning through dialogue will surely make your long life’s voyage a richer one.
Here at the University of Tokyo, we will continue to create together new knowledge and a new future as a university that is open to society. We want to maintain our connection with you and be a place of learning that you can visit any time. As you now set off into a new world with pride in your heart as a member of the University of Tokyo community, I offer my very best wishes for your continued growth and success. Congratulations again on your achievement today.
President
The University of Tokyo
March 21, 2024
