令和元年度　東京大学秋季学位記授与式・卒業式　総長告辞

Many congratulations to all of you. You have been awarded a doctor’s, master’s, professional, or bachelor’s degree by the University of Tokyo. On behalf of the University, I extend my sincere congratulations to you all. I also congratulate and express my sincere appreciation to your families, who have supported you through your studies.

725 graduate students completed their programs this autumn. There are 245 doctoral degree program graduates, 422 master’s degree program graduates, and 58 professional degree program graduates. 74 undergraduate students have also graduated. Of these, 18 are graduates of Programs in English at Komaba, or PEAK, an English-language undergraduate degree program. In addition, 4 are graduates of the Global Science Course of the Faculty of Science, an English-language undergraduate transfer program for those who started their study at foreign universities. 525 of our graduating students, or about 70%, come from outside Japan.

Today, you take your well-earned diplomas in hand. I am sure that many of you are looking back over your days at the university, remembering moments of joy and the challenges you experienced with your fellow students.

With those experiences behind you, today you are about to take the next step in your lives. Many of you will venture into the world outside of academia. This is a world that is changing like never before. It is also difficult to predict how this change will transform society in the future. You may feel excited yet worried about stepping out of the university, a safe and secure environment for learning. As you enter a new chapter in your lives, I’d like to share a story of a past UTokyo graduate that I think will offer some insight to you.

That graduate is the pioneering female anthropologist, Professor Hiroko Hara.

Professor Hara was among the first group of female students admitted to the University of Tokyo after the end of World War II. It was when Japanese universities were just opening their doors to women. Now, female students represent about 20% of the university’s student body. Back then, however, the share of women was only two to three percent. When Professor Hara enrolled in the University in 1953, there were only 58 female students out of about 2,000 entrants.

At that time, the University of Tokyo was a place of research and education dominated by men. But it accepted women onto its campus, starting to search for ways to change itself into a new type of university. It was a time when people who gathered here were trying hard to create future-oriented, academic disciplines.

At the University, 97.8% of the students were men. In such an environment, Professor Hara said she was empowered by the words of her supervisor. He said: “Half of humanity is women and any society is made up of both men and women. You can understand society only by looking at it through the eyes of both women and men. It is important for society to have both perspectives. So, do your best!”

Gradually, she was attracted to the interesting aspects of anthropology – discovering and trying to understand the mysteries of humanity – and she devoted herself to study.

In her undergraduate and graduate programs, she was engaged in field work, doing research on the lives of people in Japan’s farming, mountain and fishing villages. She closely observed how each individual lived by tatemae (建て前), the prevailing norms of their communities and social groups and how they managed to live with one another to sustain their communities. In Japan, people are often said to put the norms and rules of the group before anything in their lives. Professor Hara then came to wonder whether this value was universal to people living in any social group. She grew more interested to research hunter-gatherer people, who were thought to live in a flat, social structure without a leader.

In reality, however, there were only a few hunter-gatherer communities that a researcher could visit and study. Given Japan’s economic situation at the time, it was not at all easy to do fieldwork overseas. What’s more, Japan had no program in place for supporting a graduate student to carry out overseas fieldwork. So, Professor Hara went to study in the United States in 1959 and wrote a letter to a national museum in Canada as a graduate student. She managed to win support and got the opportunity to research a hunter-gatherer group in a far north region in Canada. She was joined by a female researcher of about the same age, Janice Hurlbert, who had just received a master’s degree in Canada. Two women of different nationalities jumped into the harsh environment that was home to an ethnic group unknown to them. I believe this was an incredible act of bravery. After Janice Hurlbert finished her own project and left, Professor Hara returned to continue her research alone through the harsh winter.

According to research papers at the time, this hunter-gatherer group was called “Hare Indians.”

The name Hare Indian comes from the wild animals they eat. In the area they inhabit near the Arctic Circle, rivers freeze in October and the winter temperature drops as low as 50 degrees below zero. Naturally, there are few plants and animals. Hares alone are not enough to satisfy their hunger, but there are few other animals or plants to eat. In such a harsh environment, several families form groups and live together in tents, moving from place to place following their prey.

To learn about their way of life, a researcher also needs to live with them in this harsh environment. One wrong move and you risk losing your life. In a situation like that, what would you do? I suppose you would ask someone to teach you what tools to prepare and how to survive by using them.

Professor Hara also tried to seek advice on how to make preparations. Let me tell you one interesting episode. She went to a group of Hare people in June and asked how to use snowshoes before snow started to fall in September. Just like skis, snowshoes are strapped onto your shoes to make it easier to walk on snow. If she hadn’t learned how to use them well, she couldn’t have followed them from one place to another. If she had been left behind, her own life would have been at risk. So, Professor Hara thought she needed to learn how to use them before the snow season. But the people she asked only told her that she would figure that out by herself, once she wore them when snow began to fall in winter. They laughed at her because she was trying to put on snowshoes even though there was no snow yet.

Then, she began to recognize that Hare people didn’t have the concept of learning from others or teaching others how to do things. When asked if they were taught how to catch moose, they would say they taught themselves how to do it better. Likewise, adults don’t teach children how to tan animal skins. Children learn how to do it by watching adults. At first, children can’t do tanning as well as adults, so other people will comment and say things like “that looks strange.” But they don’t demonstrate how to do it, and children also don’t ask for advice. Children just watch other people carefully when they are tanning, try to find ways to improve their skills, and eventually master the technique on their own.

Through this fieldwork, Professor Hara discovered that “having the willingness to learn is observed universally among humans, but the act of teaching and being taught is not absolutely universal.” This is one of the unique insights she gained through her research.

Now, I would like to try and relate this experience to the university today.

Two years ago, the University of Tokyo celebrated the 140th anniversary since its foundation. These 140 years can be divided into two periods of roughly 70 years before and after the end of World War II in 1945. We can call the first 70 years before the end of the war the first period and the second 70 years following the war the second period. Professor Hara enrolled in this University to start her research at the beginning of this second period. Under its new constitution, Japan aimed to become a nation of peace and culture and Japanese society was beginning to democratize itself at the time.

And now, the University of Tokyo is at the beginning of another 70 years, the third period or what I call UTokyo 3.0.

Now, we have entered the era of UTokyo 3.0. Our society is changing more quickly than ever before. In particular, we are seeing great advances in information and communications technologies in the 21st century. We can move across national borders easily, communicate with people around the world in real time, and instantly spread information far and wide. But at the same time, we also see the depletion of natural resources, further environmental destruction and global warming. All these are raising more concerns over the sustainability of the earth’s environment.

All of you are going to step into a new world in these rapidly changing times. I believe the story of Professor Hara’s spirit to accept and embrace differences and her insights about learning will give you some hints on how to live your life ahead.

Professor Hara entered the University of Tokyo as one of a very few female students. In those days, women had already obtained education, voting and inheritance rights like men. Even so, she must have encountered unfamiliar situations with her male counterparts at the university. In her fieldwork, she came across people who lived by different values and in a very different natural and physical environment. What is very important is that she embraced the unfamiliar and was able to put things into an academic perspective. She could do that because of her experiences at the University of Tokyo. She learned knowledge and methods from diverse academic disciplines, including anthropology. In other words, the University’s broad liberal arts education and intellectual training equipped her with a sense of autonomy to “build up her own academic field on her own initiative.” This is because the university encompasses a wide range of disciplines including science, engineering, social sciences and the humanities, and spans both the past and future of humanity.

In these times of great change, we all need to cope with unfamiliar environments and people with different ways of thinking, and to build new relationships with them. Given that, Professor Hara’s endeavor nearly 70 years ago inspires us. The knowledge she gained at the university gave her the strength to pursue her goals. And each and every one of you should have that same knowledge, too. I hope you will venture into your new fields, with your heads held up high.

Having the willingness to learn is universal among humans, but asking others how to learn is not. This discovery by Professor Hara is a very important insight we can turn to in these times of great change. In the days when things changed slowly, what you had to learn was already completely described. And there were people who could teach it to you. But today, we are seeing rapid changes in technological innovation and world affairs. There is no one who can tell us what to expect and what to do. We need to learn on our own. And there is no end to that kind of learning. It continues even after you graduate from university.

Professor Hara enjoyed learning new perspectives through interacting with people of different cultural backgrounds and different values on a personal level. I believe her positive outlook will also give you the strength to carry on in these rapidly changing times.

It is my hope that you will become a role model for others to follow in life-long learning and take the lead to cultivate new frontiers in this new era. Most importantly, I hope you will enjoy that process just as you did with learning at this University.

You may face tough challenges. You may feel helpless at times. Remember that you can always turn to the University for help. The University of Tokyo will always be with you. Graduation does not mean the conclusion of your relationship with us. Our alumni all over the world are all your colleagues. Together, we will create a better, future society.

Congratulations!

Makoto Gonokami
President
The University of Tokyo
September 13, 2019

（和文）令和元年度　東京大学秋季学位記授与式・卒業式　総長告辞