令和元年度　東京大学秋季入学式　総長式辞

Welcome to the University of Tokyo. On behalf of the University’s faculty, I would like to extend our sincere congratulations to all of you. I would also like to congratulate your families, who have supported you through your studies and some of them are present here today to join in this celebration.

This autumn, the number of students joining our Graduate Schools is 806. 444 are joining master’s programs, 309 are joining doctoral programs, and 53 are joining professional degree programs. At our undergraduate faculties, 37 students are enrolling in Programs in English at Komaba, or PEAK, an English-language degree program. Also, 4 students are entering the Global Science Course of the Faculty of Science, an English-language transfer program for those who started their study at foreign universities.

All of you must be eager to take on new challenges in research and study at the University of Tokyo. The University has high academic standards built up over its 140-year history, a wide range of disciplines, and rich academic resources. I would like you to dedicate yourself fully to learning in this outstanding academic environment and play leading roles in creating a new society of tomorrow. You will have full support from all our staff at the University.

Today, our world is facing great changes. It is also facing many challenges. In January last year, I attended the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The main theme of the Forum was “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World.” We are now seeing the development of many “divisions” spreading in a number of areas: division by national borders, racial divide, economic disparity, different political structures, religious conflicts, different stances on bioethics or environmental issues, as well as highly-segmented academic disciplines. We are all living in a fractured world. Such division limits the possibility of dialogue, achieving mutual understanding or cooperation to create a shared future. How can we work together to overcome such difficult times? Today, by way of my congratulatory message to you, I would like to share several stories that I hope will stimulate you to think about this.

In May this year, we saw the end of the Heisei era and the start of a new era, Reiwa. The name of this new era was reported to originate from Japan’s ancient poetry “Manyoshu.” There is the same combination of Chinese characters found in Chinese classical literature “Wen Xuan.” There was a discussion about whether the origin of Reiwa was from Japanese literature or from Chinese literature. But if you consider how Japanese expressions came to be formed, it seems natural that the Chinese characters in Manyoshu have their origin in Chinese classics.

Since ancient times, Japan was eager to learn and accept Chinese civilization, digested and developed it further to create a new society and culture. Chinese characters as “written letters” are one such prime example. Waka poems in Manyoshu were written in Manyo-gana, which used the pronunciations of Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. This innovative method eventually lead to the invention of Hiragana and Katakana.

Since those ancient days, Japanese people have creatively used a combination of Chinese and Kana characters as their communication tool. This has, in turn, fostered the ability to create new Japanese words and develop Japanese culture. I hope the new era name, Reiwa, will help remind us of our ancestors’ vitality for creating new original culture, and their open minded approach to ideas from overseas.

In the Meiji era in the late 19th century, Japan learned a lot of modern knowledge from the West. To bring in this new knowledge, a huge amount of translation was carried out, which also helped to set the stage for academic development. This was made possible because Japanese people had the ability to use Chinese characters. Many new Japanese words were created through translation. This was thanks to Japan’s tradition of intellectual training and experience. Our ancestors used a combination of Chinese-derived On（音）-reading and Japanese-original Kun（訓）-reading methods to freely turn concepts expressed in foreign languages into original Japanese expressions. This was not the work of one or two scholars. Based on a body of Japanese, Chinese and Western knowledge accumulated by the end of the Edo period, a number of new “knowledge professionals” worked hard to develop new academic fields. The collective work of these knowledge professionals was the driving force that pushed Japan toward the modern age.

Since the Meiji era, many Chinese students have come to study in Japan and learned about new concepts in newly-invented translations of words from the West, such as university, philosophy, economy, socialism, and republic. They took these new expressions back to China. At this time, East Asian countries began rushing toward modernization. In fact, the Japanese word “Kindai（近代）” or modern itself was one of those translated words from the West. Culture represents a history of learning exchanges between different groups of people. It embodies the crossing of knowledge over borders today. You are all now going through a time of great change. A new form of cross-cultural exchange will emerge unlike anything we have experienced before. To take the lead in creating this new culture, I would like you to gain the foundations of knowledge here at this University that will spark new ideas and new ways of thinking.

Now, all of you are here to learn about various specialized fields. Any academic discipline is basically about presenting new perspectives or new ways of thinking through words and writing papers to share those findings with others. They are the very basics of academic learning. This remains the same even in these times of change. Our General Library is one of the University’s symbolic buildings. It has over 1.2 million books. This building houses an enormous collection of research papers, books, and other documents. But the Great Kanto Earthquake, which hit Tokyo directly in 1923, caused what one can call the greatest tragedy in the history of Japan’s libraries. The earthquake burned down the General Library which housed a rich collection of books from various schools of the Edo Shogunate. Moreover, a number of rare books that had been collected from around Japan and abroad ever since the Meiji Restoration were all gone. But later, the University received financial support and precious collections of books and documents from around Japan and from overseas institutions including the Rockefeller Foundation. Thanks to all these donations, the University was able to rebuild the library over time.

I would encourage you to enter and explore this library. You will feel that it represents a rich stock of words built over the years by this University. You can imagine how all the support from Japan and abroad went toward rebuilding the library. It can teach you one important lesson: cultures flourish only through exchanges with peoples from different regions and by crossing the borders that divides them. In that sense, it is truly symbolic that the General Library, a symbol of the University’s knowledge, recovered from the ashes with generous support from around Japan and across the world.

One of the library’s key collections is the Ogai Collection. Mori Ogai, a famous Japanese novelist, was born in 1862 in an area now called Tsuwano Town, in Shimane Prefecture, located in the western part of Japan. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine and became an army surgeon. Later, he went to study in Germany. After he returned from Germany, he worked as a medical doctor and became a capable bureaucrat who played a key role in supporting the Meiji government. On the other hand, he was also talented in music and the arts and is now better known in the field of literature. Ogai collected a huge volume of books throughout his life. His family donated that collection to our library in 1926, three years after the earthquake. The other day, I myself went to see those books again. When you walk up the lofty stairs inside the General Library, you will see rows of precious books – about 16,000 books of Japanese and Chinese classics and about 2,600 German and other western books. Many of them still have Ogai’s notes in them. You are about to start your studies at the University, roughly 130 years after Ogai’s enrollment. You can still go to the General Library and take one of Ogai’s books in your own hands.

I was greatly surprised that intellectuals in the Meiji era gained so much knowledge from all those books and generated many new words. What makes me more surprised is that Ogai’s book collection covers not just his specialization ― medicine and natural science ― but also a wide range of fields of the humanities and sciences including literature, philosophy, history and the arts. It seems that his interest was not just limited to medicine but was covered on nature and human society in general.

What if Ogai were alive today? How would he view students’ learning today and research activities at the University? At the beginning of this address, I said that the world is now fractured. Academic disciplines are also becoming highly specialized and increasingly segmented. I don’t think he would be satisfied with such a divided state of knowledge.

We are living in a time of great change, and this is creating the force that is causing this division in knowledge. Looking at Ogai’s books, I felt that he had a flexible sensibility and vitality that could easily transcend such divisions. There is no limit or boundary to academic learning. Your academic interests should expand as wide as possible. It is perfectly fine even if you can’t narrow down your interest in the first few years. If a young Ogai were here today, he would be likely to let his burning curiosity lead him and take on new challenges to pursue new academic horizons.

The University of Tokyo is the best place for taking such new endeavors. We are a comprehensive university. Our campuses are home to both Bunkei (the arts and humanities（文系）) and Rikei (the sciences（理系）). This is a common way in which we divide the academic fields in Japan. Bunkei includes fields such as social sciences and Rikei includes fields such as natural and applied sciences, engineering and mathematics. But the wall separating the two is now breaking down fast. For example, psychology, a Bunkei discipline, and brain science, a Rikei discipline, are now being merged. Big data analytics has brought about new research methods for social sciences as well. As such, the line between Bunkei and Rikei is becoming vague. This has opened up new fields that were never thought to be academic disciplines before. These new fields have the potential to develop even further and to expand the boundaries of knowledge. Efforts to cross academic borders are speeding up. To create new academic fields, all of you need to develop the sensibility and vitality to challenge conventional wisdom and go beyond it.

Lastly, let me share one happy episode after I became the University President. I now have opportunities to meet with people from various fields and hear their stories in person. One such person I met was Mr. Yoshiharu Habu, one of the most famous shogi masters in Japan. He sometimes plays shogi against AI opponents. He is also very interested in the latest advances in AI technology. He told me that his eyes were opened to new possibilities in the familiar art of shogi after he started playing against AI. This is because AI learns from an enormous volume of data about the past moves that human players made, and sometimes comes up with moves that are totally unexpected by conventional standards. These days, moreover, AI elevates from the data generated in games that pit AI against AI. Mr. Habu is a great master of shogi, but he does not rest on his past achievements. He does not hesitate to take on and enjoy new challenges from AI. That’s why he has won seven major professional shogi lifetime titles, a feat ever achieved before.

The University of Tokyo has long continued its tradition of academic learning since the Meiji era. This way of learning is now going through a dramatic transformation unlike anything we have seen before. The new form of learning that we are seeing today is not just about the fusion of Bunkei and Rikei disciplines. It is not just about the combination of conventional methods. I have no doubt that the whole world is gaining momentum as we explore ways to create new knowledge. I envy you very much as you can start your research activities in such an exciting time.

I believe this wave of dramatic change presents a great chance for all of you. There is no guaranteed formula for success in academic learning. I would like all of you to resist the growing tide of division. I would like all of you to bring together and integrate all kinds of knowledge to cultivate your own path into the future. Think, for a moment, about the unlimited potential the University has to offer you. The beauty of academic learning is coming to understand a universal truth from what is actually happening around you and learning from the wisdom that comes from beyond a particular time and place. You have your classmates seated next to you. Each of them comes from a diverse background.

The vitality of academic learning comes from diversity and the exchange of differences. We are all gathered here for that purpose. I believe that such a process of knowledge collaboration will be the key to our futures. Together, let us create new forms of academic learning and a new society.

A time of change is a great opportunity. Let’s fully enjoy this great fortune.
I hope all of you will make the most of your time here at the University of Tokyo.

Congratulations!

Makoto Gonokami
President
The University of Tokyo
September 20, 2019

 

（和文）令和元年度　東京大学秋季入学式　総長式辞