October 04, 2022

President's Message for New Students, October 2022

President's Message for New Students

Today, I would like to congratulate you on your admission to SOKENDAI. Many international students enroll in autumn, and under the circumstances, I am very happy that you were able to successfully enter the country so that you may begin your research. Normally, we would all gather together at the university's headquarters in Hayama so that you could all get acquainted with other new students in different departments. You would then participate in the Freshman Course where you would broadly discuss your research together with students ahead of you in your programs. However, once again this year, I regret to inform you that, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, both the entrance ceremony and Freshman Course will be held online. I believe that human beings are better able to understand each other by actually coming together in the same place at the same time and speaking to one another face-to-face, and I feel that meeting online is a poor substitute for this.

However, even a poor substitute is better than no substitute at all. Also, since I'm sure that all of you are far more comfortable and proficient with information technology than those of my generation, I hope that, even under these conditions, you get to know each other and build relationships that will last for years to come.

SOKENDAI is a graduate university with no undergraduate programs. Furthermore, our departments are not all located together on a single campus. Each department is instead housed within one of several national research institutes scattered across Japan. Each department also possesses a very limited enrollment capacity, from three to five students per year, which is far outstripped by the number of professors and other academic staff members at the parent institute. Once in this environment, you will be regarded from the very beginning as a young researcher preparing to lead the next generation, rather than simply as a graduate student to look after. Each parent institute is classified as an Inter-University Research Institute for researchers from across Japan in the applicable fields who are conducting world-class research. The atmosphere at these institutes differs significantly from that of a graduate university that serves as an extension of an ordinary undergraduate university, and the daily process of research will likely be quite different as well.

These are the circumstances under which you are all now beginning your new period of research, and you will face a variety of difficulties. In addition to the various difficulties inherent in conducting research to obtain a doctoral degree, you will face others that are unique to SOKENDAI. For example, the small number of students in each department makes it difficult to build a student community. Also, you may lack access to certain beneficial facilities that students at an ordinary university might take for granted, and while the academic staff members are all top-class researchers, not all of them are skilled in education - just to name a few of the difficulties that you may encounter. Nevertheless, I am confident that those of you who selected SOKENDAI and decided to enter our university to pursue your doctoral dissertation research will be able to overcome these difficulties and give full attention to your research.

That being said, however, if you have any problems, please be sure to seek advice and assistance. Each department - as well as the SOKENDAI headquarters - offers consultations and counseling services to provide this type of support. At many locations, services are also available in English. It is not good to keep problems and worries to yourself, and if it exacerbates into a true depressive state, it will be extremely difficult to recover. Right now, you may be so full of hope that you can't even imagine ever becoming so distressed. However, in the same way that you remain ever-ready to respond in the event of an earthquake and other disaster, please also be ready to seek the care you need when facing hardships.

What sorts of research projects are you about to begin? Some of you may have already clearly defined your topic, while others may only have a vague goal in mind with the details left undetermined. Either way, you are all embarking on a voyage into uncharted waters. Doctoral dissertation research, whether to discover new facts or to provide new perspectives, is a process of bringing to light something that no one had ever before considered. It is truly exciting experience.

How, though, is it possible to consider that which no one had ever before considered? As you pursue your research into the unknown, I would also like for you to perceive and observe the process of research from a slightly higher vantage point in order to see what it means to be able to achieve this.

However, although observing yourself and your actions from a higher vantage point and being capable of meta-level thinking are both extremely important, you may not have the luxury of these right now. I myself was not capable of such meta-level thinking when I entered graduate school and began my doctoral dissertation research.

My background is in physical anthropology, which explores how the human organism evolved and what it has become today. I studied in this field as an undergraduate as well. However, at the time, I wasn't so interested in humans themselves. All I wanted to do was delve deep into unexplored territory on this Earth. However, this was in the 1980s, so there wasn't any "unexplored territory" left on Earth. Every place on the planet had already been visited and investigated in some way or other.

Humanity has originated from Africa, which is also the home of humanity's closest living relative - the chimpanzee. So, for my doctoral dissertation, I chose to study the behaviors and ecology of wild chimpanzees living on the banks of Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. I lived in a local-style hut without electricity, gas, or running water, and I had to hire dozens of locals to help me in my research, even though I had no prior experience employing anyone whatsoever. There were certainly difficulties, but I was able to revel in the thrill of exploration. I am grateful for the experience because it made me what I am today. I became keenly aware of how people think and feel differently when their cultures are different, and yet at the same time, I saw many things that made me realize that humans are the same wherever you go, no matter how different our cultures may be.

All of you are about to begin research in a broad range of fields, but I have a question specifically for our new international students. Why did you choose Japan? I'm sure you have many different reasons, but I hope that, whatever your field of research, you also learn a bit about Japanese culture and society during your time here. And to our Japanese students, I hope that you are able to reflect on the nature and character of Japan through your interactions with international students. I also hope that you take the opportunity to visit other countries and experience researching overseas to further deepen your insights into the nature of human beings and the cultures thereof. SOKENDAI offers a wealth of such opportunities.

SOKENDAI is currently composed of six schools and a total of twenty departments. This will remain the case for this academic year, but from next year, we are redesigning the university to have twenty courses organized under a single school and a single department. Even now, it is possible to learn about different fields of research and incorporate them into your own research, and to receive guidance from professors in different schools. Nevertheless, moving forward, we would like to further facilitate the flow of ideas by completely removing the barriers between schools. By doing so, we hope to become able to foster more people than ever before who work to discover new problems and tackle them in innovative ways. You are enrolling in the university just prior to this reorganization, and I hope that you adopt the spirit of this reorganization in advance and strive to break new ground with an attitude of free thinking, unrestrained by your school or department.

The first thing I would like you all to do is to develop an area of expertise in which you are second to none. I want you to feel like a professional who, at least for the time-being, knows more than anyone else regarding a particular issue. Mastering a single path is important because it provides you with your own internal axis. In addition, I would like you to acquire the habit of always looking around to see what you can learn from research in other fields outside of your specialty. Although academia by its very nature tends to move constantly toward subdivision, there are no boundaries when it comes to the phenomena themselves that we explore. The various phenomena we observe in nature and in the world are interrelated to varying degrees, and there is never only a single way to view an issue. I hope that you will learn to be both specialists and generalists in this way over the years you spend at SOKENDAI.

Nobody is sure if the pandemic may soon come to an end or not. But in Europe, most social restrictions have already been lifted. Japan is a bit more cautious, so life may remain inconvenient for some time to come. Even so, we hope that the period of research you are now beginning will be a wonderful part of your life. We would like to provide you with as much support as we can. Once again, congratulations on your enrollment today.

2022, October 4

Mariko Hasegawa, President
The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI