President Speech 2020

Today is a very special day for all of us who gather here, as well as for those family members of graduating students who cannot gather here but have to participate remotely from campus.

This is not only the day which marks the end of your long academic journey at International University of Japan, but also the day we can celebrate the end of a very stressful spring term without anyone infected by COVID-19 virus on our campus. It was indeed a very strange spring term that we have to spend together, all of you taking most courses on-line even if all of our students live on campus or nearby.

I admire all of you, students, faculty and staff alike, that we could get through these very tough days together, full of anxiety at first, but very united and caring for each other for the entire spring term. As the president of this university, I am very proud of you all.

I am happy to announce that we can send out today 99 masters students from Graduate School of International Relations, 49 masters student from Graduate School of International Management, and 1 PhD student from Graduate School of International Relations. I would like to congratulate all the graduating students and their families for their hard work and intensive study here at IUJ. All of you can be very proud of your wonderful achievement.

But at the same time, I am very sorry that we must have this commencement ceremony as a very scaled-down version to avoid infection, without any guests and the 1st year students, as well as your families. We even do not have a congratulating speech by a distinguished guest. This ceremony itself is very symbolic of what all of you had to go through toward the end of your time at IUJ.

We should feel happy, though, that we could gather here well and healthy, since there are millions of people in the world, including many at home countries of yours, who suffer from this vicious virus.

One of the things that this virus forced many of us to do is to do self- reflection, I think. Self-reflection about yourself, self-reflection about your family and people around you and self-reflection about the country you were born, because this seems to be one certain thing that this virus forced us to do during so many hours of staying home and avoiding contacts with other people. All of us had so much time think about ourselves and what we have had to go through. More than anything else, I feel very sorry for so many victims from this infection all around the world. Perhaps because of such a large sad impact, we really have to think about what is really happening and why it is the way we see.

I reflected myself on my own society, Japanese society. Let me give you one example, just one of many. Japanese society seems to be a society of one extra consideration for others, as well as a society of one extra action for details. In conjunction with the Covid-19 infection, an example of one extra consideration is so many people wearing masks not to infect others and not to be infected by others. An example of extra action for details is so many people washing hands with soap so often to keep themselves clean. Actually, these patterns of behavior have been rather common in Japan even before Covid-19 but they have been accelerated to another height since this March.

Being a specialist on Japanese industries, I conjecture these same traits of one extra consideration for others and one extra action for details lie behind the strength of Japanese workplace both in manufacturing and service industries. People often take extra consideration for the smooth working of human network around them and provide helping hands. People often take extra action of details to keep quality up and cut cost down in their everyday operations. We often observe these behaviors, just to take some examples, both at the automobile shop floor and at the Japanese ryokan in their O-mo-te-na-shi.

This is just a small example of mine, and I may be wrong in my conjecture.  But I encourage you to reflect on your experience in Japan as well as in your home countries to probe into the factors behind how different societies react to the same pandemic disaster. Covid-19 attacked all the countries equally at about the same time but they seemed to have brought about somewhat different reaction behaviors in different societies, which evident, for example, from very different patterns of infection spread. The currently observable differences may converge or diverge in the long run. But this reflection effort would be a valuable cross-societal thinking experience for many of you, I hope, since you have been trained in social sciences at IUJ and  also partly because you have spent two years of your life until today in a bit strange society called Japan where many people all over the world seem to think some mysterious success in containing the virus has occurred, at least so far. Japan seem to provide one polar case of comparison to force deep cross-societal reflection. In a sense, you might have been lucky to be the eyewitness of this mystery right in the middle of the disaster.

Learning how to think about the real world, or to put it a little differently, constructing one’s own conceptual framework to understand the phenomena which you encounter in the real world, that is one of the most precious intellectual assets you can get from graduate school education. It is not just learning theories or techniques which is important. It is thinking capability which counts out there in the real world after your graduation. I hope you have become persons who can think better or deeper because of your academic study at IUJ.

One of the interesting and very pressing reality around us today which is worth thinking about is this COVID infection, which has impacts on various aspects of our daily lives and economies in most societies around the globe. It seems to be changing the realities around us in most parts of the world. To understand this reality change and ask why, seems to be a very interesting conceptual experiment you can do. After all, it is free to think. You need time, but you do not need any money to think. And I hope you have passions to this conceptual experiment, remembering so many victims from this virus and determined to minimize its negative impact in your society in the future.

I urge you to do that conceptual experiment on this infection especially on cross-societal basis, since you have spent your time on a campus where almost 50 different societies are represented and where, as we call it, the world gathers. We have ample opportunities and samples for such comparison. This is a unique value of this university.

Apart from COVID infection comparison, I hope you have done many of those cross-societal comparisons on other topics and have experienced a plenty of cross-cultural interaction during your stay at IUJ on an almost daily basis. When I became the president of this university three years ago, I was of course very much impressed by this unique value of IUJ. This is a very special place, being an English- speaking university located in rural Japan where international standard curriculum has been pursued and students from so many countries gather.

As the social environment, IUJ is special because it is the best place for cross-societal comparison and cross-cultural interaction, as I have already mentioned.

As the natural environment, moreover, I believe IUJ campus is a special place where many people can feel the spiritual power of nature. People can get energy, on and near campus, from the green fields in summer, the massive white snow in winter and beautiful mountains all year round. Maybe not a spectacular scenery, but from morning mist, bright sunshine, thin clouds and glittering snow, I very often feel I am revived by getting energy from the nature. I hope that many of you agree with me.

When I could finally come to our campus three weeks ago for the first time in more than two months due to travel limitations, I felt the same sensation, if you will, from the nature on and surrounding our campus. This is a truly beautiful and serene place.

I know that many students jokingly say that IUJ stands for I and U in Jail. I want to correct this joke by saying that IUJ should stand for I and U in Jewel. This place is like a precious jewel, with jewel like people from all over the world and jewel like nature at the foot of Hakkaisan mountain.

As such a special place, I only hope that IUJ will remain to be a place where you want to come back to often after graduation, both in your memory and sometimes in person. You are always welcome to come back.

To end this speech with those words of advance welcome, congratulations again for your graduation and good luck to all of you out there at your next destination.