March 27, 2023

Spring 2022 Graduation Ceremony Address

Spring 2022 Graduation Ceremony Address

I would like to express my sincere congratulations to all of you on your graduation from SOKENDAI and the conferral of your degrees today. I am sure that the research you have conducted for your degree has been both exciting and enjoyable. Yet, at the same time, I am sure that you have also experienced many hardships. In particular, we are now in the third year of the pandemic, which has drastically changed the way people live throughout in the world. Undoubtedly, you have been dealing with the effects of the pandemic for nearly the entire time that you have been researching for your doctoral degree. I can easily imagine the many hardships you endured, such as not being able to visit your laboratory, not having access to the library, not being able to conduct field studies, or conversely, not being able to return from research sites - just to name a few. I would like to express my sincere joy at seeing you overcome each and every one of these hurdles to arrive at this point today. In addition to my joy, I would also like to express my deep gratitude to your academic supervisors, the professors involved in guiding your research, as well as the members of your families, all of whom have supported your efforts.

To those of you receiving your degrees today, what path will you take in the future? According to past statistics, the largest number of you will likely continue your research as fixed-term post-doctoral fellows. This may be here in Japan or somewhere overseas. Additionally, some of you may go on to work for companies or other organizations rather than for universities or research institutes. Others of you may still be undecided. However, regardless of which path you choose, I hope that, over the course of your lives, you make the most of the abilities that you have honed through your degree research here at SOKENDAI.

We are a graduate university designed to foster the next generation of researchers by providing students with the opportunity to conduct their research at national research institutes engaged in world-class research. This is why most of our incoming students are aspiring researchers. However, just because you have earned a degree in a particular field of research does not mean that becoming a professional researcher is the only path to success. By this, I mean that the abilities you have honed through your degree research are not applicable solely to producing results in this single research project in your particular area of study.

When you take a broader perspective, away from the narrow scope of this single achievement in a certain field of research, what abilities do you feel that you have honed in comparison to what you were capable of before beginning your degree research? The ability to survey and organize the previous research in a given field, the ability to identify problems, to uncover potential that no one has yet noticed, the ingenuity to consider possible methods to explore this new potential, the imagination to envision the new prospects that successful research could open up, the ability to express yourself in a logical manner, to comprehensively convey an idea in writing through a series of papers, and the ability to remain resolute and persistent in your efforts... Is creativity not simply the fruit of combining these sorts of abilities? When further abstracted, such abilities and traits are without a doubt universally applicable. Working as a researcher at a university or other institution is also far from the only way for you to demonstrate these abilities.

And even if you do become a researcher, obtaining a degree does not mean that you will immediately stand at the forefront of your field. If you do not truly and fully demonstrate a range of abilities, such as those I just mentioned, which you should have honed during the course of your degree research, then it will be difficult to become a top-notch researcher even down the road. Above all, though, to be a researcher, you must truly enjoy the process of research. Thinking back, my husband and I got married when we were in the second year of our respective master's degree programs, and we used to often talk about research while preparing dinner, whether we were chopping cucumbers or boiling something on the stove. Although we both belonged to different graduate schools, talking about research was so thrilling to us because we were both thinking about the same things from different angles.

Nowadays, some young researchers say that they make a point not to talk about their research at home as a way of maintaining a good work-life balance. This saddens me somewhat, but I guess that times have changed. Even so, I suspect that, now as ever, researchers still feel more joy in their research than in anything else. In any case, I hope that all of you expand beyond your specific research topic and embark upon the rest of your lives with an awareness of the general abilities that you have honed through the research by which you obtained your doctoral degree.

It feels as though, in Japan, there is a widening gap between the world of academia and the rest of society. The general public is no longer very interested in understanding the temperament of academics or in hearing about what they have devoted themselves to. At the same time, academics have enjoyed an environment in which they are free to conduct research as they please, without knowing much about how society in general operates. Therefore, speaking as an academic, while I would like the general public to become a bit more scientifically literate, at the same time, I recognize that academics too need to become far more "socially literate." The Science and Society curriculum provided by SOKENDAI's School of Advanced Sciences was designed to build this sort of mutual understanding. In addition to your scientific literacy, I would like for all of you to also acquire a measure of social literacy.

A moment ago, I mentioned the temperament of academics. While your abilities determine whether or not you are capable of a particular thing, your temperament determines whether or not you are well-suited for that particular thing. These are two completely different traits. Past studies have indicated that temperament seems to be largely inborn. When we are young, we are influenced by what we think and by what others expect of us, and many people end up going in a direction that is at considerable odds with their inborn temperament. However, our temperament has a strong influence over us, and eventually, as the years go by, our innate temperament will come to dominate many aspects of our life.

I encourage all of you to take another close look at your own temperament to see what you are truly suited for and what you most enjoy. In doing so, you may come to realize that you have more options available than just the life of an academic, or you may decide that academia is your true path. True happiness is finding a position that matches both your temperament and your abilities. As an academic myself, I hope that as many of you young people as possible will actively support the next generation of research. Nevertheless, I would also like to convey to you that there is no need to feel that success as an academic is the only way for you to demonstrate the abilities that you have honed through the research you conducted to obtain your doctoral degree.

My term as president of SOKENDAI will come to an end at the end of this March. I too will be "graduating" from the university. I have served two terms as president of SOKENDAI, beginning in 2017 for a total of six years. My basic policy for managing the university, which I adopted after becoming president, has been to place the most emphasis on supporting our students. SOKENDAI's departments are located in a variety of research institutes, which function as parent institutions. Research institutes are venues for research and possess the budget, equipment, and personnel to accomplish this. Since SOKENDAI has accepted graduate students who intend to conduct research at these institutions in order to obtain a doctoral degree, I adopted this as my basic policy because I consider student support to be the university's primary role.

In Japan, it has long been the case that students who wish to enter graduate school to conduct research with the aim of obtaining a doctoral degree have received very little financial support. Perhaps this is because graduate students have been seen as nothing more than people who have chosen to continue researching as a hobby instead of getting a job as soon as they graduate from university, rather than as valuable up-and-coming researchers who will support the next generation. On the other hand, in Europe and the United States, the next generation of researchers have access extensive scholarship and salary programs, and it is true that graduate schools in Japan are less attractive than their counterparts in Europe and the United States in this regard. I now feel that we must change this situation. SOKENDAI has only recently been able to improve this situation to some degree (though it is of course still insufficient).

I have also been paying close attention to the issues of harassment and mental health, and I have done what I can to create environments where everyone is able to comfortably devote themselves to their research. The headquarters of SOKENDAI is located in Hayama, yet our departments are scattered across Japan. This makes it difficult to have a clear understanding of the realities of each research site. The environments may still not be perfectly comfortable for everyone, so I hope that the incoming administration will continue these efforts to improve environments.

Climate change, global warming, environmental destruction, living organisms going extinct, and even the reason behind the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic... These and other signs in the world today are ample proof that we must change the course of civilization to develop differently than during the 20th century. In the 20th century, the development of science and technology led to a dramatic rise in people's standard of living, with a focus on mass production and mass consumption.

Accompanying the rapid rise in the global population and the improvements to everyone's standard of living, the energy consumption of humanity as a whole has skyrocketed, and this has led to the destruction of virgin forests, an increase in the number of man-made objects, and world-wide disruptions to the cycle of elements. It is impossible for this state of affairs to continue for much longer. This is why everyone says that we must make the shift to a sustainable society. We must shift from objectives based on the view that development means possessing large quantities of goods to the mentality of affluence without abundance, with objectives through which we can achieve happiness without needing so much. This is true, but no one knows how to make it happen. No one yet knows how to do this.

On the other hand, the Internet and other new information technologies have removed some material and spatial limitations, and enable many things that used to be impossible. In the past, meetings were only possible if the participants physically traveled and gathered in one spot. Now, however, online meetings are commonplace. In the past, the only way to buy anything was to actually visit the store. Now, however, you can view nearly any product you want on a screen and buy it with the click of a button. In the past, the extent to which people could make new acquaintances was limited to the scope of their activities. Now, however, the Internet can potentially connect anyone with anyone. We do not yet know what roles general-purpose AI and robotics will play, or how the IoT will change society, but we can be sure that these technologies will have an effect on society.

I believe that these two trends in combination will lead to a world that operates under drastically different values and systems than the world of the past. We do not yet know what those values and systems will be. It is up to all of you to build them. The foundations of our values and worldview are primarily created by our experiences when young, and these seem quite difficult to change once we get older. The senior generation, myself included, grew up in the old world, and it seems difficult for us to come up with truly innovative ideas for how to leverage new technologies to create a sustainable world. I feel that young people who are growing up in this ever-changing world are far better suited to coming up with such ideas.

No matter what sort of life you lead in the future and no matter where you live in the world, I hope that you work to build a new world based on what you have learned at SOKENDAI, with a flexible mindset, through frequent discussions with others, and by employing your imagination.

My sincerest congratulations to you today.

2023, March 24

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