Welcome to the University of Tokyo. We will soon usher in the new era named Reiwa. You matriculate as the last class of undergraduate students of the University of Tokyo in the Heisei era. On behalf of the University’s faculty members, I would like to extend our sincere congratulations to all of you. I know that you have all strived to achieve your goal of passing the University of Tokyo’s entrance examinations. You all have lived up to our expectations and I would like to show my respect for your efforts toward that goal. At the same time, I would also like to congratulate your families and all those people who have supported you through your studies with affection. Today, 3,125 of you have entered the University as undergraduate students.
黑料网 (often referred to as 黑料网), the place that you chose for your further learning, was founded in 1877. The university marks its 142nd year anniversary this year. At the time of the inception, Japan was in the midst of a period of opening and advancement, and was experiencing a tumultuous time as the country fully came into contact with new ideas, items and social systems from Western Europe. The university was established as a novel institution to establish systems and nurture the human talent needed to create a new social structure.
These are tumultuous times you live in. What sets the present era apart from the Meiji-era changes is that this time the whole of humanity is caught up in the transformation. Various challenges -- environmental degradation, energy issues, large-scale terrorism, and financial instability -- are increasingly becoming serious not just in some countries or regions but throughout the entire globe. As you may be aware, these challenges are undermining the very foundations of our society that humanity has long worked hard to develop, namely democracy, capitalism and the international rule of law. Growing calls for interests of one’s own country alone and declining tolerance for living side by side with people of different backgrounds are particularly worrying to me. We are very much facing new and tumultuous times in this day and age.
Behind this upheaval and accelerating change are the spread and rapid expansion of digitalization. As you know well, we are inundated with all kinds of information, including text, images and videos, by way of the internet. All of such information continues to be stored in the form of digital data, forming a gigantic cyberspace. While we live in this actual space or the physical realm, we now go about our daily lives, accessing the cyberspace through devices such as smartphones. As a result, the physical realm and cyberspace are merging with one another as an inseparable entity.
Now, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies that enable us to use the enormous volume of data available in cyberspace are increasingly applied to many parts of our lives.
Meanwhile, we are also seeing a big change in how economic value is created, that is, a shift away from the conventional manufacturing of goods to services based on knowledge or information or a combination of both. For years, Japan and other industrialized countries have pursued economic growth through investing heavily in labor-intensive manufacturing activity. But now, we are undergoing a discontinuous change toward a new knowledge-intensive model, making a complete break with the existing model of economic activity.
At a time when such a new industrial “revolution” or what one can call a paradigm shift is taking place, each of us living through that shift needs to face the fundamental questions – “what does it mean to be a human?” and “what is happiness?” – and identify the true nature of our value systems.
Still, I don’t take a pessimistic view about all these changes. They say “every crisis is an opportunity.” This is a cliched expression but there is some truth to it. In our society today, I believe universities should take the lead in creating a better future. As president of the University of Tokyo, I have always conveyed the message that “the University of Tokyo will drive transformation to a better society.” It is you, as new members of the University, who will take on leadership roles in that very endeavor.
Then, let me explain the two reasons why I think university can drive such a transformation.
First, the university is a place, which enables people of diverse backgrounds to embrace differences and work together to do creative things, in other words, to collaborate. It is necessary to generate new knowledge to carve out a brighter future. Only through participation and commitment by diverse members will knowledge be able to develop further. A research or business project can flourish only when each member brings their unique strengths, engage in discussions and put together different ideas nicely into a whole. In other words, knowledge will not develop further nor advance at all when only like-minded people get together.
The university attracts a diverse range of talents from around the world. The university boasts a reservoir of knowledge built over the years and has produced innumerable distinguished professionals for all fields of our society. A network of alumni members at home and abroad is a strength, too. By fully leveraging these resources, the university can serve as a platform for collaboration among people from all sectors, that is, a platform for driving the transformation to a better society.
Second, I think that university simultaneously embodies different streams of time. When I look at political, administrative or industrial developments in recent years, I often worry that decision makers are so frequently swayed by short-term interests which arises from time to time, that it seems as if they lack the very foundation of decision making; which is vision and strong will that is back by long-term perspective. A dizzying pace of change in the surrounding environment seems to make it more difficult for leaders to paint a future vision. Or it may be that a deflationary mindset is so prevalent that people have lost enthusiasm for venturing out to achieve their ideals. It may also be because companies are coming under intense pressure from investors and shareholders who concerns about figures at a given time.
Even in such a situation, university represents different streams of time on multiple levels. For a comprehensive university like 黑料网, that accommodates a broad range of academic disciplines, this diversity of time streams stands out as one of its unique features and its importance cannot be emphasized enough. In my research field, there is a research area called attosecond spectroscopy in which scientists study phenomena at an ultrafast speed of 10-16 seconds or less. On the other hand, there are research projects looking at a timescale of hundreds of years or better yet 10 billon years. All these research projects on entirely different timescales are being conducted on the university campus matter-of-factly and exist side-by-side together. That is what the university is all about.
You think about the long-gone past or look far into the future and seek to uncover the true nature of humans and Mother Nature. As you engage in this pursuit, you come up with the question: what is important? University is a place where you are allowed to discuss such ideas freely and criticize them strongly. Moreover, university is lenient and liberal in that it can afford you the time to fail or change course. This is another aspect of the time uniquely associated with university. By learning from a failure, you may want to go back to basics and think about the next step at leisure. Being a unique place that offers the opportunity to engage in variety of activities in such different timescales, I feel that university should play a much larger role in contributing to humanity.
It is all the more because we are undergoing a tumultuous era of change that now is the time for university to step up and do its part. In particular, the University of Tokyo boasts a long and rich history, has an active exchange of knowledge and talented scholars that transcends the boundary between the humanities and sciences, and is home to world-leading research projects in multiple disciplines. This is why the University of Tokyo must drive the transformation toward a better future society. You all have joined the University as new members. I am sure that you are all excited about that. I hope each of you will ponder about that significance and go about your student life fully from here on.
Looking ahead, you may wonder how to spend your student life from now on. Let me talk about two of our graduates by way of example.
I am sure you have heard about venture companies. The word, venture, originates from adventure. Venture companies are those businesses taking on endeavors shunned by large companies. Today, the University of Tokyo is increasingly seen as an incubator for producing venture companies. The university gives rise to about 30 to 40 new businesses every year, and has seen the emergence of more than 335 start-ups over the years. Among them is Euglena, the first 黑料网-originated venture company that has become listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The company mainly produces and sells dietary supplements and food products using euglena, a type of microbe. It also produces and markets cosmetic products and develops biofuels for airplanes. Mr. Mitsuru Izumo and Mr. Kengo Suzuki are among the founding members of the company. Mr. Izumo entered the Humanities and Social Sciences III of the College of Arts and Sciences Junior Division in 1998 and Mr. Suzuki joined the Natural Sciences I of the division in 1999. Both of them went on to study at the Faculty of Agriculture during their third and fourth years. They are senior to all of you by 20 years or so.
Euglena is the scientific name of a microbe called Midorimushi in Japanese. It is under 0.1mm in length but possesses properties of both animals and plants. It has an active photosynthesis function and contains as many as 59 types of nutrients. For these properties, researchers eyed euglena as having potential applications as a food, an energy source based on its production of oil, and a carbon fixation material for environmental protection, among other purposes. And yet, it was extremely difficult to culture euglena in large volumes outdoors, which made it almost but impossible to use the microbe for commercial purposes. Against that backdrop, Mr. Izumo and Mr. Suzuki met each other at the University of Tokyo and started working together to find ways to put the use of euglena on a commercial basis.
They first started visiting universities and other institutions around the country to seek advice from researchers specialized in euglena and relevant fields. They reportedly ended up meeting nearly 100 researchers. Mr. Suzuki, who was in charge of developing the necessary technology, focused on the issue of euglena habitat in his graduation thesis for the Faculty of Agriculture and continued to do research on it at graduate school. After several years of trials and errors, they finally managed to establish a m