From the Dean

Dean, Graduate School of Commerce Tomoki Oshika

Waseda University’s Graduate School of Commerce (GSC) was established in 1951 under Japan’s postwar new system (shinsei), making it one of the oldest graduate schools of its kind in Japan. Not only does it boast a long history, but it has also produced, through both its master’s and doctoral programs, many outstanding alumni who have gone on to contribute to academia as researchers and to industry as highly specialized professionals. In this sense, it can be considered one of Japan’s leading graduate schools in the social sciences, both in scale and in quality.

The reason we are able to produce such talented alumni lies in the fact that students, faculty, and the curriculum function as interlocking pillars. Since graduate school is a place for research, this means it is not merely about acquiring knowledge regarding “questions for which answers already exist”; rather, the process of inquiry into “questions for which answers have yet to be found” holds great significance. To maximize the potential of each incoming student—who is, so to speak, a researcher-in-training—we pair them with an advisor who is themselves an active researcher, alongside providing a structured curriculum of lecture courses in the master’s program. Furthermore, while we offer six specializations—Management; Marketing & International Business; Finance & Insurance; Accounting; Theoretical Economics & Econometrics; and Public Policy & Economic History —we impose only minimal restrictions on the selection of lecture courses. This approach enables students to gain a broad understanding of business studies as a whole while pursuing their own specializations in depth.

The significance of “new discoveries” in graduate school—inquiring into questions with no existing answer on one’s own—is growing all the more as generative AI becomes increasingly prevalent. Many generative AI systems, particularly those built upon large-scale language models, generate responses by predicting the most likely next word based on vast amounts of data. As a result, they are not well-suited to answering unknown questions. Experiencing the research process—identifying a problem on one’s own, exploring solutions to it, and ultimately arriving at a new answer—leads students to acquire skills essential for thriving in the coming era of generative AI.

The GSC is committed to fostering researchers and highly specialized professionals, both talented and promising, who, by bridging theory and practice, can devise solutions that are both universal and practical—solutions that neither remain mere academic theory nor amount to superficial practical fixes. Furthermore, by welcoming a large number of international students, we bring together diverse values and cultures, producing talent capable of thriving worldwide in an increasingly globalized business world. Through these efforts, we are confident in our ability to establish ourselves as a leading institution in business studies, not only in Japan but around the world.