2023年度9月入学式を執り行いました

“The first words all of you need to hear today should be shouted out in a clear voice: Congratulations to each and every one sitting in front of me!  Unqualified, unvarnished, spelled out in caps and crystal clear CONGRATULATIONS!

Waseda University is a great place to study, because of the faculty and because of the diverse body of students for sure; and as you’ll discover, the facilities are amazing also.   I myself am a professor of the humanities, which means I spend a lot of my time searching for old books in the stacks of the Central Library or watching century-old films at the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum. Sometimes you can find me drinking coffee while I read a translation of Haruki Murakami’s novels at our brand new Waseda International House of Literature, just a few minutes’ walk across campus from here. The donuts are super delicious by the way – I recommend you try them as soon as you can with your friends.
Studying at the university is one great way to gain many of the skills we need in order to build our careers, and to make important decisions as voters, consumers, parents or teachers of the next generation to follow us here on this impossibly polarized, endangered planet. And there is a synergy involved here, an opportunity for each of us gathered today, to expand and to cultivate our understanding of this world through direct contact and action – whether that action be a simple walk by yourself up a steep hill to retrace and envision the lives of men and women who walked on the same path hundreds of years ago, or to reach out even further, beyond the campus gates, into areas of society we’ve only heard of or glimpsed at through digital space.

Words can be translated into action, and actions have the power either to harm or to heal us. The next four years will lead you towards a career, and will help shape your view of the world in ways, hopefully, that will bring you closer to the joys and to the challenges felt by others at great distances of time and culture and space. I say hopefully because the world will be waiting for these words of yours, and certainly for the actions you take. Good luck every step of the way.”