[Special Feature: 30 Years of SFC] SFC and Me: Walk on the Wild Side of Gulliver Pond (Kamoike)!

2020/10/07

I graduated from Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) in 1999. Age-wise, I am in my mid-40s, but lately, I have been frequently asked to write essays reflecting on my life. Recently, I was even interviewed for a book where I looked back on my apprenticeship years from my late 20s to early 30s, and now I am being asked to write about my student days for a magazine. Since this might be a premonition that my life will end early next year due to illness or an accident, I will record the dark history of my youth at Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) here. My alumni peers walking on brilliant career paths probably won't empathize, but it should at least serve as evidence that there was a human being with blood and tears in that artificial campus.

Having no other universities I passed the entrance exams for, I entered Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) in its fourth year of establishment. It was a place that lacked everything necessary for student life, consisting only of classrooms, computers, and professors. In class, we learned about the coming information society and C language. I formed an academic literary circle called the "Union Club" with friends (including later philosopher Asaki Nishikawa, economist Tomohiro Inoue, life scientist Koichi Takahashi, and dance critic Yukihiko Yoshida), spending our days printing fanzines and stapling them by hand. To become an official organization, we needed a full-time faculty member as an advisor, and Hisanaga Makino, who lost at rock-paper-scissors, went to get an approval stamp from the literary critic Professor Jun Eto. He was a fearsome conservative polemicist, and rumors said that when he got drunk at graduation parties, he would agitate students by saying, "Let's go raid the Asahi Shimbun together." When I joined the Eto Seminar to closely read the English translation of Natsume Soseki's "Kokoro," the professor appeared in the Iota classroom wearing a sharp suit and tie. I had poor posture and slouched, but he cautioned me, asking, "Is something wrong with your stomach?" and I began to pay attention to how I sat in the seminar.

My father, a former member of the Zenkyoto (All-Campus Joint Struggle League), would make snide remarks every time he paid my tuition, saying, "Your school is full of nothing but right-wing professors." After Professor Eto retired, I joined the seminar of critic Professor Kazuya Fukuda and attended the drinking party on the first day. Having drunk too much, I lectured on the war crimes of Emperor Showa right in front of Professor Fukuda, which made the other students freeze. True to his reputation as a neo-conservative polemicist, the professor argued back against the delusions of post-war democracy, and I went home crying after being completely demolished. After that, I attended the Fukuda Seminar diligently and became absorbed in the works of I-novelists such as Zenzo Kasai, Isota Kamura, and Shukei Chikamatsu.

In the seminar of poet Professor Teruo Inoue, any research presentation or report was permitted, making it an asylum (refuge) for students who wanted to engage in artistic expression. Whether a student performed Butoh dance, recited their own poetry, or I screened an experimental film, the professor would smile and provide insightful commentary while smoking Caster Milds in the classroom.

In the mid-90s, the Media Center had Betacam editing desks and Macs capable of video editing, but rendering took days and they were practically useless. Since there was no video circle, I formed a film research club and worked part-time to buy my own 16mm film equipment. Intending to shoot an experimental film, I built a set out of plywood in the basement studio of the Media Center. I filmed a short titled "My Burial," in which I appeared naked and vomited, while pig entrails moved around the set via stop-motion animation. After the shoot, the rotten smell of the entrails clung to the studio, and I was promptly banned from the premises. I tried to rent the studio using a friend's name, but a student working as an AV consultant reported me to the staff. That short film was later screened at European film festivals, giving me the confidence to pursue a career in the world of video, so I suppose it was worth the mess.

Years later, when I was invited to be a lecturer in video expression at SFC, I found it strange that they reached out to someone like me who had repeated two years and walked the backroads of life. I realized that, unlike politicians, university personnel decisions don't involve a screening process. Returning to the campus after over a decade, the efforts I had made to survive in the outside world felt like a lie; the campus had become a place where honest and serious students grew up healthily. I tried to convey the fun of filmmaking using art films and documentaries as materials, but I'm not sure if I succeeded with the YouTube generation. The best I could do was to advise them, at the very least, not to become "creators" who make programs or commercials for TV stations or advertising agencies.

Having spent six years as a student and eight years as a lecturer—a total of 14 years—at SFC, I can only call it an inseparable fate. I have never had a relationship last that long with any person I felt compatible with. The campus that made my heart race when I was young and the concrete buildings that have reached their 30th anniversary have grown old and weathered, but the artificial Gulliver Pond (Kamoike) and the lawn remain as out of place as ever. Students speak cleverly using loanwords, and those in the humanities are struggling to get credits. I only hope that for the next 30 years, this place remains as peaceful as it is now.