Opening of the Yagami Campus

2018/08/22

Image: The completed Yagami Campus and the slope in front

These nostalgic photos show the construction around the spring of 1971 and the Yagami Campus at the time of its completion. For the Faculty of Engineering (now the Faculty of Science and Technology), which was located in Koganei at the time, returning to Yagami-dai was a long-held wish. Due to delays in construction caused by student protests and the excavation of archaeological remains, moving began in the summer of 1971 while construction was still ongoing in some areas. The Yagami Campus officially opened in April 1973. Nearly half a century has passed since the relocation to Yagami, and fewer people now remember the Koganei Campus. The Koganei Campus was inherited from the former site of a Yokogawa Electric factory; most of the buildings were old, and some school buildings and laboratories used the factory structures as they were. We truly suffered from drafts and dust. Therefore, the move to Yagami-dai was a dream-like event for those of us who were in Koganei.

Passing by the side of the Hiyoshi Commemorative Hall, the Yagami Campus appears majestically on top of a small hill across the valley. The slope in front, continuing from the Hiyoshi Campus, felt to us like a road of hope toward the future. At the top of the slope, a plaza spread out, with a six-story research building in front, plum trees and a wisteria trellis to the right, and the Matsushita Memorial Library beyond them. To the left was a pond, with a large camphor tree beside it, and on the other side of the pond, with the classroom building at his back, stood a bust of Mr. Ginjiro Fujiwara, watching over us. Between classes, this plaza overflowed with students—some chatting, some sitting on the stone steps eating lunch or talking, others absorbed in books under the wisteria trellis—it was a place for interaction between faculty, staff, and students. For me, this plaza was a place of relaxation and a source of vitality. When I hit a wall in my research, I would walk slowly around here, looking at the Hiyoshi Campus across the valley or the sunset while reflecting; it was a place to return to my roots. Now, the Sosokan stands in this plaza as the face of the Faculty of Science and Technology, and the large camphor tree that was next to the pond now welcomes people in front of the Sosokan as a symbol of Yagami-dai.

It is a bit of a shame that this plaza is gone, but in its place, I fondly remember exchanging discussions with students over coffee on the veranda of La Poire, located in the Sosokan.