Indispensable Things for the New Year's Holidays | Jiro Kokuryo (Dean of the Faculty of Policy Management)

2009.12.24

It doesn't feel like the New Year without some inconvenience or something coming to a halt.

That much hasn't changed, then or now, but I think what comes to a halt has changed considerably. In the past, the first sales of the year started later, and ATMs would even shut down for the first three days of January, so we would rush to the bank at the end of the year to withdraw funds for the New Year. I feel there was a certain necessity to the *osechi* (traditional New Year's food) that mothers would prepare, all while complaining about the effort. These were the things that gave me a sense of the season. Now, many of life's inconveniences have disappeared and things have become more convenient, but conversely, the lack of tension makes it harder to get into the New Year's spirit.

For the past decade or so, I've found my sense of the season in watching to see if the network will go down on New Year's Eve. In 2000, it was said that systems around the world might crash due to the so-called Y2K problem. In the end, everything was fine. Eventually, the focus shifted to mobile phone emails, and calls to refrain from sending New Year's greeting emails began to circulate. Following that trend, I wonder if this year's year-end will be all about Twitter. Given the surge in users at SFC over the past few weeks, it seems plausible that the systems connecting Twitter could crash here and there due to a flood of New Year's tweets.

While changes in our tools easily alter our lifestyles and even our sense of the seasons, there remains the unchanging sight of people patiently waiting for a non-responsive server, trying to send New Year's greetings to friends and acquaintances as quickly as possible. I suppose this kind of contradiction is what makes human beings so interesting.

From the global economy and Japanese politics to IT, 2009 seems to have been a year that only heralded major changes to existing systems, while the shape of what lies ahead remained unclear. I believe the coming year will likely be one in which that shape begins to be defined more concretely. During the New Year's holidays, I'd like to stop time for a moment and reflect on this.

To everyone, thank you very much for all your support this year. I wish you all a happy New Year.

(Incidentally, my greatest personal source of the New Year's seasonal feeling is the graduation theses of students who come rushing to me in a panic. Every now and then, there are students who cause a great fuss because they couldn't gather data as planned or found a flaw in their logic. I wonder if they'll be okay this year. Good luck, everyone.)

(Posted on: 2009/12/24)