The Appeal of "Ken-Ma" | Choichi Yoshino (Dean, Graduate School of Health Management)
2005.11.11
Well, I hear the topic this time is a very conventional one (not very SFC-like, is it?): "Aspirations and Enthusiasm upon Becoming Dean." But being the last of the five contributors to write, I feel a bit of pressure.
Anyway, for the formal details about our graduate school, I'd like you to look at the school guide.
The name Graduate School of Health Management is long, so we commonly call it "Ken-Ma."
As for what we study at Ken-Ma, true to its name, it is the pursuit of methods for the efficient and appealing health management of individuals and organizations, especially in a super-aging society. This makes it a graduate school program of a kind rarely seen in Japan.
By the way, the word "health" (kenko) is a tricky one. This is because it is commonly "taken for granted" that "health" means "being healthy and free of disease or disability." However, for the elderly, it is also "taken for granted" that they will have some physical impairment, which complicates things. To resolve this, we treat the "average" elderly person, who may have some minor impairment, as being as close to "healthy" as possible. In other words, "Ken-Ma" starts from the premise of treating "health" and "illness/disability" as a continuum, rather than placing a traditional barrier between them. Incidentally, the term "health" (kenko) was apparently coined by Ogata Koan, the mentor of Yukichi Fukuzawa, and popularized by Yukichi Fukuzawa himself. Furthermore, his terminology also includes "taikan kenko"*, which is a perfect fit for "Ken-Ma."
So, to advance this field of study systematically, efficiently, and appealingly as described above, it requires knowledge of medical sciences and nursing, know-how related to nursing care and medicine, and, importantly, the active integration of sports into this field. Therefore, "Ken-Ma" is composed of three areas of concentration: Nursing, Medical Management (I-Mane), and Sports Management (Spo-Mane). Each of these has its own outstanding faculty and students from completely different backgrounds, making the program extremely interdisciplinary.
From a graduate school with this kind of stance, in addition to the aims and objectives mentioned above, there is a very high potential for numerous wonderful 21st-century businesses to emerge in each of these fields. Including this prospect, the motivation of the members of "Ken-Ma" is very high.
My shoulders are getting stiff, so I'll end it here. The End.
* "Taikan kenko": This refers to including in the concept of health a state where one may have some minor, but not conspicuous, impairments.
(Date of publication: 2005/11/11)