My Bookshelf | Hajime Yoshino (Dean, Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care)

2004.09.09

I have bookshelves in three places. They are in the Dean's office of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care at SFC, my research office at the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care on the Shinanomachi Campus (SC), and at home. Well, to be precise, in this case, "bookshelf" might be better described as "workspace." Throughout my life, I've mostly had bookshelves in two places: one at work and one at home. In today's diary entry, I'd like to share some thoughts on my bookshelves in this situation, focusing on two points: (1) the difference between having two and three locations, and (2) guidelines for using the bookshelf in the new Dean's office.

This difference is, in fact, much greater than I imagined. Since my work mainly consists of thinking and writing (or so I believe), I need a minimum set of reference materials in all three locations. The most representative of these materials are, of course, dictionaries. Nowadays, electronic dictionaries save a lot of space, which is a great help, but their small screens can't provide the same "dot" (sudden rush) of information about a word at a single glance like a paper dictionary can. Regarding Japanese and English dictionaries, fortunately, or perhaps I should say something else, both of my daughters are quite extravagant and buy many things, then discard them without a second thought. I secretly collect and use these, so I have more than enough. However, this isn't the case for Chinese-Japanese, German, nursing, and medical sciences dictionaries. I have to acquire these while wondering how many more years I'll be using them. The problem here is that while I could just buy the same set for all three locations, for some reason, I find myself wanting different ones. As a result, even with dictionaries, there are subtle differences in expression and interpretation, which inevitably makes me want to consult different ones. But these three locations are up to 70 km apart, and the reality is that I often go several days without visiting one or the other. Furthermore, I have a long-standing, unchangeable habit of thinking out the outline of a manuscript by the deadline and starting to write it the next day. But I want my manuscripts to be as perfect as possible. For this reason and others, I find myself both lamenting and enjoying the fact that the difference between two and three locations is greater than I ever imagined.

I am the second dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care, which was established in 2001, but I actually inherited a completely empty Dean's office. This was because the first dean, Gen Yamazaki, was appointed Vice-President immediately after becoming dean and only occupied the position for six months, from April to September. During that time, for the reason mentioned, he often worked at the Mita campus and rarely visited the Dean's office of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care at SFC, let alone had the time to furnish it.

When I took over as dean in October 2001, the School of Nursing was still at SC, so the research offices for us clinical faculty members of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care, which are now at SC, were located at SFC. However, upon my appointment as dean, my research office (which faced south, adjacent to the forest where goshawks live and the biotope, and where the beautiful silk tree flowers delighted the eyes in summer) met the unfortunate fate of being confiscated.

Reluctantly, I moved all my belongings to the Dean's office (sigh). The first step in setting up the Dean's office was to deal with the bookshelf, which was especially bare in an already completely empty room. It was then I realized that the Dean's office must be used for both public and private purposes, and that aesthetic considerations were necessary for visitors. This is quite difficult. The bookshelf in the Dean's office is a fixed unit with double doors featuring clear glass panels. I started by positioning the shelves based on the overall layout. In the end, in the best, or most prominent, spot, I placed Juku-related decorations like a decorative plate of Yukichi Fukuzawa. To its right, I put materials related to the Juku and SFC; to the left, materials for the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care, various medical associations, and medical sciences; and on the bottom shelf, materials for various committees. Of these, the medical sciences materials were moved to my SC research office when it opened in 2003, but the other materials have been accumulating at an unimaginable rate. The shelves are already overflowing, and I have started the process of discarding things. As dean, I am obligated to attend various committees within Keio, and as a result, I have an enormous amount of related materials. At first, I filed and saved most of these, thinking that faculty and staff might want to view them, but I realized that no one ever did. Recently, I've been making an effort not to accumulate materials. In addition, there are many other shelves with blinds in the Dean's office. However, they are low, out of sight, and far from the dean's desk, making them extremely inconvenient. As functional bookshelves, the ones in my research offices at SFC and SC are superior. To improve this, as a summer project in 2002, I built a rather large bookshelf behind the dean's desk (on the west side, facing the Tanzawa Mountains, and fully visible from the second-floor connecting corridor). I painted the backboard brightly with three colors using a felt-tip pen, and everyone has praised it. (Flattery, I wonder?)

Organizing bookshelves is always something that has to be done in a hurry. And once you've done it, you rarely ever redo it, right? This task is difficult enough on its own, but this time I was faced with the even more challenging requirements of multiple bookshelves—three of them, no less—and a bookshelf for both public and private use. I have described my current situation, where I am still exposed to these challenges. (The End)

(Photo taken from the second-floor connecting corridor of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care)

(Photo taken from the Dean's office of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care)

(Date of publication: 2004/09/09)

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