Deans' Relay Talk: Cherish Encounters During Your Student Days | Tomoyuki Kojima (Dean, Faculty of Policy Management)
2004.05.27
Encounters can happen anytime, anywhere. However, when we look back, everyone should have a few encounters that have defined their lives. Isn't it during our university years that we have the most opportunities for such encounters? For me, that was certainly the case.
In high school, my days were consumed by judo, and I barely managed to get into the Faculty of Law at Keio University. But as a first-year student from the countryside of Fukuoka, I couldn't quite fit in with the sophisticated Keio students from the city. I wasn't very diligent in my studies, and at the end of my first year, a movement against a tuition hike broke out, and the university was barricaded, leading to a long period of canceled classes. For some reason, with time on my hands, I decided to read a book I had purchased as a required textbook. As I read, I was drawn into its concise problem-setting, clear hypothesis presentation, logical verification process, and convincing conclusion, and I read it all in one go. That book was "A Study of the History of the Chinese Communist Party" (Keio Tsushin), and the author was Professor Tadao Ishikawa, who would later serve as President for 16 years. Having lived in Shanghai from one month after my birth and being a repatriate just before the end of the war, I already had an interest in China, which made me think about studying Chinese issues.
If that had been all, I might have graduated and become a newspaper reporter as I had originally hoped. What changed that was my subsequent interaction with Professor Ishikawa. After finishing the book, I wrote a letter to the professor with my thoughts, and I soon received a reply inviting me to his home. Then, I began to be mentored by a graduate student in the professor's lab, whom the professor had told, "There's an interesting student here, so please look after him." That graduate student was Professor Tatsuo Yamada, who later became the Dean of the Faculty of Law. Even though I wasn't a seminar student, I received guidance from Professor Ishikawa and Professor Yamada on various occasions. From my third year, I received direct guidance in Professor Ishikawa's seminar, and that has led me to where I am today.
These kinds of encounters happen during one's student years. However, the prerequisite for this is the attitude of a teacher who responds to a single letter from a student. I make it a rule for myself to always reply to emails from students, no matter how short.
(Date of publication: 2004/05/27)