Let's Create, Over and Over | Gen Miyagaki, Assistant to the Dean of the Graduate School of Media and Governance
2021.07.20
I expected to see the ocean, but all I could see was the faint silhouette of Mt. Fuji. What I heard was not the sound of waves but the roar of aircraft, and I think I had a bad feeling at that point. I arrived after about 25 minutes, passing through a place called Sasakubo. The bus passengers, all about the same age, were like a tightly packed bundle of anxiety. This was the day I first came to campus, in the spring of 31 years ago.
Ascending the slope lined with trees that looked as if they had just been planted yesterday, I arrived at the campus to be greeted by the Alpha and Omega buildings, which remain unchanged today, the waterfall flowing between them, and a decorative paper ball. Feeling a little happy, I proudly walked up the stairs, only to find my way blocked by a fence that served as a wall. It was then I learned that the only completed buildings were the first two, the Keio building, and the Sigma building, and that the lower part of the Iota building was still behind a wall. The Sigma building housed a small library, gymnasium, cafeteria, and co-op all together. The front view was the same as it is today, but when I went around to the back, there was nothing. The only other thing was a pond that looked more like a large puddle. In short, we had enrolled in a construction site.
Looking back calmly now, the only information we were given beforehand was a black-and-white offprint pamphlet with a red cover and a single, somewhat realistic "photo of a model of the completed campus." Relying only on that, we each let our imaginations run wild, so I think it's fair to call it a delusion. We bet on an inexplicable, flimsy intuition. The roughly 1,000 individual delusions must have all been different, but no matter what they were, the one thing we had in common was that the situation before our eyes was completely different.
We were supposed to have come to a place called a university. There, we were supposed to find an environment to satisfy our intellectual curiosity and pursue our inquiries, as well as the campus life of our dreams.
For the former, about 50 faculty members engaged with us with all their might. The motto was "We are different from Mita." However, we didn't know Mita in the first place. With "being different" as our only clue, we had no choice but to fill in the blanks and read between the lines with our delusions. With only about 25 courses offered per week, and not having inherited the usual university culture of skipping classes from upperclassmen, I think we generally attended diligently (as there was nothing else to do). Group work existed from that time. Since the campus was so far away, it was foolish to go home only to come back for an intensive course the next morning; it was more efficient not to go home. This is how the practice of "staying over" came about out of necessity. I think the first piece of Mita culture that was brought to us was the strange word "egui" (intense/harsh).
The problem was the latter. The first course of action for young people with nothing but delusions is to complain about everything indiscriminately. However, when we said, "This isn't 'Shonan Fujisawa' at all!" we were shot down by Professor Toshiaki Izeki (former professor/dean of the Faculty of Policy Management), who told us to study marketing. When we said, "It's a complete lie that a train line is coming!" we were gently admonished with a smile by Professor Hiroshi Kato (the first dean of the Faculty of Policy Management), who said, "We never said when. Just you wait and see." To top it off, when we complained, "I don't even really know what 'Environment and Information Studies' is, even though I chose to come here!" we were given the runaround when a handmade picture book titled "The Adventure of the Goat Concerning the Sheep Who Do Not Adventure" was distributed, likely orchestrated by Professor Kenji Kumasaka (former professor/dean of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies). I think the students who picked unwinnable fights were also a bit much, but the professors engaged with all of this (from an oblique angle), and although the situation didn't change, I felt my anxiety ease a little.
Complaining gets you nowhere. Above all, for those of us who had made our choice, there was no escape. To win this random bet, we had no choice but to change reality itself. More than research or job hunting, we first needed to make our delusion-filled campus life our own.
When you talk about campus life, it's basically about clubs and festivals. Here too, when we complained, "There are no clubs!" a professor replied with a straight face, "Of course not," and while telling us to think for ourselves, they threw us a lifeline by suggesting we hold a meeting to create clubs. Students gathered in the circular classroom in the Omega building, and from the podium, calls went out one after another—"I want to play soccer," "I want to make a movie"—and in response, groups formed one by one. We figured out how and where to conduct our activities after that.
We needed a festival, too. Even though I had hardly ever been to my local festivals, I thought that if we had yukata, a yagura tower, and fireworks, it would feel authentic. We attended classes in yukata from the morning (and got scolded for the noisy clatter of our geta), had the evening classes canceled all at once (back then, the festival was held on a weekday), and gathered again in that small space to achieve a great sense of catharsis. In this way, we also did a radio show and created a "minicomi" zine using LaTeX. Come to think of it, I even nonchalantly asked Professor Jun Eto (former professor of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies) to write something for our zine—something that would get you instantly fired at a publishing house.
Now, whenever I come to the much emptier campus, that scene from back then strangely comes to mind. I see. We were always just creating, without thinking about the consequences. It's still the same now , and there are people imagining 20 years from now . It's a campus that lacks too many things to be called "campus life," but I suppose we can just create it again and again while engaging with the students. After all, it's only been 31 years.