Time of "Kakawari" (Involvement) | Kazunori Takashio, Assistant to the Dean, Graduate School of Media and Governance
2023.02.21
Efforia is retiring.
He was, as you know, the 2021 JRA Horse of the Year. Unexpectedly, the recent Kyoto Kinen turned out to be his last race. He surged forward from the start as if to take the lead and settled into a good position in second, but he suddenly lost speed before the fourth corner. His jockey, Takeshi Yokoyama, pulled him up before the finish line and dismounted. It was a classic case of atrial fibrillation. Although he is a progeny of Epiphaneia, a sire whose offspring are said to be often precocious and difficult to understand, many are lamenting his premature retirement. He had not won a race since the 2021 Arima Kinen and had been struggling, unable to even contend for victory. Yet, he was the kind of horse that made you bet on him, unable to give up hope for a comeback. I wanted to see him face off against Titleholder, Do Deuce, and Equinox in a G1 race one more time.
I was born and raised in Fuchu. Since my grandparents' house was near the racetrack and my father loved horses, I feel like I spent every weekend of my childhood at the racetrack. I remember a small pond near the paddock. I used to make a simple fishing rod with disposable chopsticks and some string to catch crayfish. The bait was dried shredded squid, a snack sold at the concession stands. There was always a drunk old man next to me (the atmosphere at the racetrack back then was... well, I'll skip the details). There was also a riding ground for a certain university's equestrian club near my house. The only fan letter I have ever written in my life was to Oguri Cap. Mysteriously, I even received a reply from the horse. Having spent my childhood like that, for me, the horse remains one of the most beautiful creatures in the world.
As you know, the active career of a racehorse is very short. Efforia's career as a racehorse lasted a little over three years. This feeling is similar to the sense of time in the "kakawari" (involvement) between a university professor and the students in their lab.
The longer people have been following horse racing, the more racehorses they have seen. Accordingly, their attachment to specific horses runs deep. What's interesting is that it's not about having one or two all-time favorites, but rather having a so-called "oshi" (favorite) horse for each generation. They'll say things like, "For that generation, it was that horse." Topics like the "strongest generation" or the "strongest horse of a generation" often come up. That's how clear the demarcation of "generations" is in horse racing. It's the same for a professor looking at their lab members.
This is also a characteristic of SFC, but many students jump into my lab early in their undergraduate years. The time until they leave the lab is two to three years for those who graduate with a bachelor's degree. If they go on to a master's degree, that's another two years. Many are also in the four-year integrated program for bachelor's and master's degrees. The time I can "involve" myself with each student is short, just a few years at most. The "kakawari" with students who want to master their field becomes a little longer. Some students work on their graduation projects in a different research group. This turnover of generations, the lab's metabolism, is an eternal worry and, at the same time, a joy for a university professor.
It has been exactly 10 years since I established my current lab (Sociable Robots Lab.) in 2013. The personality of each generation varies. There are active generations, slightly quieter generations, and all sorts. And it's fun to watch them from the sidelines with a grin. There have been several generations that I wanted to call the "strongest generation." How to pass the energy of such a generation on to the next is quite a challenge. Of course, I sometimes think, "If only I could create a dream team that transcends generations." But that would probably be a professor's selfish desire.
The current members of my lab are without a doubt the nth "strongest generation." For that reason, when I think about the undergraduate and graduate students who will be leaving the lab this spring, I feel a greater sense of sadness than in previous years.
During the three years that Efforia raced, these students, through their "kakawari" with me, have been experiencing in real time the great difficulty of the COVID-19 pandemic and the process of recovery from it. This generation has experienced a time when they couldn't use campus or lab resources, a time when they could only "involve" themselves with people online. Perhaps it could be called "Zoom aftereffects"; the boundary between in-person and remote communication is blurred, and some people still can't quite adapt to the difference between the two. Nevertheless, this experience is this generation's greatest strength and should also be a major advantage for their future lives.
The last time I contributed to this column, in the fall of 2021, I posed the question, "What is a campus, anyway?" ( "Changes in Connection and the Campus" ) At that time, although in-person campus life was beginning to return, campus-wide events were still mainly held online. The Camp for Designing the Future, the ORF, and the academic conferences I was closely involved in were all online.
It has been almost a year since a sense of normalcy has mostly returned to campus. In the fall, I was able to hold the ORF, for which I continued to serve as executive committee chair, in person for the first time in three years . Holding it on campus was entirely my own selfish decision. It was the first time in 20 years. Almost none of the previous know-how remained, and all preparations were made through trial and error. Still, we exhibited a full set of ideas and achievements born from the campus, using the campus's resources to the fullest, and accomplished on campus what we couldn't do in Roppongi (of course, I am aware that some people would have preferred it to be held in central Tokyo). I have nothing but gratitude for Professor Narukawa, who managed the overall exhibition, as well as the faculty members of the executive committee and the administrative staff from various departments.
The Camp for Designing the Future also made an unprecedented leap forward. At the Camp for Designing the Future 2022 , which returned to a summer schedule, we went beyond the campus to hold community-based workshops (in a training camp format) in three locations: Tosa, Aso, and Daisen. With the cooperation of Tottori Prefecture and WebDINO Japan, I was also in charge of the "Augmented Town Workshop / Envisioning the Future of a Town with XR and Robotics" in Daisen. Of course, the high school and technical college students who participated were great, but even more so, the teachers from those schools, the local government officials, and the local people who cooperated with our fieldwork got enthusiastically involved, and we were able to spend some very intensive time together. The adults, as if saying, "We can't lose to the students," formed impromptu teams and worked on the same theme all night. My, how very childish of them (and I mean that as a compliment).
The important thing is that we didn't simply return to how things were three years ago; everything has been upgraded, and there is steady progress. The trial and error of these past three years was by no means in vain. The same goes for the lab members leaving this year. This generation overcame unprecedented difficulties and achieved results worthy of being called one of the "strongest generations." They showed more than three years' worth of growth. That is the reason why, in their not-so-long time of "kakawari" with me (which may have even been shorter than that of other generations), they became a generation that left such a strong impression. Everyone, you should be proud of yourselves.
P.S. I started writing this with the intention of talking about the evolution of the ORF and the Camp for Designing the Future, which you were probably expecting, but Efforia's retirement blew all that out of my mind. I'm sorry. I'll write about it another time.