Finding Your Own Path | Kiyoka Nozue, Dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care
2024.04.09
To all new students, congratulations on your admission. For current students, April marks the beginning of a new academic year, a time when everyone takes the next step with a fresh mindset.
At university, you will deepen your learning in various fields. It would be wonderful if your studies lead you to a point where your interests grow stronger, allowing you to define and pursue your own field of research and practice. Even so, if you face a series of setbacks, you might find yourself questioning whether this is the right path for you or if you have made the right choice. What you will do, what path you will take—these are questions only you can answer for yourself. Isn't the main theme of your university years to discover the direction you are heading, even if it is still vague?
In 1914 (Taisho 3), Natsume Soseki gave a lecture at Gakushuin titled "My Individualism." In it, he reflected on his life and said, "Having been born into this world, I felt I must do something, yet I had no idea what that something should be... I spent many gloomy days in secret, wondering what would become of me." After much thought, Soseki came to the realization that "there was no way to save myself other than to fundamentally build my own concept of what literature is," an idea he called "self-reliance" (jiko hon'i). This means that you are the agent of your own life. He then states, "Isn't it necessary for those who study and those who are educated, whether for a lifetime's work or for ten or twenty years, to keep going until they hit upon something? 'Ah, here was the path I was meant to take! I've finally unearthed it!' It is when you can cry out such an exclamation from the bottom of your heart that you will finally be able to find peace of mind. And with that cry, doesn't an unshakeable confidence begin to rear its head?"* I take the liberty of interpreting this "confidence" not as a sense of being unbeatable or overly self-assured, but rather as self-trust and self-respect. Perhaps it can be said that this is what lies at the foundation of the spirit of independence and self-respect.
Your university years are a fun and exciting time when you can challenge yourself with new things. It is also a transitional period on the way to becoming a socially and economically independent individual, and a time of intense psychological conflict. I imagine that all new students are now filled with both anticipation and, to a greater or lesser extent, anxiety. But it is precisely because of this anxiety that you can strive to do your best. I offer my heartfelt encouragement to all new students, hoping that you will live your university life proactively and, through much struggle and uncertainty, discover your own path.
*Natsume Soseki, "Watashi no Kojinshugi" (My Individualism), in *Soseki Jinseiron-shu* (Soseki's Essays on Life), Kodansha Gakujutsu Bunko, 2015 (original edition 2001).