Keio University Press Books Found in Latvia | Hiroyuki Ishida, Dean of the Graduate School of Health Management
2024.04.16
From late March to April, I spent some time in Riga, the capital of Latvia. I was there for work as the medical supervisor for the Ice Hockey World Championship held in the city. Through my specialty in sports medicine, I have served as a member of the International Ice Hockey Federation's medical committee for over 20 years and am regularly entrusted with the job of medical safety management for such international tournaments. I am the only person from East Asia in this position, and I faced many difficulties at first. While ice hockey is strongly associated with North America, the sport also has thriving domestic leagues in various regions around the world, including Europe, Northern Europe, and the former Soviet bloc. The International Ice Hockey Federation, which governs the sport, is headquartered in Switzerland. Many of its past presidents have been from Europe, and the current president, Luc Tardif, is French. Although English is officially the common language, various European languages are spoken on site due to the diverse backgrounds of its members. I am by no means a gifted linguist, but the French I picked up from watching "Emmanuelle" too many times in my adolescence has proven useful, allowing me to communicate well with Europeans and be accepted as part of the federation family.
"Professor, enjoy watching the ice hockey games!" some students and faculty members said as they saw me off. However, since I wasn't there as a spectator, it was far from enjoyable; it was a daily nerve-wracking experience. As you know, ice hockey is a high-contact sport where serious injuries can occur in an instant. When I'm playing, I don't worry about it at all, but when I watch from a safety management perspective, it's so dangerous I can hardly bear to look. I work with the local medical team to respond to emergencies, but more important than the response itself is preparing a plan for potential incidents (this is called an emergency action plan, or EAP). Medical systems differ from country to country, so it is not easy to develop an EAP with local staff while taking these differences into account. I have to closely monitor all 15 official games plus all official practices and be prepared for the EAP in case of an emergency, so it's quite a mentally taxing job. Even with a perfect plan, you never know what will actually happen. I've had an experience (a memory from the Czech Republic) where we got into an ambulance only to find it was so old and shook so violently that by the time we reached the hospital, the player felt worse from motion sickness than from the injury. For better or worse, I've recently come to enjoy these kinds of situations (laughs).
By the way, Latvia is a country not well known in Japan, but when I asked the locals, they said that the most famous Latvian export to Japan is probably the song "Million Roses." I was a little surprised, as I also like the song (Tokiko Kato's version is famous, but personally, I would love for people to listen to the version by Sayuri Kume (Saki Kubota)). The Japanese lyrics tell the story of a poor painter in love with an actress who sells his house to buy all the roses he can with the money, wanting to surround her with them. While those are lovely lyrics in their own right, the original Latvian song is different; it's said to be a national "lullaby" that everyone in the country knows. The theme is about the life given to a child by the goddess Māra. This life is not necessarily a happy one, and the lyrics seem to imply something like, "Māra gave me life, but did she forget to give me happiness?" A local told me that at the time, the country was under Soviet rule and suffered various forms of oppression, and these feelings were implicitly woven into the song. It seems that not only manifestos but also access to free education and information from other countries were heavily restricted. They unanimously say that being under Soviet rule caused their country's development to lag even further behind that of other former Eastern Bloc countries like Poland and Hungary. Perhaps because of this background, they have a strong sense of their current geopolitical identity as a member of the Northern European countries, not the former Soviet Union.
They also have a very strong desire to learn about foreign information and cultures, and they say the internet and libraries are the hubs for this. Indeed, the local internet infrastructure is excellent; I had no trouble accessing the high-speed internet wherever I went. The new National Library, which opened in 2014 (Photo 1), is also magnificent, and I was fortunate to have a local acquaintance give me a tour of the inside. Not only is its massive avant-garde exterior impressive, but the interior is also avant-garde and grand, with books from all over the world neatly organized on each floor. I was also able to browse the shelves related to Japan and was surprised to find many donations from Keio University Press. A staff member expressed their gratitude. There, I was also able to find books written by people such as Tomoki Kamo, Dean of the Faculty of Policy Management (Photo 2). There is no doubt that the desire to learn about the world, including Asian affairs, was the driving force behind the construction of this magnificent national library.
After returning to Japan with these experiences, I shared this story with the new students at our graduate school. In 1945, Japan lost a war for the first time. However, for the approximately 80 years since then, our country has been free of war and civil conflict, and we have been able to live in peace. Of course, this is a wonderful thing, and I, like many others, have come to take it for granted. But when you go abroad, you realize that what is normal for us is not, or was not, normal for them. There have been countries where women could not dress freely or receive an education for governmental or religious reasons, and quite a few countries in the world still have such systems in place. In a certain film ("Papicha," directed by Mounia Meddour), there is a scene where the protagonist confesses that for young people oppressed by civil war, the only way to escape is to flee abroad, and so the entire country has become a waiting room for escape. Visiting various countries, I have come to understand that this is a cry from the heart. In contrast, the educational environment in our country, and at Keio University, may not be "the best," but at the very least, we have an environment that can satisfy your intellectual curiosity, and we faculty members will do our utmost to support it. Tools like ChatGPT that can quickly provide answers (or what seem to be answers) have emerged, but the lifeblood of Keio University is "learning while teaching, teaching while learning" and "vigorous debate." I explained the importance of continuous learning by quoting from "An Encouragement of Learning, Volume 15."
It's not from the recent TBS drama "Extremely Inappropriate!," which just aired its final episode, but if Yukichi Fukuzawa were to time-slip into the Reiwa era and see Keio students who prefer "ChatGPT over reading books," "social media over vigorous debate," and "matching apps over the Mita-kai," he would surely lament, "I did not create Keio University for this kind of future!" I myself have only a few years until retirement, but it is precisely because we live in such times that I feel strongly that I must reaffirm the aspirations Yukichi Fukuzawa entrusted to his disciples and continue to pass them on to our Keio students.