Message from the President

Seiga Ikusai

Tetsuji Morohashi who is the first president of the university codified our school philosophy. There is a song entitled Seiseishaga found in Lesser Court Hymns - part of the “Classic of Poetry” (or Shikyo, one of the Confucian scriptures). A part in the preface refers to “a joy of training promising youths for society,” which is one idea represented in the school philosophy. The Ga in Seiga is a plant called Tsunoyomogi. Seisei means a vivid green color, alluding to how plants grow very thick. Therefore, Seiga Ikusai broken down by the four characters roughly alludes to “a wish for students to grow and thrive as the plant Tsunoyomogi does.”

Think Globally, Act Locally

Ever since the Japanese translation of the book The Age of Uncertainty by the American economist John Galbraith was published in 1978, the phrase taken from the book’s title has frequently been used to describe unpredictable future economic and social conditions. The Japanese economy has been confronted by various unforeseeable crises, such as the bubble economy and its collapse, the confusion that ensued the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and the Great East Japan Earthquake, and each time new graduates were facing an “employment ice age”. Covid-19 is another such example. What skills are required to overcome such difficulties? I refer to these as the “intelligence to empathize and collaborate”. These are the capacity and capability to raise one’s learning, strive for specialized academic performance, and cooperate and work with others in bringing an empathetic approach to confronting various difficulties and challenges faced by diverse people, society and humankind. At Tsuru University, we expect our students to acquire such intelligence before going out into society and the world.

There are major differences in campus life between large-scale urban universities and suburban liberal arts universities such as our own. In careers guidance in the United States of America, when selecting a university, students place emphasis on not only the field they want to study but also on what kind of campus life they wish to lead and the type of university that suits them. Tsuru University brings together students almost in direct proportion to the population distribution of Japan’s 47 prefectures, and I look forward to meeting you at our entrance ceremony

President
Hidenori Fujita

He was born in 1944. He completed the doctoral program (PhD) at Stanford University. Professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo and at Kyoei University. He has served as a member of the Science Council of Japan, as president of the Japan Society of Educational Sociology, and as president of the Japanese Educational Research Association.

＜Literary works＞

Child, School and Society: Irony of an Affluent Society, University of Tokyo Press, 1991; Education Reform, Iwanami Shoten, 1997; Family and Gender: Organizing Principles of Education and Society, Seorishobo, 2003; Reappraisal of Compulsory Education, Chikuma Shobou, 2005; and more.