Graduation address for the September 2022 academic year
To all the graduates of the September term, congratulations on your graduation! We can only imagine the joy of your parents and guardians who have eagerly awaited this day. On behalf of Tohoku Gakuin University, I offer my heartfelt congratulations.
Today, I'd like to talk about a person associated with our university. That person is Shimazaki Toson, who also served as a teacher at Tohoku Gakuin. This year marks the 150th anniversary of Shimazaki Toson's birth. As you all know, Toson is counted among the three great literary figures of modern Japan, alongside Mori Ogai and Natsume Soseki. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of his birth, the film "Destruction," starring Mamiya Shotaro, is being screened in various locations this year and is quietly gaining popularity.
Shimazaki Toson. His real name was Shimazaki Haruki. The "Haruki" in "Haruki" is written with the same character as in "spring," but it's pronounced the same way as me. Toson was born in 1872 (Meiji 5) in Magome, Nakasendo, Kiso, Shinshu (present-day Nakatsugawa City, Gifu Prefecture). Perhaps there were expectations from his hometown. At the age of nine, he went to Tokyo, and in 1887 (Meiji 20), he entered Meiji Gakuin Junior High School, a Protestant Christian school like Tohoku Gakuin, and graduated in 1891 (Meiji 24). He was 15 to 20 years old at the time.
During his five years at the school, Fujimura was at the top of his class in his first two years, but some kind of setback struck him. In his autobiographical novel, "When the Cherry Tree Ripens," he writes: "The results of his inner struggle were immediately reflected in his graduation grades. For the first two years of school, he held the top position in his class, attracting the affections of many professors, and he was also one of the youngest among his classmates, but when it came time to graduate... he ended up leaving school with grades around third to last." This autobiographical novel depicts a romantic relationship with a female student from a nearby mission school, but I don't think so. The truth seems to be that Fujimura himself made a clear change of career path. In other words, those around him expected him to become a businessman, while Fujimura himself dreamed of becoming a politician and took the entrance exam for the First Higher School, but he failed and lost his motivation for studying. Rather, he abandoned the model student-like way of studying that focused solely on grades, and began to aspire to learning in a broader sense. Fujimura describes his situation as follows: "According to Sutekichi (Fujimura), there are roughly two paths before us. One has a predetermined model, and there are footprints of those who came before us that we can follow. The other has nothing like that. We have to forge our own path. The path he is trying to walk on of his own accord is the latter. That is why he feels an indescribable fear. The result of his internal struggle was... he left school with grades around third to last. However, he no longer cared about such things. The fact that there was a relatively good library compared to other schools, that he could realize the path he was on, and that he was able to find friends like Suga (Togawa Akikotsu) and Adachi (Baba Kocho) made his time at this school worthwhile." Fujimura didn't graduate from school simply by achieving excellent grades; he graduated because he found friends with whom he could share the legacy of modern literature, and because he recognized the value of university life in the well-equipped library that he could continue to use even after graduation.
While attending Meiji Gakuin, Fujimura was actually baptized into Christianity. He was baptized at the age of 17 by Pastor Kumaji Kimura, an educator who was also an English teacher at Kyoritsu School, the preparatory school Fujimura attended, and the pastor of Takanawa Church. Mr. Kimura was always looking out for Fujimura. After graduation, Fujimura took a job as a teacher at Meiji Girls' School, where Kimura was the vice-principal. However, as a young literary man in his early twenties who had just graduated from school, Fujimura's life, which he chose to pursue as a struggle of the heart, was extremely difficult, caught in the great changes of modern Japan. As a teacher at Meiji Girls' School, Fujimura suffered from his love for his student, Sato Sukeko, who was already engaged, and resigned from Meiji Girls' School. Feeling guilty as a teacher, he left the church and embarked on a 10-month wandering journey to the Kansai region. Fujimura had even prepared herself for suicide, but was unable to go through with it. When she returned to Meiji Girls' School in 1894, she was met with the suicide of her close friend and leader of the magazine "Bungakukai," and the imprisonment of her eldest brother, Hideo, in connection with the water pipe incident. To make matters worse, she received news of the death of her daughter, Sukeko, and the burning down of her family home in Magome. Thus, in 1895, Fujimura resigned from Meiji Girls' School once again, in despair.
It was at this time that Fujimura was assigned to Sendai as a teacher of Japanese composition and translation at Tohoku Gakuin. After moving from Miyagi Girls' School to Meiji Girls' School as a teacher, his colleague, Okonogi Chushichiro, recommended that he take a job at Tohoku Gakuin. In fact, Fujimura was only in Sendai for a mere 10 months, from September 1896 (Meiji 29) to July of the following year. During that time, the beauty and tranquility of Sendai's nature, the hospitality of his colleagues at Tohoku Gakuin, the sense of fulfillment from teaching TG students, and the facilities of the library with its large collection of books—all of these experiences at Tohoku Gakuin healed Fujimura's heart, which had arrived in Sendai in despair, and allowed his talent to blossom into poetry, creating the "dawn" of Fujimura's life and, at the same time, the "dawn" of modern Japanese poetry.
You probably all know the famous seven-five syllable poem that goes, "When I saw you beneath the apple tree, with your bangs just beginning to be styled, I thought of you as a flower-like girl, with the flower comb in your hair." This poem, "First Love," is included in the collection "Wakana-shu," which Fujimura wrote in six months after arriving in Sendai. He then returned to Tokyo, but his life remained difficult.
At that time, it was Kumaji Kimura, who had baptized Fujimura, who opened up a path for him to make a living by becoming a teacher again and provided him with an environment in which he could pursue his creative activities. At the time, Kimura was the headmaster of a school called Komoro Gijuku in Nagano Prefecture, and it was there that Fujimura spent six years in Komoro, paving the way for him to become a prose writer instead of a poet. Fujimura was a graduate of Meiji Girls' School and married Fuyu Hata, who was from Hakodate, and they began their married life in Komoro. It was during his time in Komoro that he introduced the technique of factual description in "Sketches of the Chikuma River" and began writing his masterpiece "Destruction," paving the way for him to become one of Japan's leading modern novelists.
From Fujimura's growth process, I would like to offer two lessons to all of you graduating from Tohoku Gakuin University today. First, I urge you to cherish the relationships you have cultivated through your studies. As a young man aspiring to a career in literature, Fujimura chose a path where there was no predetermined model or a trail to follow, but rather a path where he had to forge his own way. Consequently, his life was a continuous series of struggles, difficulties, disappointments, and setbacks. It was his teacher at preparatory school, Pastor Kumaji Kimura, as well as his colleagues and friends, who extended a helping hand to Fujimura during this time. Currently, we are living in an era of war, infectious disease outbreaks, natural disasters, and rapid technological innovation such as AI, and we are living in a time when we cannot find a trail to follow. I hope that you will cherish the bonds with your mentors, colleagues, and friends, and face your struggles and difficulties head-on.
The second issue is one of the heart. Regarding Fujimura's faith, his various actions later in life led to the notion that he had renounced Christianity, and Awashi Fuse, a fellow art teacher at Tohoku Gakuin who had lived in the same boarding house by the Hirose River, described him as "an anti-Christian, but a person of a certain kind." Fujimura himself, in his autobiographical novel, says this about Christianity: "When someone asked me if I was a Christian, I couldn't immediately answer that I was the same person who had been baptized at Professor Asami's (Kumaji Kimura) church... Then, when someone else asked me if I didn't believe in God, I wanted to answer that I was one of those who, though childish, were seeking God." Fujimura sought God amidst hardship and despair, even if he was not a member of a church. He was by no means apostate or anti-Christian. I believe that at Tohoku Gakuin University, you all learned a great deal about what God is and what it means to be human through worship services and Christian-related subjects. I believe that the more times we live in times of crisis and change, the more diverse religions emerge, confusing people's hearts. Humans use God for their own purposes, or even substitute God for God, causing suffering to others. Tohoku Gakuin University's school motto is LIFE, LIGHT, and LOVE. LIFE means valuing individual dignity, LIGHT means contributing to society through learning and work, and LOVE means living as a person loved by others.
Finally, I would like to conclude my congratulations by wishing all the graduates good health and continued success in their future endeavors. Congratulations on your graduation!
September 30, 2022
Haruki Onishi, President of Tohoku Gakuin University