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Message from the Dean<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dean of the Graduate School of Modern Society and Culture, Niigata University<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n BAMBA Satoshi, Ph.D.<\/span>\u3000 <\/span><\/p>\n \u3000<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0The other day, I was participating online in a higher education-related symposium.<\/span><\/span> Of course, I thought I was seriously participating in the conference because it was about an important educational theme, but in events like this, I always participate half out of obligation to the organizer, and I also had to participate via Zoom from my room.<\/span><\/span> Maybe it was because of this, or maybe he was dozing off a bit.<\/span><\/span> One panelist struck me in the ear.<\/span><\/span> I hurriedly turned to my computer, ignored the lecture that was still going on, and opened my browser to search.<\/span><\/span> In a book that arrived a few days later, Shunsuke Tsurumi, one of postwar Japan's leading thinkers, recalled the impact he received from a single word he encountered while studying at university when he moved to the United States at the age of 15.<\/span><\/span> \u201cBefore the war, I met Helen Keller (1880-1968) in New York.When she learned that I was a university student, she said to me, \u201cI learned a lot at university, but then I had to unlearn a lot.''<\/span><\/span> \"It was,\" he said.<\/span><\/span> Learn (Learn), and later learn and relax (Unlearn).<\/span><\/span> It was my first time hearing the word \"unlearn,\" but I knew what it meant.<\/span><\/span> I imagined knitting a sweater according to the pattern, unraveling it, returning it to its original yarn, and knitting it again to fit my body.'' (Toward a New Fudoki - A Roundtable Discussion with Shunsuke Tsurumi, Asahi Shinsho, 2010).<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0Tsurumi says that we must unlearn what we have learned.<\/span><\/span> To forget what you have learned.<\/span><\/span> It is about dismantling the knowledge we have acquired in a conventional manner and rebuilding it as knowledge that suits each of us, like unraveling and re-knitting a sweater.<\/span><\/span> When I say that I was worthy, I don't mean to trivialize it, as even those of us who are dumb can understand.<\/span><\/span> Rather, it means reassembling knowledge borrowed from others and reforging knowledge through encounters with others, depending on the complexity and specificity of the problems each of us is facing.<\/span><\/span> \u00a0If the Japanese word \u201clearning hogusu'' is a bit far-fetched as a translation of the English word \u201cunlearn'', then simply \u201cforgetting'' is fine.<\/span><\/span> We must unlearn what we have learned.<\/span><\/span> To learn something new.<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0When I think about this, I feel that this is a teaching more appropriate for graduate school than university.<\/span><\/span> Graduate school as a place to \"learn and relax\" - that's the catchphrase that comes to mind.<\/span><\/span> If a university is a place to \"learn\" something, then a graduate school is -- especially our Niigata University Graduate School of Contemporary Social and Cultural Studies, which was created as a comprehensive graduate school that explores issues that span various fields of humanities and social sciences.<\/span><\/span> ---A place for \"learning and loosening\" where we forget what we have learned so far and retrain our knowledge by engaging in dialogue with neighboring fields, teachers, and classmates.<\/span><\/span> Isn't that what it is?<\/span><\/span> This does not mean that we have to forcefully deny traditional academic disciplines.<\/span><\/span> In the same book, Tsurumi's interlocutor, Sun Gu, a Chinese researcher on the history of Japanese political thought, mentions:<\/span><\/span> \u201cI don't think about \u201ccrossing borders'' casually.<\/span><\/span> I also believe that \u201ccrossing borders'' occurs within departments rather than between departments.<\/span><\/span> In other words, it is not about breaking down or merging departments, but rather opening up old departments.''<\/span><\/span> I hope that our \u201cGenshaken'' will become a place for such \u201clearning and relaxing'' and \u201ccrossing borders.''<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Message from the Dean \u00a0 Dean of the Graduate School of Modern Society and Culture, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gens.niigata-u.ac.jp\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gens.niigata-u.ac.jp\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gens.niigata-u.ac.jp\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gens.niigata-u.ac.jp\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gens.niigata-u.ac.jp\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/www.gens.niigata-u.ac.jp\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3915,"href":"https:\/\/www.gens.niigata-u.ac.jp\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26\/revisions\/3915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gens.niigata-u.ac.jp\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.gens.niigata-u.ac.jp\/english\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/banba_sd_6985-scaled-3.jpg\")
\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n