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President
of Nagasaki University
Hiroshi
Saito
M.D., Ph.D.
President's Profile
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President's Address at Nagasaki University Entrance Ceremony, 2007
April 6, 2007
Please allow me to introduce myself.
I am Hiroshi Saito, President of Nagasaki University.
I would like to welcome a total of 2,240 new students, 1,699 undergraduates and 541 graduates, to Nagasaki University in this memorable year of 2007, celebrating the 150th anniversary of its foundation.
In the name of the 150-year history of Nagasaki University, I would like to express my gratitude to you for having chosen this University out of 709 universities around Japan, and would also like to extend a cordial welcome.
Have you heard of the 300-year old saying “Heading to Nagasaki to study with a Kyu on his back”?
"Kyu" is a woven-bamboo backpack and people in old times used this when they traveled.
During the period of national isolation starting from 1639, Nagasaki was Japan’s only city opened to the world and a mecca for young people who aspired to learning. Many bright young intellectuals gathered in Nagasaki from all over the country. The saying was born of that historical circumstance.
Those young geniuses learned medicine, chemistry, botany, astronomy, and other discipline from medical practitioners in the Dejima Dutch Trading Post such as Siebold, Dutch-trained physicians such as Kogyu Yoshio, and Dutch translators such as Tadao Shizuki. The whole town of Nagasaki was a university. Choei Takano, Shinsaku Takasugi, Ryoma Sakamoto, Yukichi Fukuzawa, and others who contributed to the Meiji Restoration all learnt in Nagasaki. In a way, they were alumni of Nagasaki University and you are their academic descendants, their “juniors.”
With the historical setting of “the whole town of Nagasaki being a university”, Nagasaki has become one of the Japan’s most educationally minded cities furnished with the advanced facilities for higher education.
In 1857, Dutch naval surgeon J.L.C. Pompe established “Igakudenshusho”, the present School of Medicine. As this fact shows, Nagasaki University is one of the oldest national universities with its history of 150 years.
In 1874, the “Elementary School Teacher Training Institute” was set up, the Faculty of Education as we know it today. We celebrated its 130th anniversary two years ago.
In 1890, the “Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the Department of Medicine of Fifth National Middle High School” was founded, which has today become the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. It is 117 years old.
In 1905, the “Nagasaki Higher Commercial School” was formed, Japan’s third school of economics after Tokyo and Kobe. It has developed into today’s Faculty of Economics. Its centennial was celebrated the year before last.
In 1921, the “Department of Fisheries of Nagasaki Prefectural Teacher Training Institute for Vocational Education”, today’s Faculty of Fisheries, was created.
In 1942, the East Asia Research Institute of Endemics, the predecessor of the Institute of Tropical Medicine, was organized.
In Nagasaki, these distinguished higher education research institutes with their long histories were combined to create Nagasaki University in 1949. Six limpid streams merged to form a great river “Nagasaki University”.
Afterwards, the “Faculty of Engineering” was inaugurated in 1966, the “School of Dentistry” in 1979, the “Faculty of Environmental Sciences” in 1997, and the “School of Health Sciences” in 2002 to evolve into an even greater river. Now Nagasaki University has grown into one of Japan’s top-level universities, in both quality and quantity, that comprises eight faculties, four graduate schools, and one institute with 10,000 students and 2,200 faculty and administrative staff.
The degree of “Master of Tropical Medicine”, established in April 2006, is Japan’s only graduate school exclusively researching tropical infectious diseases. Its lectures and training sessions are all conducted in English.
As you can see, Nagasaki University is not just old in years; it is a university “old but new, unique, and distinctive” which has kept challenging itself to reorganizations and creation of faculties and departments in response to the demands of the times.
Nagasaki University made a fresh start as “Nagasaki University, National University Corporation” in April 2004, with the ultimate goal of continuing “its role as a ‘center for transmission of intellectual information’ indispensable for the world”.
A little while ago, the Nagasaki University Orchestra conducted by our alumnus Mr. Takaaki Taneguchi and the Nagasaki University Romantour Choir entertained us by performing beautiful music. Your senior fellows played and sang with their whole heart. You must have been impressed.
Young people’s enthusiasm moves us and makes us anticipate a bright future for the world. Your sincere efforts and positive attitude to life will enhance the reputation of the University and eternalize its name, and eventually the most significant “transmission of intellectual information” will come from Nagasaki University.
Please “strive hard” for everything you are determined to do. Nagasaki University will make every possible effort to support you if you act on your own initiative.
On the Bunkyo Campus, overall remodeling of the Faculties of Education, Engineering, and Fisheries, and attached elementary and lower secondary schools are about to begin. 65% of the whole Nagasaki University buildings are already more than 30 years old. Actually, this percentage is not particularly high because the average reconstruction ratio of buildings older than 30 years old is also 65% at other national universities. The problem is the low rate of building renovation. Nagasaki University has so far renewed only 18% of the deteriorating buildings, and this is far from national average of 68%.
Therefore, it may be no exaggeration to say that Nagasaki University students have been studying in the worst environment of all Japanese universities. I feel very sorry about that. This is all due to the on-campus dispute over the relocation issues in the past 10 years, and the overhaul had not been permitted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology until the settlement was achieved.
Five years ago, agreement was finally reached to go for the restoration of the Bunkyo Campus buildings, and it will be completed by next March. The University Hospital on the Sakamoto Campus was also built 30 some years ago and suffering from deterioration. This coming November, a new 14-story building will be finished after spending 20 billion yen in three years.
Let's now take a look at the 150-year history of Nagasaki University from the perspective of expansion progress, and divide it into three stages.
The first stage is the establishment of “Igakudenshusho” and the subsequent “period of beginning”. The second stage is the “period of recovery” from the birth of Nagasaki University on the site destroyed by the atomic bomb in 1945 up to the present time. The third stage is the “period of progress in the 21st century” kicking off with the redevelopment of the Bunkyo and Sakamoto Campuses.
You are the people the “150-year history of Nagasaki University” has chosen to lead the development of Nagasaki University in the 21st century. In other words, you are the “children of the 150-year history of Nagasaki University” who are entrusted with the future of the University. You have been sent by God and Buddha or some great invisible power. Without you, there will be no tomorrow for Nagasaki University.
In closing, there is something I would like all of you to do. On August 9, 1945, we lost 54 precious lives among students, faculty, and administrative staff in the Nagasaki Normal School, the predecessor of the Faculty of Education, 27 in the Nagasaki College of Economics, the predecessor of the Faculty of Economics, one in the Nagasaki Youth Normal School, the predecessor of the Faculty of Fisheries, and 897 in the Nagasaki Medical College and its affiliated College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the predecessors of the School of Medicine and School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, which were located closest to the hypocenter. There is no other university in this whole world which has experienced such a disaster.
62 years ago, about 1,000 of our seniors were victimized by the atomic bomb right here on this Bunkyo Campus in which cherry blossoms are in full bloom now and on the Sakamoto Campus where the School of Medicine and the University Hospital are situated. The University Campuses are cemeteries for the people who have lost their lives in that atomic devastation. To dump cigarette butt litter and plastic bottles and such on these Campuses would be shameful deeds which would violate our predecessors, our seniors. Such conduct should be prohibited. I ask you, if you find any trash, to please pick it up and put it in the rubbish bins.
This is of course true outside the Campus as well. For example, if you won’t follow the garbage rules of the town where you started living by yourself and take only arbitrary action, that will sadden and disappoint the people in Nagasaki who have warmly cared about the “young people studying in Nagasaki” for hundreds of years. Such attitude would make them think that “diligent and honest Nagasaki University students no longer exist”. Ignoble behavior will also hurt your family’s honor who have raised you and saved money to help your study in Nagasaki.
Those who were killed by such a horrible disaster as the atomic bomb would have done commendable jobs if they had survived. I believe it is a responsibility of Nagasaki University students, faculty and administrative members, and alumni to learn well how to live well for our predecessors. I would like you to always keep this in mind.
I am concluding my complimentary address by welcoming these bright young freshmen who will create the new history of Nagasaki University in the 21st century and by extending my appreciation for their entering Nagasaki University.
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