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To all our new graduate students, congratulations on your admission. On behalf of the faculty and staff of the University of Tokyo, I extend my heartfelt congratulations. Here in our graduate schools, you will build upon your specialized knowledge to formulate your own questions, seek out answers, and share your findings with the world.

The crucial element here is originality — that is, whether you can create something uniquely your own, something that goes beyond mere imitation. It is often said that in order to create truly original work, one must first establish one’s self. But what does it mean to establish a self?

Today, I would like to explore together with you this question of self.

First, let’s consider what the self means within the mechanisms of our own bodies. It is well known that the immune system functions as a biological process that defines the self in physical terms. When you think of immunity, you might recall how, for example, viruses causing COVID-19 or influenza are identified and eliminated as outsiders — as “non-self.” Vaccines exploit this mechanism by priming the immune system with information about a pathogen, enabling the system to respond swiftly upon infection. In fact, Dr. Yasuhiro Furuichi, who studied at our Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, was the first in the world to reveal that the cap structure of messenger RNA is essential for protein translation, and this discovery was later applied to the development of COVID-19 vaccines.

For a long time, microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria have been considered to be “enemies” that cause disease. In reality, though, harmful microorganisms that exist solely as our adversaries are exceedingly rare. In fact, our digestive tract and skin are home to diverse communities of microorganisms that live in symbiosis with us. It has become clear that the diverse genes and functions of those microorganisms underpin our health and vitality. When the relationship with those coexisting microbial communities is disrupted, our risks for autoimmune diseases, allergies, obesity, cancer, and other conditions rise significantly.

In other words, the immune system does not simply eliminate microorganisms as non-self; rather, it also accepts them as part of the self. This mechanism of coexistence is called tolerance, a word we also use to describe a broad-minded attitude toward other people. The tolerance mechanism is the same phenomenon that stops our immune system from attacking our own bodies and fetuses in the womb. That tolerance also prevents allergic reactions to food.

Our modern medical understanding of the mechanism of this tolerance has evolved.

In the past, it was thought that a central authority existed within the body to define the self, with immune cells operating in a centralized manner to determine whether or not to react. However, the past half century of research has made clear that the self is not some kind of authoritarian dictator. Rather, individual immune cells recognize their targets while interacting actively with others and forming relationships appropriate to the local context. In this complex, dynamic process, the interactions together determine the overall behavior of the immune system. In other words, the self that emerges in immunity is not a fixed entity but a phenomenon, a process, an active engagement with the environment. In essence, research on the body’s immune system has revealed the dynamics of how the self is formed through development and transformation in repeated encounters and dialogue with others.

The decentralized, flexible, and dynamic behavior observed in living organisms was an inspiration for the concept of distributed autonomous systems proposed in the late 1980s for application to engineering. Such systems lack a central controller; instead, multiple independent agents operating on their own interact with one another to generate orderly behavior as a whole. Beginning in 1990, this grew into a research project based on Japanese conceptual approaches, with broad participation from researchers in Japan seeking to learn from living organisms, derive theories from them, and find methodologies for engineering such systems. For example, drawing ideas from the immune system’s ability to respond flexibly and in a distributed manner to diverse “others,” research was conducted on robot control and the construction of networks of sensors using the immune network theory proposed by Niels Kaj Jerne. I myself did research then on distributed autonomous robotic systems.

Building on that idea, the mid-1990s saw the advent of the concept of emergent systems as a way to extend the idea of distributed autonomous systems into a methodology for functional system design. That approach not only considered the interactions among the parts of the system but also focused on the global order that emerges from those interactions, thereby giving rise to new phenomena and functions.

The immune system is a prime example of these two systemic concepts in action. A multitude of diverse cells behave autonomously and in a distributed manner, and through their cooperative and competitive interactions, a new “self” is formed. Within this system as a whole, an order emerges for identifying and eliminating pathogens.

So, what conditions are necessary for the emergence of a new self? One is diversity among the individual elements constituting the system. Another is the crucial matter of designing interactions with others — that is, ensuring that communication is bidirectional.

Let’s shift our perspective slightly and consider the issue of self from the standpoint of microorganisms.

Today, the global spread of drug-resistant pathogens has become a major challenge. Yet, from the pathogens’ perspective, this represents the emergence of a new self. Since the discovery of penicillin in the first half of the 20th century, humanity has developed a wide array of antibiotics. Meanwhile, microorganisms have developed their own countermeasures by evolving resistance to the drugs.

What enabled this evolutionary process was the diversity inherent within microbial populations. Under the selective pressure of antibiotics, only those bacteria that have resistance survive, propagate, and eventually come to dominate. This example clearly demonstrates that diversity within a system is indispensable for adaptation to environmental change. Applying this analogy to humans, we might say that possessing internal diversity — having a broad range of perspectives and experiences — is important for navigating our lives.

On the other hand, we must not overlook the fact that a major factor contributing to the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria has been the continued application of the selection pressure of antimicrobial drugs uniformly and unidirectionally. The evolution of drug resistance was accelerated because we continued to rely broadly on antibiotics that act indiscriminately, rather than developing targeted drugs designed to precisely control microorganisms based on an understanding of their specific pathogenic characteristics. This unidirectional action — stemming from a lack of willingness to learn through dialogue — has generated a hostile “other” in the form of drug-resistant bacteria.

These issues of self, tolerance, and dialogue within the immune system can be generalized beyond the level of the physical body to domains such as the human mind and human society.

Consider the groundbreaking book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, authored by journalist Randy Shilts during the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. In his reporting, Shilts discusses from multiple perspectives how, in response to a new invader in the form of AIDS, many people — including politicians, bureaucrats, sex industry operators, the blood transfusion and product industry, healthcare professionals, gay liberation activists, and religious figures — tried to remain uninvolved, refused to face reality, confined themselves to explanations they found personally reassuring, and shunned honest, open discussion. Through its presentation of the realities of the situation and their causes from multiple perspectives, the book revealed a kind of immunodeficiency within American society itself.

True dialogue begins with the candid observation of facts and a sharing of the problems that come to light. It requires us to trace the roots of our differing opinions and to explore where our shared ideals might lie. Such efforts are particularly essential for addressing the global challenges we face today.

Let me return to the topic I raised at the beginning: the establishment of the self and the pursuit of originality.

As we have seen, the self is a phenomenon that emerges as a process from interactions and dialogue with others. During your graduate studies — through observations and experiments, analysis and research — you will engage in continuous dialogue with your research subjects. You will also encounter a diverse array of people as you connect with society. These will all be opportunities to expand your potential. In addition to such encounters with external others, engaging in sincere dialogue with the others within yourself — with your persevering past self and with your envisioned future self — will likely offer clues for nurturing your originality.

Precisely because each encounter is unique within your lifetime, honing the precision of your perception and action will be vital for pursuing your originality. Do not stop at an abstract understanding of the diversity of others; also engage directly with the individuality of each person you meet. In your time in graduate school that begins today, the process of dialoguing with people and things previously unknown to you will give rise to a new self — your own emergent system — that will astonish you, captivate you, and open up a future for you that is both exciting and fulfilling. I sincerely hope that, for each and every one of you, the process of inquiry will be unique, dynamic, and filled with joy.

Once again, congratulations on your admission to graduate school.