500彩票网

To all of our new students, congratulations on your admission. Your presence here today is the result of your dedicated efforts and the support of your family, your teachers, and many others around you. On behalf of the faculty and staff of the University of Tokyo, I offer my warmest congratulations. As each of you embarks on your university journey, I have strong expectations that you will accumulate diverse new learning and experiences, opening up future possibilities as a student of 500彩票网.

Many people today believe that almost no one in Japan is unable to read and write. After all, education in our country is compulsory through junior high school, and with free tuition and educational subsidies, most people can continue to high school. Japan is widely recognized internationally for its high educational standards.

However, according to the 2020 national census, approximately 94,000 individuals aged 15 and older have not attended school at all, and around 804,000 have completed only elementary school — in total, some 900,000 people who have not finished compulsory education. Nearly 70 percent of them are Japanese nationals. Furthermore, it is estimated that between several hundred thousand to over a million individuals not included in those figures are “nominal graduates” — people who, despite holding a junior high school diploma, did not receive a solid foundation in basic learning, often due to extended absences from school. Considering this, we can say that a significant number of people have trouble with the basic reading and writing skills needed for daily life and participation in the economy.

Originally, the term “literacy” simply meant the ability to read and write. Today, however, it is often used in combination with specific subject areas — as in “Internet literacy” or “health literacy” — to refer to the ability to utilize knowledge related to those domains. Our lives require a multitude of different skills and forms of knowledge. Today, I would like to talk about the kinds of literacy you will need during your university years.

What kinds of literacy should we acquire today?

One example is what might be called “minority literacy.” Over the past thirty years, the global movement of people, goods, and capital has grown substantially, and the number of foreign nationals studying or working throughout Japan has increased. Some of you may be considering studying abroad. When you live abroad for study or work rather than merely for tourism, you will experience inconveniences you never encountered as part of the majority in Japan. In this age of globalization and diversity, we must confront the reality that anyone can find themselves in the minority.

I myself once lived in Neuch?tel, a small Swiss town with a population of about 30,000. When a dozen of my research colleagues and I would go out for lunch, not a single one of us came from the same country or region; everyone was a “minority.” The language spoken in the town was French, but in our research setting the common language was English. In that environment, where no one was a native English speaker, I had valuable multicultural and multilingual experiences, such as being taught everyday French in English, and realizing that I couldn’t adequately explain Japanese history and culture, which I had thought I knew well.

There is an interesting picture book that makes us aware of the multicultural and multilingual environment that has been emerging in Japanese society. Titled Oriibu Kaasan no Firipin Minwa [Mother Olive’s Filipino Folktales], the book is narrated by a woman from the Philippines who came to Japan as part of a government-sponsored international marriage initiative launched by Yamagata Prefecture in the late 1980s to address the severe “bride shortage” affecting its rural communities. The policies implemented to address that serious social issue in rural areas have perhaps now been forgotten. However, the book bears quiet witness to the reality that emerged in that region.

The picture book depicts Philippine folktales that the author, who became a mother in Japan, recounted to her Japanese-nationality children. You might wonder why the book is written in the Yamagata dialect, with standard Japanese printed in smaller type next to local expressions. This choice reflects the lived reality of these women who came from abroad. The Japanese the author learned was the pure local dialect spoken by the generation of her husband’s mother — a testament to her earnest efforts to adapt to village life. Many such women later divorced for various reasons. While in the villages, they were forbidden from speaking to their children in the languages of the Philippines. The author of this picture book also ended up separated from her husband and children, living alone with photos of her family on the wall, anxious about whether she could renew her spousal visa. Thus, the hometown stories recounted in the Yamagata dialect were also tales directed toward the children she could no longer meet — global and local elements intertwined within a single volume.

That picture book further hints at another difficulty faced by many foreigners living in Japan: mastering the Japanese language. Unlike other languages that use Chinese characters such as Chinese and Korean, Japanese kanji have multiple possible readings (on yomi and kun yomi), which many find particularly challenging to master. This difficulty is not limited to foreigners; it also affects the Japanese people I mentioned earlier who have not completed compulsory education. Having successfully navigated the University of Tokyo entrance examinations, you may not perceive it as a challenge, but this issue constitutes one of Japan’s internal barriers to globalization. [Translator’s note: In the Japanese original, all of the kanji in this and the following two paragraphs are marked with furigana (phonetic guides) to demonstrate the same accessibility being discussed in the text.]

The culture of rubi — the furigana phonetic guides used in the picture book I mentioned — used to provide valuable opportunities for learning kanji compounds, and knowing the reading allows one to look up words in a dictionary. Many years ago, in fact, books and newspapers provided rubi quite thoroughly. Now, however, the practice of adding those phonetic guides is common in only a very limited range of books for children. In this sense, the initiatives of the Rubi Foundation established in 2023 are noteworthy. The organization’s stated aim is “to create a society where learning is accessible to everyone and diverse cultures can coexist by appropriately promoting the greater use of furigana (rubi).” Acquiring literacy sometimes requires re-examining the societal norms and conventional wisdom that have been taken for granted.

Therefore, the literacy required for innovative global citizens entails not only language proficiency, cross-cultural understanding, and the ability to adapt to international standards. I believe you should also acquire a perspective rooted in your own country and local community, along with an attitude of acknowledging and embracing the experiences and cultures of minorities.

When considering what literacies are necessary for contemporary society, how we engage with artificial intelligence is also profoundly important.

The conversational bot ChatGPT released by OpenAI in 2022 attracted much attention worldwide. Even without specialized knowledge or skills, simply by giving instructions in a chat format users can easily obtain a variety of outputs in the form of text, images, and video. In this respect, it instantly captured the interest of many people.

I imagine many of you are already using generative AI in various contexts. It easily produces text, computer programs, and virtual imagery, greatly assisting our lives. But we must not forget that the responses generated by AI sometimes contain information that is not grounded in fact or include biased assertions. We must therefore cultivate the ability to critically evaluate the information and suggestions generated by AI from the standpoint of our own perspectives and expertise. And beyond the issues of accuracy, AI also brings unavoidable ethical challenges, such as protecting privacy, addressing bias, and confronting the proliferation of fake images exploiting deepfake technology.

While further advancements in generative AI are undoubtedly on the horizon, it remains very much a work in progress. It is crucial to approach AI as you would an eccentric conversation partner — one who is remarkably knowledgeable and skilled at finding information, yet occasionally prone to errors and biases that require verification — and to engage with it accordingly. By continually refining the quality of our questions and maintaining a spirit of critical inquiry, we must develop the ability to create new standards and frameworks from fresh perspectives.

Whether we welcome it or not, we will soon be living alongside AI. The day may not be far off when we travel in vehicles driven by AI, work while conversing with AI, and even have household chores done by robots and appliances equipped with AI. As innovative global citizens, we must forge a new literacy, one that is grounded in critical thinking and a deeper understanding and empathy for others. This perspective will be indispensable for all fields of study, and it will help pave the way for breakthroughs in whatever field you choose. I hope each of you will think about this carefully.

The topics I have discussed — minorities and AI — are merely examples of the kinds of literacy I encourage you to develop. The life that awaits you at the University of Tokyo will not only bring you new knowledge. It will also offer fresh perspectives, and it will enable you to form meaningful connections with others. Throughout your university journey, I hope you will cultivate not only your learning but also the strength to confront adversity and the compassion to support others.

Congratulations once again on your admission to our university.

FUJII Teruo
President
500彩票网
April 11, 2025