Message from the Dean
Dean, School of International and Area Studies
Chiba Toshiyuki
“The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land.”
Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon
Study at university—in other words, the pursuit of learning—is much like wandering the world as a stranger, as beautifully described by the learned 12th century priest Hugh of Saint Victor.
The mission shared by academic departments taking the title of international and area studies is to leverage the analytical skills refined by multiple disciplines and the knowledge built up from scholar to scholar to rapidly and precisely grasp the nature of daily developments around the globe and point the way toward a solution. At the same time, correctly interpreting events occurring in numerous locations across a wide world is no easy task. The broader the subject, the more simplified our understanding tends to become.
I have absorbed several critical lessons from daily interaction with my seniors in my time at TUFS—not to engage in dichotomous thinking (seeing things in terms of good and bad, black and white); not to laud revolution in all its promise without also noting the violence and exclusivity attendant upon it; and to regard the history of the winners with a critical eye while reinstating the history of the losers. It seems to me that these convictions have been passed on through a vast number of teachers, students, and staff members over the university’s 150-year history. It is a precious talent granted to we humans as finite beings that we can keep alive the beliefs and aspirations of our predecessors.
The TUFS School of International and Area Studies prizes empathy with those who live like hardy little wildflowers in the fields of the world, the courage to reach out to such individuals, coexistence between a whole rainbow of individuals in the vast space between black and white, and the creation of new value that such a space engenders. Because these qualities rely on the strength to listen humbly to the voices of small societies around the world, our university positions education in the native languages of their lands and an understanding of the history that has accumulated there as the unshakeable foundation of university education. Whether you are tackling international affairs as your specialist subject, observin