Message from the President
President: Fumio Harashima
As our name suggests, the Tokyo Metropolitan University is located in the Tokyo metropolis - a most vibrant city and the world's most populous. Our mission is to pursue the vision of an ideal human society in a metropolis and applied in following ways: engage in research and education which has genuine relevance and benefits to the people and urban environment of this metropolis; contribute to building a highly intellectual society with a dynamic industry structure; and help realize a society of vitality and longevity.
The mission of the university is "education" and "research" which can alternately be expressed as "the succession and creation of knowledge." We believe that through education, the knowledge accumulated by humankind is handed down to the next generation; and that through research, a sense of values and culture for the next society is created, proposed and communicated to society.
In our modern society, education has evolved in our social system due to the human need and desire for life purpose and fulfillment, thus we perform training and practice in order to maximize our practical ability. This is not just limited to general learning. Training and practice are also necessary in the arts like music or painting, as well as in sports like baseball or tennis. Humankind has been able to make progress at each step because it developed a system of training called "education." Ten thousand years ago, humans were nothing more than prey for lions on the grasslands of Africa. Now, however, humankind has built civilizations as a result of having evolved an education system. The most important role of universities is to nurture people through education, who will create and advocate a sense of values and culture for the next generation.
With respect to research, in the 20th century academic research competed for numerical targets, namely "what can you do?" e.g. How fast can you make a shinkansen (bullet train) travel at? How small can you make a semiconductor? How large an airplane can you construct? Now, in the 21st century, academic research has shifted from this age of numerical "what can you do?" competition, to an age where we choose: What do you want to do? What should be done? What should you not do? Take the sporting world, for example, and consider which events are popular at the Olympics. Up until the end of the 20th century, events waged on numbers were popular such as: How many seconds can you sprint 100 meters? How heavy a weight can you lift? More recently, sports have gained popularity in which the element of beauty and grace is evaluated in addition to hardened athleticism, such as figure skating, rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming. Academic research is the same. We have reached an age where the well-honed findings of researchers are evaluated according to human sensitivity.
The time that you spend here at the Tokyo Metropolitan University is the most important time in your life for establishing your own identity and for determining the direction of your life. It will also probably be the most productive time in your lives in terms of your respective specialized studies.
