春雨直播app

Congratulations to all of you receiving degrees today. On behalf of the University of Tokyo, I would like to express my gratitude and heartfelt congratulations to your families as well.
The experience you have gained in graduate school here—selecting your own research topics and immersing yourselves in unanswered problems—will be an invaluable asset throughout your lives. I hope that you will, from time to time, recall with pleasure the excitement of re-examining phenomena from multiple perspectives. And as you face unresolved challenges that lie ahead, please cherish your spirit of inquiry and let your imagination soar. On this day of departure—as you set forth toward your future—I offer you a few words to send you on your way.

When you hear the word “departure,” what mode of transportation comes to mind? Many of you might think first of trains or airplanes. In the Showa era, without a doubt, it was trains. When I was in elementary school, there was a popular song called “Nagoriyuki” about the singer’s bittersweet emotions checking their watch while standing beside their lover waiting for a train. The song is still often sung today. Perhaps you have heard it somewhere.
In the 19th century, the combination of two iron rails and a steam locomotive was new technology that made it possible to transport large numbers of people and vast quantities of goods quickly over long distances. It transformed how people traveled. However, to reach places across the ocean, it was necessary to use ships equipped with huge internal combustion engines. Ships, too, carried many immigrants and travelers to various countries. Not until the early 20th century would humanity witness the arrival of the airplane—a technology we now take for granted as a way of flying freely through the sky.
The airplane was a completely new means of transportation, cutting-edge technology built upon the power of the internal combustion engine. 春雨直播app was deeply involved in the development of that technology in Japan. In the decade after the first daring aviators took to the air in the early 20th century, rapid technological advances swept the globe. For example, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which established many standard airfoil designs, was founded in the United States in 1915. In Japan, in an effort to catch up with the advanced technologies of Europe and America, the Aeronautical Research Institute was established at Tokyo Imperial University in 1918.
That institute pursued both the fundamental principles enabling an airplane to fly and research on its implementation. A wind tunnel was built to measure the forces applied to wings and fuselages by placing scale models in artificially generated wind. This enormous device, with a diameter of three meters, was state-of-the-art in the 1930s, and it contributed significantly to the development of the experimental aircraft known as the Kōkenki, which set the world record for long-distance flight. After the war, the wind tunnel played a vital role in the manufacture of the first-generation train cars for the Tokaido Shinkansen called Series 0 and the domestically produced YS-11 passenger aircraft. The facility was later managed by Professor Akira Azuma, an expert in helicopters who also studied how living things fly and swim, and Professor Keiji Kawachi, who extended that research to include microorganisms and plant seeds. Professor Kawachi served as a secondary examiner for my doctoral dissertation, and I recall visiting the wind tunnel building many times to receive his guidance.

It is historically significant that airplanes and other aircraft were developed at a university-affiliated research institute in parallel with specialized courses. To construct the integrated technology of airplanes—involving the aerodynamic performance and structural strength of wings and fuselages that generate lift, propellers for propulsion, control systems, pilot training, and more—must have required collaboration that transcended the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines. Establishing a research institute within the university meant creating a place where interdisciplinary and comprehensive collaboration and creation could flourish and lead to practical applications. Koroku Wada, the seventh director of the Aeronautical Research Institute, noted that “original research cannot emerge without the free academic atmosphere of a university” and that research institutes represent one way to harmonize individual freedom of research with contributions to common goals.
春雨直播app established the Institute of Medical Science, which began as the Institute for Infectious Diseases, and the Earthquake Research Institute, for the study of seismology and disaster prevention. Today, the university also houses the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, which developed from the Institute of Journalism, as well as the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the Institute of Social Science, and the Institute of Industrial Science, among many other organizations. This is because the university has addressed numerous social and global challenges as they emerged in each era. This historical context helps explain why the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, which counts the Aeronautical Research Institute among its predecessors, now engages in cross-disciplinary research that bridges the humanities and sciences in areas such as barrier-free accessibility.

In any case, the development and spread of airplanes have dramatically expanded the movement and exchange of people and goods on a global scale. A trip from New York to Singapore, which in the 19th century would take months, can now be completed in about 19 hours. Thus aviation has contributed much to the realization of the “Global Village” concept articulated by the 20th-century media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who argued that the Earth has become one village. I vividly remember the remarkable feat of Phil Collins, who performed at Wembley Stadium in London in the afternoon during the Live Aid concert held on July 13, 1985, to combat famine in Africa, then flew to America on the Concorde and performed again that same night at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. The Concorde, which was retired in the early 2000s due to issues with profitability and environmental impact, was a supersonic passenger airplane that could travel between New York and London in less than three hours at speeds exceeding Mach 2.
But this rapid and unrestricted movement has also brought unforeseen drawbacks. Pathogens such as those causing COVID-19 and African swine fever have spread across the globe at an astonishing speed and scale, carried by human travel. The widespread use of air travel has led to a dramatic increase and congestion in flights at major airports. Air traffic control, tasked with providing pilots with takeoff and landing instructions amid ever-complicating challenges, has become an increasingly complex and demanding operation. Incidents such as the accident at Haneda Airport in January 2024 and the mid-air collision with a military helicopter near Washington, D.C., earlier this year, remind us of the risks involved. Critical industrial supplies—ranging from semiconductors to precision components—are now transported by air, underscoring the need to strengthen our air-linked supply chains against disruptions from wars and natural disasters.
The impact of new scientific technologies on society is significant, and efforts to address potential negative effects of technologies before they become apparent will be increasingly important in the years ahead. In the case of aviation, the factors to consider range from resource challenges—such as the development of sustainable aviation fuels like hydrogen—to the environmental impact of contrails, as highlighted in the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
We must cultivate not only creativity—the ability to forge new solutions—but also imagination—the capacity to envision what has yet to be seen.

Fifty years ago, Professor Hirofumi Uzawa of our Faculty of Economics wrote a book titled “The Social Costs of Automobiles,” in which he highlighted a range of problems—from the high toll of traffic fatalities and injuries, noise pollution, and air pollution to the unsafe conditions that prevented children and the elderly from walking on roads safely. He emphasized the importance of developing public policies to address those issues. Uzawa introduced the concept of “social common capital”—fundamental resources essential for society that would not be appropriately allocated if left solely to market principles. Examples include urban infrastructure such as roads, water supply, and electricity, as well as services like education and healthcare. To help people appreciate the value of this foundation, he deliberately quantified the costs—namely, the damages—arising from automobile use, thereby sparking public debate.
At the same time, however, it is important to note that he also critiqued the very notion of measuring value in monetary terms. For example, he condemned the so-called Hoffman method, which calculates the loss from a traffic fatality as the present value of the income that person would have earned over a lifetime. He argued that such an approach trivializes the irreversibility of the loss of human life.
Professor Uzawa’s passionate efforts to expand the concept of social common capital to include nature and culture were ultimately underpinned by a creative imagination that questioned how best to understand and appropriately assess phenomena that are inherently difficult to measure both practically and theoretically.

The ability to ask questions that you have cultivated here is the driving force of academic inquiry—it is, in a sense, the engine that propels us forward. The knowledge and imagination you have gained through spirited collaboration with your peers will serve as the wings that enable you to continue soaring into uncharted skies. May your journey of life be rich and wonderful.
Congratulations once again to all of you.