Private University Waseda

This article was published on Financial Times Chinese website

A month ago, I listened to a one-day academic seminar commemorating the 50th anniversary of Sino-Japanese relations at Okuma Lecture Hall of Waseda University. Then I was mesmerized by Waseda University. I looked up information and scurried around. The more I learned, the more I found it amazing. There are many private universities in Japan, and the number of schools and students is much higher than the number of public colleges and universities. This itself is extremely rare in non-Western countries. Waseda University was one of the first private universities, but its educational ranking is not considered first-tier. It’s amazing in other ways. I always felt that the ethos of the university resonated with the questions and values I was pursuing and caring about.

Take the JR line from Shinjuku station to Takadanobaba station in a few minutes. From the platform to the exit, the most prominent outdoor billboard is covered by a Japanese language training organization, with the slogan in Chinese and contact information left on WeChat and QQ.1 According to historical sources, this area has been a gathering place for Chinese students since the end of the Qing Dynasty. First they went to language schools, then to Waseda University. Generation after generation, passed down to this day.

There is a short bus ride from the station to Waseda University, with buses departing every 5 minutes during peak hours. More than a hundred years ago this area was a suburban field in the northwest of Tokyo. Now it is a city center area, densely populated and known for its high concentration of university students.

My second trip to the university, I chose to walk. Walking along Waseda Avenue, I could hear people speaking Chinese all the way. For one thing, there are a lot of Chinese students, and for another, there are relatively few Japanese people talking on the street. The Chinese element here is a bit more Chinese. In general, the Chinese food sign on the street says “Zhonghua” and sells tianjin rice, fried rice with vegetables and fried dumplings. Here, it’s spicy hot pot, Sha Xian snacks, Lanzhou ramen, crayfish and lamb’s capon, which is pretty much the standard around universities in China.

Waseda University has a deep and longstanding connection with China, one of the strongest in the world. It received students from the Qing Dynasty, revolutionaries and intellectuals, and had close exchanges and even cooperation with the major political forces in China, until it hosted official Chinese delegations after the war. The school’s history museum displays a secret letter from Sun Wen to Okuma Shigenobu, the founder of the school, accompanied by photographs of the welcoming party at which Okuma entertained Sun Wen. A Chinese studies teacher at Waseda who translated Mao’s Selected Works has written a book called “Waseda University and China,” in which the secret letter is also included. There is a lot of material in the book, but my favorite part of the book is the daily records of the wartime teacher who taught Chinese studies at the university.

Waseda University is still a place for journalists. A few days ago, I attended a lecture at Waseda University to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, and one of the speakers was a Japanese journalist friend of mine who came from Waseda. I told him that I had heard that your university produced journalists. He said yes, mentioning that there was a time when half of the journalists were from Waseda, and explained that the school’s culture at that time was such that officials were rejected, but they were also concerned about public affairs.

In the school’s history museum, there is a special exhibition entitled “People of Speech,” and almost all of the exhibits are about Waseda’s journalists. The introduction to the exhibit talks about the right to information, civic expression, the value of professional journalists in the age of information overload, and Waseda’s founding mission. At the end of the introductory text, there is an antipodean spirit, but unfortunately my translation software didn’t pick it up, so I wonder if it’s meant to advocate standing up to the powers that be.

Frankly, I didn’t stay long at this exhibit. The best decade or so was dedicated to journalism, and it’s sad to see these displays with the feelings and emotions bubbling up inside.

Waseda’s name is also interesting. In general, universities are named either by quoting scriptures or by naming them after cities or countries. Especially in the late-developing countries, the emergence of a modern university is often the expectations of the elite of the times. The early rice field, on the other hand, means that the rice in this field is early rice, which belongs to the local colloquialisms, a bit like Zhangjiawan, Erdougou and other such appellations. To date, Waseda is also a town-level unit under the Shinjuku precinct, which sounds the same level as Songzhuang and Wudaokou. Among the famous domestic universities, Nankai takes a similar name to Waseda, and is said to take its name from Nankaiwa. Coincidentally, both universities were private when they were founded.

When we talk about private education today, it is often associated with elitism and high tuition fees, making it appear to be more advanced than public education. However, more than a hundred years ago, I am afraid that the so-called private education was more on the side of private education.

Of course, the founder of the school, Okuma Shigenobu, was not considered a private person; he was a great man of the court who formed the cabinet twice, and was a trendsetter on the East Asian stage, on the same level as Ito Hirobumi and Inuyasha Tsuyoshi, among others. It is said that the founding of the school originated from a conversation between him and Fukuzawa Yukichi. The latter, of course, is a great name, and can be called the father of modern education in Japan, as well as the founder of Keio University. It can thus be seen that the leading brothers of modernization in Japan generally had the heart to do private education. Two days ago, I checked the information, said Mr. Sun Yat-sen in Beijing to prepare for the establishment of the National University, the first president of Song Jiaoren, is also modeled on Waseda. Waseda University School History Museum information shows that the school was founded 15 years in 1897, the founder of the school NPC King Kuma only came to the forefront, appeared at the opening ceremony. Considering the heated political situation in the imperial court at that time, he was cautious, more or less, to stay out of trouble. At that time, the school was known as the Tokyo College of Technology, and offered three major subjects: political science, economics, law, and science, plus English. in the early 1900s, when the school’s relationship with the government eased and the school was recognized and upgraded to Waseda University, Okuma’s close friend and political rival Hirofumi Ito took part in the inauguration ceremony the year after the name change. A caricature depicting the situation of the hanging of the license is exhibited in the Museum of History. On the cartoon, there are a few young students who look silly and scruffy, happily changing their school license plates, with a sense of being a rich man who got a good deal on a good thing. According to records, Waseda University alumnus Liao Chengzhi often sang the Jaeno version of the school song adapted by college students back in the day when he hosted Japanese friends visiting China:

Waseda, northwest of the capital

A tin house in the forest towers above the sky

We live here.

A penny of radish and five cents of beans is sweet and sweet.

Repeat the song at the end. Skinny. Skinny.

As you can imagine, Waseda at that time was closely related to the court battle. For the Okuma family, it was a long-term vision to organize a political party to clean up the dynasty and to attract young people to the school. However, how should such a school advocate and attract talents?

Historical records show that it was difficult for the authorities at that time to accept this new form of privately organized education. In the eyes of the authorities, this school was “a school for rebels”. This shows the intensity of the clash of ideas at that time, but it also shows that radical heresy can survive in the world. In the early years of the university, things were not always easy for the university. A Centennial History of Waseda University” also specializes in spelling out that initially the Imperial family, the Zaibatsu and the Ministry of War did not look down on this university. If there is no Okuma this tree blocking the wind and rain, the school is afraid that would have died.

According to the Museum of History, on the day the school opened, it was Okuma’s spokesman, Azusa Ono, who stepped in. He advocated that the school should be academically independent. A note from the school’s history museum explains that this independence had two meanings: not blindly following Western studies, and not succumbing to politics. More than a hundred years ago, the new modern world was just beginning to take shape, and politics, economics, technology, society, ideology, the world order, food, clothing, housing and transportation were all changing. Westerners did not yet know where this change was headed, let alone the Far Eastern islands. The concepts and values we know today had not yet been invented. Japanese translators were still scratching their heads and inventing new kanji names for imported modern knowledge. Being there, I could feel the splendor, the excitement and the cruelty of the times. While it is understandable that political parties are used as a tool to play the game, and that the benefits and disadvantages are realized on a case-by-case basis, education is for the sake of long-term future gains. Perhaps it is for this reason that the school boasts the pursuit of academic independence as its core goal.

This is a task in which the private sector has an advantage over the official sector. The official both political, with control powers and responsibilities, and interest constraints. If the identity is not independent, how can academics be independent. Without independence, it is impossible to exhaust as many different perspectives and ways of thinking as possible, and to explore another possible future.

In going through the various Waseda documents, one word comes up frequently, in the wild.

Okuma was one of the founding fathers of modern Japanese society, and the private education created by him was clearly not an ivory tower of learning behind closed doors. Quite the contrary, the school’s presence in the field is more like an emphasis on contributing to diverse and pragmatic programs for the nation and society outside of officialdom. It is precisely because of its role in the wilderness that it is able to have a broader vision and a more flexible stance. Externally, it is a testament to this vision that the university was able to set up an institution dedicated to the study of China and to open up cultural exchanges between Chinese and Japanese people at a time when public institutions were preoccupied with the pursuit of the West in the late 19th century. In the 1950s, hosting Guo Moruo and a Chinese delegation as a private university was a demonstration of stature. The subsequent cultivation of a large number of journalists who monitor power is likewise the best footnote to being in power.

The Centennial History of Waseda University records that in the 1930s, Japanese staff officers visited the school and interacted with students for hours. At Waseda in those days, there were both fascists and civil rights advocates, those who emphasized freedom and the rule of law, and those who espoused greater East Asian co-prosperity. What and how would these young people in opposition talk about when they met with the military staff. It is actually quite worthwhile to play and make reference to. The parties concerned do not know where the future is heading. If we take 10 years as a unit, they are all losers, and they are lucky to be alive. But if we take half a century as a unit of measurement, the scattered thoughts and the glimmering of humanity in the process of exchanges can be covered by the ashes in the field, and then meet the open fire after the war, burning out the spectacle of half of the country of the speakers, which can be regarded as who loses and who wins?

In this sense, the history of Waseda University is perhaps the presentation of the social value of private higher education in the process of modernization of a society. The vicissitudes of the school’s transformation in the current situation are also precisely the epic and painful lessons of private higher education.

Mr. Mei Yiqi, former President of Tsinghua University, once said that the so-called university is not a building, but a master. But the history of Waseda University seems to say that the so-called university is not the master, but the independence in the field. Mr. Wang Jing’an’s monument behind the engraved sentence of the spirit of independence, free thinking, and the spirit of Waseda seems to be quite compatible.

There are a few old bookstores on Waseda Avenue with small storefronts. Old magazines and detective story collections are displayed at the entrance. One is modern, simple and sophisticated, with a spiral staircase to the ground floor. The entire wall of books is bound in black hard-cover wrappers with gold lettering on the side, mostly scholarly works on East Asian culture and history, such as a study of a particular parochial trade during the Late Tang Dynasty and so on.

Twenty years ago, there were also many bookstores around Zhongguancun, famous ones being Wind in the Pines, Guo Lin Feng, and Wansheng Book Garden. There were also old bookstores, like Douban Bookstore. On weekends, I often met wandering vendors outside the school who set up stalls. At that time, I received a handwritten copy of “The Fifteenth Year of the Ten Thousand Calendar”. For a moment, looking at the old clerks in the old bookstore, I was envious and thought about whether I could open an old bookstore in Songzhuang.

Forget it, let’s talk about it. What I envy most is whether I can have the opportunity to go back and set up a university as well, let’s call it Songzhuang University, why shouldn’t I?