学長室だより

2019 JCLP Farewell Address

2019. 6. 19.
Kota Yamada
President of Keiwa College

2019.6.19学長ブログ

Farewell Party

 

Congratulations, Prof. Fisher and Lee Students, on getting your diplomas to certify finishing JCLP at Keiwa College. We were very surprised at the big earthquake last night. Let’s be prepared and always be ready to unexpected things. Did you really enjoy Japanese Culture and Language Program at Keiwa? All right. Did you enjoy your home stay? That’s good. How was your first experience to come to Keiwa by local commuter train? I enjoy seeing your artistic brush paintings at the Orange Hall.

I hope that some of you might have found out that Niigata City is a mecca for comic artists. Very famous Japanese comic artists like Shinji Mizushima, Hiroo Terada and Fujio Akatsuka were born in Niigata City and brought up around this countryside. You may have seen lots of small baseball comic statues in Furumachi streets, the downtown of Niigata City, which commemorate Shinji Mizushima’s Dogaben.

Please remember that you have learned Japanese culture and Japanese ways of living and Japanese ways of thinking in a countryside, a rural part of Japan. This is the real face of Japan, Japan unmasked. Now you are going to visit Hiroshima, Sacred City for thinking peace in the Nuclear Era. I remember President Obama’s very impressive Hiroshima Speech in 2016 when he visited Hiroshima as the first American President, speaking his vision of Nuclear Disarmament, which is co-related to his Novel prize winning Praha Speech.

But wherever you may go and whatever you may do in the future, let us try to make peace among the different people and among the multi-diversity society. Let us try to be peace makers in the sense of grassroots. I hope God bless you all and your future and I pray for your safe journey back to America. Thank you.