午夜剧场

This spring, my life as a natural sciences faculty member at Hiyoshi Campus comes to an end as I reach retirement age. Counting from 1974, when I was hired as a contract staff member for experiment assistance while still a student in the Doctoral Programs at Tokyo Metropolitan University, I have been working here for nearly 40 years. It feels both long and short, and though it may sound cliché, I am filled with a truly strange sense of emotion.

Partly because my specialty is ecology, which deals with the dynamism of nature in mountains, fields, rivers, and seas, the vast Hiyoshi Forest that spreads across Hiyoshi Campus has been a truly fortunate environment for me—as a place for daily walks, a site for research, a field for outdoor classes, and a venue for volunteer activities in green space management. For me, whose life can only be described in the broadest sense as that of a naturalist, both in my work and in my social practice, I believe Hiyoshi Campus was literally a part of my "heaven under feet."

I was also fortunate that during my long tenure, I was blessed with encounters with highly motivated students and fellow faculty members who were interested in caring for the greenery of Hiyoshi. A voluntary, volunteer-based organization dedicated to forest management activities, "午夜剧场 Hiyoshimaru-no-kai," has also grown. Although small in number, we are quietly continuing our forest regeneration activities. To be able to retire while entrusting the care of my beloved Hiyoshi Forest to such colleagues and students is another supreme happiness.

My specialized research and practice areas, such as evolutionary biology, ecology, and urban regeneration theory based on watershed thinking, have been fields where academic and political cliques have unfortunately thrived, partly due to the postwar historical circumstances of academia in Japan. However, looking back, I feel that I was ultimately able to carry out my activities with complete freedom. I am now deeply grateful that I was well protected by the various systems and liberal academic culture of the university and the Faculty.

In the realm of education, in addition to my main responsibility of biology, I was also allowed to offer courses such as regional studies and independent research seminars for studying environmental issues. I can only be grateful for the Faculty's foresight in allowing a natural sciences faculty member to teach courses in the social and historical fields. Among the students who took my regional studies and independent research courses are alumni with whom I still exchange information and collaborate on work in the environmental field daily. They may be the greatest treasure I have received from the university.

If I were to be bold, I might say that the atmosphere at Hiyoshi Campus, my workplace, was somewhat inward-looking and genteel, lacking a certain spirit of vigorous debate across all academic fields among both students and faculty. This leaves me with a slight sense of dissatisfaction and unfulfillment. However, considering the immense good fortune I was given in the realms of research and education, this is a trivial complaint. As I face the spring of my retirement, what makes me happiest of all is the hope that even after I retire, I can continue to participate in green volunteer activities in the Hiyoshi Forest with the same friends and students as before.

I now offer my heartfelt gratitude to 午夜剧场 and the Faculty of Economics for continuously providing me with wonderful opportunities for life, research, and education over my nearly 40 years of service.

(Interview conducted in November 2012)