NEWS

2025 Spring Matriculation Ceremony

Update: April 2, 2025

On Tuesday, April 1, as the cherry blossoms on McLean Avenue were about to reach full bloom, ICU welcomed a total of 786 new undergraduate and graduate students from within and outside Japan at the Matriculation ceremony held in the University Chapel.

As per the tradition that has been followed for over 70 years since the founding of the University in 1953, the students' names were announced individually and all new students signed the written pledge to uphold the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in their student lives.

President Shoichiro Iwakiri gave a welcome speech to the newly gathered new students.

2025 Spring Matriculation Address by Shoichiro Iwakiri, President

A warm welcome to all of you who are entering our College of Liberal Arts and our MA and PhD programs. At the same time, I extend my warmest regards to all your family members and friends who are joining us online.

It's a great pleasure to welcome you to our campus, where the cherry trees are now in full bloom.
They are beautiful even in the rain as you see today.

Some of the first cherry trees at ICU were planted by students.

The late Tetsuo Chino, who entered ICU in the first year of its foundation, and served as the President of American Honda Motor Company in the 1980s, wrote a passage in his book entitled "Path of my life", which represents a compilation of his writings, in which he recounts his student days as follows:

"There were plenty of part-time jobs on the ICU campus which was under construction, as long as we were willing to do physical labor. I also worked part-time planting cherry seedlings that had been donated by the U.S. on MacLean Avenue."

As you know, MacLean Avenue, the long road that runs from the university's main gate to the bus stop traffic circle, is now lined with cherry trees. 73 years after ICU was founded, it's time to replant the cherry trees and new ones have been added. However, some of the old trees have been preserved. Weren't the petals smiling from the trees planted by the first students to congratulate you on your enrolment?

The first students entered ICU in 1953. Japan had been under Allied occupation since the end of the Second World War, and only regained its sovereignty in 1952. It was at this time that our university took its first steps as an education and research institution, purchasing the land for its campus with donations from citizens of North America and Japan, under the motto "University of Tomorrow".

Since its founding, ICU's mission has been to nurture students to become international citizens, or in today's terms, global citizens, and peacebuilders.
And from the outset, ICU has valued individuality, freedom, democracy, equality, dialogue, internationalism, diversity and critical thinking. Underpinning these values was a code of mind and behavior in the service of God and humanity. These were not just ideals, but also concrete content to be put into practice in life. One of the important roles of university education is to actualize these ideals, to anchor them in one's own culture through daily life on campus, and to share them with others.
As the most appropriate educational system for this purpose, ICU has practiced Liberal Arts education since its inception. It is a flexibly structured, well-ventilated education and research system that provides abundant intellectual nourishment.

You will now be studying in a department or graduate school program named Arts and Sciences. Some of you may be tired of hearing it now, as I've pointed it out many times, but Science here has the original meaning of the Latin word, scio - knowledge, knowing. Art is also used in its original sense of "skill". In other words, learning in the liberal arts is a combination of the act of discovering the unknown and bringing it into the realm of knowledge, and the skill of transforming something new and unformed into a form that can be shared with others.

Discovering something new and sharing it with others: this passion and enjoyment is the basis of learning at ICU. I hope you will become someone who brings innovation to society and, at the same time, that you will be innovative for yourselves.

To design new things, it's important to accumulate knowledge; but, at the same time, keeping suitable open spaces for imagination is also important.The ICU campus has a rich natural environment. It's a good thing that ICU allows you to spend time among living creatures that create networks usually invisible to us humans, to feel the light and wind, and to have leisure time that isn't particularly useful for anything.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt once said that "All thinking is done in solitude". Solitude is sometimes necessary to develop one's own sensibility and to form new, unique thoughts. Nature can accompany this solitude.

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We have just listened to the Bible reading. I chose the passage because I believe that the student years are, above all, a privileged time. During your years of study, I want you to value what your soul wants to know and hear, and to listen to the voice of truth that speaks to you. Critical thinking goes hand in hand, not only with logic, but with love, integrity and conscience. I hope that, in academic study and research, the act of thinking is done in the spirit of Mary (as described in the Bible reading (Luke 10: 38-42) as she listened to the words of Jesus. However, teachers are not God. Therefore, what I'm saying now is not that we should simply listen to what they say. It's more important to argue and discuss. But at the root of it all is a heart open to the truth, free from the cares of the world. I hope that the voice of truth, which, as humans, we hear through love, will be present throughout your ICU life.

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Studying and researching at university is a transformative experience. When I look at my own past, it seems to me to represent an evolution that has incorporated something different into the self to which I had been accustomed.

We are like archaea who acquire energy conversion functions by incorporating cells that become mitochondria, or like chloroplasts created by the symbiosis of cyanobacteria in eukaryotic cells. In the course of our lives, we can incorporate systems that were previously external to ourselves into our systems of thinking and feeling, and generate a new self that is different from the one we had been before.

Metaphorically speaking, we may adopt within ourselves something like the mitochondria that generate spiritual energy, like the moral cyanobacteria that intelligently photosynthesize to provide oxygen for the soul to breathe. In this way, we change ourselves.

And the changes that occur in the late teens and early twenties form the foundation for the rest of life.

You've chosen ICU as the place for this change. It's an excellent choice. Because the liberal arts are nothing other than the free and creative art of making people and society evolve by creating new systems, new objects, new ideas within one system while integrating another. ICU puts this liberal arts concept into practice.

Throughout your life as a student, each of you will develop your ability to design your own life and evolve. I hope that the study of the Liberal Arts, which begins today, will open doors enabling you to discover new ways of understanding people and the world.