Guided by a strong desire to work on peacebuilding in East Asia, I entered GraSPP as a member of the first cohort of the CAMPUS Asia program. Because my undergraduate major was international liberal arts, I was able to acquire a broad outlook and an international perspective, but when I wanted to take what I had learned over those four years and study with greater concreteness, I learned that the University of Tokyo was running the CAMPUS Asia program. Many schools offer study across two countries, but I was drawn by the fact that I could pursue research anchored in three countries, and that students who would go on to play active roles in the world were gathering there from each country.
The Encounters, Experiences, and Learning of CAMPUS Asia Have Shaped Who I Am Today
I was able to study at Seoul National University for half a year and at Peking University for one year (obtaining a master’s degree). The people I met, the feelings I felt, and the experiences and learning I gained in Japan, South Korea, and China are indispensable to shaping who I am as a person today.
What left the deepest impression on me before studying abroad were the CAMPUS Asia summer school held at the University of Tokyo, and a retreat for CAMPUS Asia students that we students proposed and organized on our own initiative. At the CAMPUS Asia summer school, we were able to spend time with our peers not only on politics and economics, but also on things we could not experience in an ordinary classroom, such as a cultural experience in Asakusa and a visit to the disaster-affected area of Fukushima. I also cannot forget the retreat we held for CAMPUS Asia students at the students’ own suggestion. We were able to have honest, heartfelt discussions about how the trilateral relationship should be and how we wanted it to be going forward, and I remember how we ultimately compiled the results into a written document. What makes graduate school different from undergraduate study is that, rather than “going on because everyone else does,” more students are there by choice — with a concrete vision of their future, their research, the opportunities they want to gain. I hope that many of those who come after me will likewise spend their two years proactively, hungrily, and enjoyably.
Continuing to Pursue What I Love
Since my undergraduate days, I have lived with the desire to work on peacebuilding in East Asia. That desire remains unchanged even now, and I believe the CAMPUS Asia experience has become the core of who I am today. Now, in 2023, about eight years have passed since I completed the program, and bringing together my career and other activities as an individual, I feel that the people around me have come to recognize me as “when it comes to East Asia, it’s Nagakawa.”
Currently, in my career, I plan and develop special programs at a graduate school of management, mainly in the areas of “technovate” (a coined word combining technology and innovation), Japan, and Asia, and I also work as a part-time lecturer at a university. As for my other activities, for three years I have been planning and running an educational program open to society called the “East Asia Peace Ambassador Project” at a nonprofit organization. I also serve as a representative of the Northeast Asia region in the Global Shapers Community organized by the World Economic Forum. For my part, I have simply kept pursuing what I love, but such steady results and passion were recognized, and in January I was given the opportunity to take part in the Davos meeting as one of 50 young people from around the world (Davos 50).
I do not really separate my career from my other activities. That is because I have come this far by thinking about how I can design my life around what I love, and by piling up the things I simply found “interesting” — and that is what has made me who I am today. And what makes that possible is my two and a half years with CAMPUS Asia, which gave me the conviction that “I really do love engaging with the people and societies of East Asia,” and the many experiences that came with it. With the peers I met there — diverse in age, nationality, and interests — I still share a great deal of time. The relations among the three countries that interest me so strongly are at times greatly swayed by politics. Even so, I believe that public sentiment among the three countries will surely improve. My two and a half years with CAMPUS Asia taught me that.
Never Forget What You Hold Dear, Believe in Your Own and Your Peers’ Potential, and Build Experiences You Can Only Have Here
What is it that you love, that moves your heart? What kind of life do you want to live? These may sound like difficult questions at first glance, but if you look back on your life so far and the choices you made along the way, I believe they are questions everyone can surely answer in some way.
There are surely many “proper” reasons, like “I want to study international politics,” of the kind you write in your application documents to enter GraSPP. What I would like to tell you is this: even if your reason does not sound so proper, hold it dear and enroll. This is because learning at GraSPP consists not only of classroom lectures; much of it is made up of time spun from chance encounters and self-directed decisions guided by curiosity. A conversation with a classmate from an African state-owned bank who happened to sit next to me; the internship I experienced in Seoul, where “I was the only foreigner doing a full-time internship”; a trip out of Beijing to Tianjin with classmates; a symposium on East Asia that I planned with my peers on our own initiative after completing the program. Not only the learning prepared for us in the classroom, but the many experiences that arose — by chance and by necessity — from all sorts of things coming together are deeply etched into my memory.
To all of you who will be enrolling: never forget what you hold dear, believe in your own and your peers’ potential, and build up many experiences you can only have here — and I would be delighted if someday we could meet as fellow members of the same graduate school.
