The University of Tokyo Autumn Semester Matriculation Ceremony took place on 1 October 2026 at Yasuda Auditorium. The Autumn Semester Matriculation Ceremony was conducted in English as it welcomed the incoming students for international programmes. The ceremony opened with movements from Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, performed by the University of Tokyo Orchestra.
UTokyo President Teruo Fujii. (Photo by Jimin Kim)
The President of UTokyo, Teruo Fujii, mentioned at the beginning of his speech that like many of those in the crowd, English is not his first language. Also like him, during their lives, many of the students will pick up English for academics, and Japanese for everyday life. He asserted that these languages are “vital tools for human imagination and creativity”.
However, to effectively communicate with each other, languages must undergo translation. Fujii asked “what it means to translate between languages” in an age defined by “machine translation” and growing sentiment that “there is no longer any need to study other languages.” He argued that words lose the “resonance” and “nuance” of their original language in translation.
He provided an example with ‘design’. Although several words in Japanese exist to grasp the concept of design, none of them are very close to its English definition, which he defined as to “sketch our ideas in drawings and plans and evaluate the results.” Thus, he said that Japanese people largely recognize “design” in katakana, a Japanese alphabet mainly used for foreign loan words, to be the most suitable. Through this example, Fujii explained that translation means accommodating for different contexts, which requires “building enough common ground to understand one another.”
His final message encouraged students to “try to have conversations with people sitting near you. […] Whatever the language, as long as we have the desire to understand one another, we can enter into dialogue.”
Student Representatives Mingyang Chen and Youjin Nam (Photo by Jimin Kim)
The Dean of the Graduate School of Agriculture and Life Sciences Kazushige Touhara and the President of the UTokyo Alumni Association Takeshi Kunibe both gave congratulatory addresses. The Pledges by Representatives of New Students were made by Mingyang Chen from the Master’s Program of Interdisciplinary Information Studies and Youjin Nam from the College of Arts and Sciences.
The ceremony concluded with a performance of Ōzora-to by UTokyo choirs Chor Akademie and Coro Letizia, closed out by those in attendance singing Tada-Hitotsu together.
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UTokyo 2026 Autumn Matriculation: Translation, Dialogue, and Understanding 2026
IUSTITIA.BG – Investigations 2009-2026 2026-10-01 10:38:57
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