Welcoming Mr. Ryoji Noritake to My Keio SFC Class

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My Keio SFC class.:  On October 27th we welcomed Mr. Ryoji Noritake, a wonderful individual doing a great job at the Health Policy Institute, an NPO in which I serve as Chairman.
 
Mr. Noritake is an alumni of SFC, class of 2007.  After graduating, he joined our Health Policy Institute Think Tank and has since been working actively in fields like, measures for cancer, cancer and brain stroke patient support ,  programs to nurture leaders of patients, and so on.  These programs have produced many results that will positively affect the health care industry.  As he persists in leading these diverse activities, he is gaining invaluable experience as a great leader.  He has become one of the most indispensable members of our institute.

Because he is an SFC alumi, I think Mr. Noritake was able to connect with the students even better. The students related with him more because he was their senior and because of his sharing of many moving stories.  

Among those stories, I was impressed especially by the one regarding the World Trade Center terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.  He was studying at Oklahoma University at the time.  He spoke about the reactions he observed of the people around him, and how he was moved to witness for the first time the power of words beyond his imagination.

In this course I aim to have students understand the importance of moving towards the global age, and to provide them opportunities to listen to the real world stories of people who are qualified enough to be their role models.  Such inspirational narratives, because they are true experiences, have power to move youth, to make them want to emulate or pursue similar careers .

Jiro Shirasu (in Japanese), is one of my favorite historical characters. He was a politician, whose career covered the early Showa era.  I wrote several articles (Ref.1,2,3,4 in Japanese) (Ref.5,6 in English) on him on this web site.   

Mr. Shirasu’s post-World War II work in Japan is just remarkable.  He studied at Cambridge University, and became a true ‘English Gentlemen’.  There are several books about Mr. Shirasu published, but he is more generally known for his philosophy of Principle (the fundamentals, essence, of things…) as well as for his countless piquant episodes.  I haven’t seen many true gentlemen like him around recently …
 
There is one collection of the essays by Jiro Shirasu titled,  ‘Japan: A Nation Without Principle’.  I purchased it at ‘Buaiso’ (in Japanese), his former residence.  In this book, there is a line that says something like ‘Education is about whether the teachers are practicing in real life what they teach…’  This is, in my view, an important ‘Principle’, especially in higher educations.  I remember nodding here and there as I went on reading.

Similarly, the stories that Mr. Noritake told in class clearly illustrated the importance of experiencing the world at an early stage in one’s life.

Thank you, Mr. Noritake, for giving us such an inspirational lecture.  I am confident that many of your juniors learned and sensed something important from your stories.