A stroll through Tamagawa University

One of the things I loved about the Tamagawa University campus, where I worked for more than 15 years, was its beauty. Walking through the gate, I would see to my left a pond with a small fountain, surrounded by trees. Walking slightly uphill along a curving path, I would pass many more trees, diversely planted to show off cherry blossoms in the spring and intense colors in the fall. There were no leaf blowers. Staff members took turns raking leaves with a bamboo broom. I appreciated the silence those autumn mornings. Of course, there were classroom buildings and then further on a small tea house with a thatched roof. 

Sometimes I took breaks mid-day as well. There was a little stream near the tea house and a statue of the Buddhist deity Benten.

Not far away was a small white wooden chapel—the school founder having been a Christian lay minister. And if I walked even further back, an imposing statue of Beethoven, another small pond and somewhat neglected area of grass and flowers. Not a student haunt. Perfect for a short stroll. 

Just behind the chapel was the music building labeled with the Biblical phrase, "No Vision, the people perish". (Often shortened in the phrase, "Meet me at No Vision at noon.") Finally, I came to the building housing Foreign Language Department, as it was known when I arrived as a part-time English teacher in the early 90s. By the time I left, it was the Department of Comparative Cultures.

I have many memories of my years at Tamagawa, but 6 years after retiring from my job there, it’s the beauty and tranquility of my surroundings that come to mind first. Thanks for nature preservation goes to the founder, Kuniyoshi Obara, who was committed to zenjin kyoiku (education of the whole person.) He believed that education was more than just study or job preparation. It was something that involved the heart, soul and body as well as the mind. When he started an elementary school on the campus in the 1920s, it was what we’d call today an alternative school. Students lived there and school life was a broad mix of study, living on site, taking care of the grounds, as well as tending plants and other projects. Gradually, Tamagawa evolved into a kindergarten through university campus. As with all alternative movements, Tamagawa's zenjin kyoiku gradually became something different in a continually changing Japan.

Fast forward to 2016.  I already knew that Tamagawa was in the midst of a building and renovation boom when I visited last month, my first visit in 5 years. I already knew that the school's famous Christmas tree had been felled to accommodate a grand new building housing a state-of-the-art library, administrative offices, cafeterias and more. “No vision”, the old music/concert building, is being remodeled into a state-of-the-art facility as well, and most important to me, the building where I worked for many years has had a total makeover. 

The Christmas tree, circa 2010:

The new administration building, now sitting on the same site:

I confess to a conservative streak—that impulse to value the old over the new when the old carries my history and memories.  Especially when symbols, like the Christmas tree, are involved. A light show in front of the new building replaced that Tamagawa tradition last year. Perhaps the new display was more impressive—or not. Symbol aside, many trees still remain on campus—a good thing indeed.

Entering Building 5, where I taught for 15 years, I was disoriented—that feeling that comes when the familiar is disguised but still you know you’re in physical space you once knew very well. The building is now a center for English as a lingua franca, a term usually used in countries with a number of indigenous languages and a need to use English as a language of communication. Perhaps not entirely accurate for Japan, but I like the concept. To consider English as a foreign language sets up an opposition between native and foreign. The term lingua franca connotes a tool, a linguistic addition. Already English language instruction had been consolidated into a center open to students from various colleges in the university system. Last year my old department morphed again, this time into The Department of English Education. All students will be expected to study in another country for a time through one of the university’s partner programs. 

Photos of the interior of the new ELF Study Hall 2016 (Building 5):

View from a upper floor of Building 5, facing the new concert hall in progress:

“Surely this will be a good place for learning,” says my former colleague, Prof. Sylvie Suzuki. A former teacher of French and very proficient linguist, she was transferred to the Tourism Department after Tamagawa stopped offering majors in other languages. On the day I visited, she and another former colleague met me in the Center for English as a Lingua Franca. On the ground floor, there’s a multi-purpose room that offers places for small group work and discussion, a wired space to practice presentations, a coffee and tea bar, and comfortable seating. Colors are designed to match psychological states, such as calmness or creativity. There’s a lot of natural light, and as always, nature’s display outside large windows. All signs in the building are in English. The floors have been renumbered—somewhat disorienting. This, the former first floor, is now the second.

Across the aisle is an independent study area with spaces for tutor-student conferences. Already these one-on-ones are quite popular, I learn. We move upstairs—via an elevator, a new feature. I visit the “third” floor where my office once was and meet several of the faculty members. Serving many more students, the faculty is larger and more ethnically diverse than it was when I taught there. Everything is new, including the bathrooms: one for gents, one for ladies, and one “for everybody”. We continue to other floors, where classrooms have been upgraded and seating has become more flexible. I feel a strange mixture of envy and sincere pleasure in seeing these positive changes. Yet, another conservative impulse springs up--the desire to defend the value of the old structure. The changes here hold much promise, but there are trade-offs, as there always are. I regret that German, French, Spanish and Chinese language departments do not have a place here anymore. I remember the colleagues who taught those languages and the students who chose them. Now the focus is on English, and choice will bring a new set of benefits and challenges.

I leave the campus as the day fades. Past the concert hall construction, which obscures my glimpse of Benten, past the tea house, classroom buildings, trees and then the pond with it’s imposing new building, lit for the evening and the future.