COMMUNICATIONS

I celebrated my sixtieth birthday on 1 July last year. My time as a Visiting Research Scholar at Nichibunken thus began at the age of sixty, one of life’s major turning points. After my arrival here, I joined the research seminar of my host, Professor ARAKI, and my thoughts turned to the professors who supervised me when I was a grad student.

It was in 1988, just a year after graduating from university, I abandoned working for a company and joined Tokyo University of Foreign Studies as a visiting research student. I then joined Tokyo Gakugei University on their masters’ program. My masters supervisor was Professor SUZUKI Makio, who was really strict. Classes were spent in a constant state of tension, and his questions about my presentations just kept coming. The seminars would finish when I somehow managed to respond to tricky questions that were beyond the limits of my comprehension. After two years of this discipline (?), I naturally proceeded down the path of academia. Professor SUZUKI told me that those who choose academia should stay up to speed with the latest books and articles in their field; they should “gather intelligence,” in other words. So, as a grad student, I made a point of calling in on specialist bookshops once a month. One day, going from one bookshop to the next, I bumped into Professor SUZUKI in the second bookshop on my rounds. This taught me that Professor SUZUKI, who was then approaching retirement, was himself forever touring bookshops. After I returned home to Korea, we stayed in touch through new year and mid-summer greetings. A few months before he died, I learned that he was ill and hospitalized, and so I went to see him. That was the last time.

When I was a grad student, Tokyo Gakugei University had no PhD program, so I entered Tokai University, where Professor KASHIWABARA Shirō, a specialist in early modern linguistics, worked. He was an extremely helpful professor, and his guidance extended to the finest details. Even after I became a lecturer myself, Professor KASHIWABARA would often write to me. He would tell me about his own research and the state of the field, and his communications would include offprints and copies of his articles. In his last years, even as he suffered from lung cancer, he put the finishing touches to his life’s work, and left to posterity a magnificent book. Half a year before he died, I was very happy to be able to join him and other former grad students for a meal near his home.

The reason I am suddenly telling stories from the past is that memories of my time as grad student came back to me as I participated in Professor ARAKI’s research group. The fact is that the passion of Professor ARAKI, one of the great authorities in the field of classical literature, naturally called to mind the professors to whom I was indebted as a grad student. Now, I myself am the same age as my professors were back then. I have four years left to retirement, but my adventures in the new field of linguistic culture have just begun. I want to take up this new challenge just as I took up challenges as a grad student.

Ever since my arrival here as a Visiting Research Scholar, Professor ARAKI and many others have treated me with great kindness. I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks.