Day In, Day Out
As part of deregulation, many government agencies were recently turned into independent administrative corporations in Japan.
Even in national universities, new restaurants were allowed to open on campus more easily, for a university to gain an income. In a certain elite university in the middle of Tokyo, once there were only two restaurants or dining halls, but now there are ten. As a result, humble restaurants and shops around the university have been forced to close. The university is going to be cut off from its neighbors.
One scholar pointed out that this is a warning against poor deregulation. Traditional human relationships between the elite faculty and students and ordinary people in surrounding areas are going to extinct in Tokyo.
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I am not sure how many students of The City College of The City University of New York (CCNY) have encountered this EEE-Report, but there is something about it I want to refer to.
In the website of CCNY, they introduce its origin:
“Founded in 1847 as The Free Academy, The City College of New York (CCNY) was one of the great experiments of the young American democracy. At the urging of School Board President Townsend Harris, New York established a school to provide access to higher education for bright young men from working class and immigrant families who could not afford private college. More than 158 years later, the experiment remains an overwhelming success.”
Townsend Harris, after having set the foundation of the present CCNY, went out to the world in the middle of 19th century, just before the Civil War in the United States.
Harris became Consul General to Japan, the first American diplomat to Japan, and began his diplomatic mission living almost alone in Japan in 1856.
After two years of struggle against the reluctant Shogun Government, he finally made the "Treaty of Peace and Commerce" with the samurai government of Japan. He is the first and (perhaps) only American who met a shogun in person in Edo Castle.
Japan at the time was amid the rising tension between the Shogun Government and some other clans who lined up against the Government’s policy to open the nation. (A Dutch interpreter, Henry Heusken, employed by Harris was put to the sword and killed by such a group of samurai.)
However, Harris succeeded in completing his mission and gaining respect from Japanese, partly due to fairly fair contents and provisions in the Treaty he offered to Samurai Japan that did not have sufficient experiences in Western Europe-style diplomacy as well as enough modern fire arms.
Harris returned to the United States in 1861 when the Civil War started, in which he took no part.
Schools in Japan today never forget to mention the name Townsend Harris in teaching history.
In the United States, without Townsend Harris and his Free Academy, there has been no such higher education institution called Harvard of the Proletariat in New York.
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Townsend Harris is the only person who accomplished a great achievement both in the United States and Japan before the new era concurrently began in each country in the late 19th century.
Any meaningful transformation or innovation in the education sector or any other public sectors, including deregulation, needs somebody like Townsend Harris that has more capability than what people concerned have conventionally thought to be sufficient.
For example, if the first diplomat from the United States to Japan had showed anything that made Japanese people feel contempt for him during his stay for five years, his gravestone in New York today would not have carried an inscription which reads “Friend of Japan.”
(Therefore, students in New York have been all beneficiaries of the Friend of Japan.)
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Day in, day out, can any public character today keep the quality of his or her conduct at such a demanding level?
(If such a person appears, the fact itself would be an extraordinarily significant piece of news among sinful people, however. )
“JESUS ORDERED THEM: DO NOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT ME”