The 121st Installment
A lockout

by Seiichi Kawata,
Professor, President of Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology

This school is among many in Japan that have been offering distance learning since the beginning of the 2020 academic year due to the spread of COVID-19. As there is also a university accreditation system, distance learning is being implemented while strictly enforcing lecture times, preparation and review times, and final examinations for course credits. Students cannot earn credits simply by watching recorded lectures, and an online learning support system called the Learning Management System (LMS) is used to manage things like viewing, report submission, responses, questions and discussions, instead of confirming attendance.

Distance learning was not easy to implement, and there was confusion at many schools. A Facebook group was started to share problems and solutions, and about 20,000 university faculty members joined to post their problems and solutions.

The teacher organization and staff at AIIT collaborated to prepare well in advance, and classes began in early May. Unable to hold admission ceremonies and perform guidance, AIIT used school IDs to confirm email access to students, send guidance materials in advance, and communicate with homeroom teachers and students. With the cooperation and understanding of the students, the first quarter will be completed on July 1.

During this time, I remembered that something similar had happened when I entered college. This was a college lockout. But the circumstances are completely different.

When I entered Osaka University in 1973, five criminal students were arrested for the Asama-Sanso Incident that occurred in February 1972 and where riot police and civilians were killed. In May of the same year, the Japanese Red Army carried out a shooting rampage at Tel Aviv Airport in Israel, and a Kyoto University student who was one of the perpetrators was killed. There were major changes in the Cold War between the East and West, with the visit of US President Richard Nixon to China, and it was around this time that the radical student movement was rapidly beginning to decline.

However, university tuition fee increases under the policy of the beneficiary pays principle started, and annual tuition at national universities for students who entered in 1973 was 36,000 yen per year, up from 12,000 yen per year in the previous academic year, so the student movement changed its policy to opposing the tuition hikes. However, it is true that even at that time, university students could earn about 20,000 yen per month if they worked part-time as tutors, and there were many who said that students at public universities were treated more favorably than those at private universities.

Tuition fees at public universities continued to increase sharply, reaching 339,600 yen per year in 1989, 528,000 yen in 2003, and then increasing slightly to the present. It feels like a different world, now that we are in a time where free college tuition is being discussed.

As soon as I entered the university in April 1973, the judo, American football, and weightlifting athletic associations reached out to me, and I somehow invited several of my friends to join me in the weightlifting club.

Although the class had started as usual, it was interrupted by several students in helmets who asked the professor to allow them to make a speech. They were given five minutes to make a so-called propaganda speech. This happened on a daily basis. Out of curiosity, I went to the student assembly and found the main lecture hall in the liberal arts building hazy with cigarette smoke, and I was simply overwhelmed by and stood still from the tremendous amount of energy from the students who targeting verbal abuse and lit cigarettes at the students speaking at the podium, and watched the lit cigarettes flying through the air.

I still remember the professor’s words after the students finished their inflammatory speech and left the classroom during statistics. “I would like to tell you all something. I am not saying that you should not participate in student movements, but there should not be violent internal fighting. There is a student I know who is in the hospital with paralysis on half their body because of this internal violence. It is unacceptable”.

As an 18-year-old who had freshly entered college, I began to have extraordinary experiences one after another on the campus I had admired, and my high school days, when I bit off more than I could chew and tried to act like a grown up, became a distant memory. One day I began to see my classmates standing in front of the building in helmets and holding square bars (wooden staffs), and I learned that the university was in a complete lockout.

Mt. Machikane is uphill from Ishibashi Station[OR1] [丸山茉緒2] on the Hankyu Railway, and the first building you reach is Building A from the side of the pond there. Its doors had large chains wrapped around them, and both ends of the chain are locked with a large padlock. This was a literal lockout. After that, I went to Building B and was also locked out, and could not enter any of the buildings for liberal arts.

This lockout happened halfway through my first semester of classes. Of course, this was no internet or other digital communication networks, and the assignments for each class subject became reports. Only final exams were strictly administered, and I was forced to learn through self-study.

I can still remember my report for a physics experiment. The assignment was to determine the value of gravitational acceleration through experiments. I decided to do the experiments at home and began to think about what experimental methodology to use. My friends said that a shortcut is to experiment with the isochronous nature of the pendulum.

If the period of the pendulum is T and the length of the string is ℓ, the gravitational acceleration g is T = 2π√ℓ/g, regardless of the mass of the suspended weight.　　　　

Using a string and a five-yen coin as a weight, I would measure the time by counting the number of times as long as possible while the pendulum was swinging. Gravitational acceleration ℊ could be measured through this alone.

I wanted to use Torricelli's theorem because I was interested in and reading hydraulics textbooks at that time. Torricelli's theorem, if quoted from the Encyclopedia Britannica, is as follows:

Torricelli's theorem is given as q = √2gh (g is acceleration due to gravity, and h is the height from the hole to the liquid surface), which is the size of the outflow velocity when a liquid in a container flows out through a small hole if the viscosity of the liquid is ignored. This value of q is equal to the free-fall velocity of the liquid and is independent of the direction of the outflow.

Here, q is the velocity of the fluid ejected from the hole, but in my experiment, the flow rate through the hole of a certain cross-sectional area can be tested by measuring the weight of the water flowing into a container with a clock and determining the volume from the specific gravity.

I experimented by drilling a hole in the bottom of a bucket and attaching the metal base of a 5 mm lead mechanical pencil, which was just put on the market. The idea was that a 5 mm core would tell me the area from the diameter of the hole. Since the bucket would no longer be usable after making a hole, I searched for an old one and performed my experiment.

No matter how many experiments I conducted, I could not accurately determine even two digits of the gravitational acceleration. I was barely able to get one digit. The problem was that the error in the area of the hole affects the value of g by the square in Torricelli's theorem, and the error is a parameter that is not offset even after repeated experiments.

I wrote and submitted my report, and received a grade of 2 out of 5. When I asked my teacher about the reason, they said, “Why did you use an inaccurate experimental method? For pendulum experiment, the accuracy for the value of gravitational acceleration increases the more times you do the experiment. That's what physics experiments are”. Although I received a 2, it was a good experience to learn about the superficialness of my thinking before starting my life of research.

The lockout I experienced was not very long, but there was a day four years earlier, in 1969, when the entrance examinations for the University of Tokyo were completely canceled and students who had applied had to abandon their dreams. It was a time when unprecedented things were happened, in the same way that the dreams of today’s high school baseball players to play in the Summer Koshien tournament were ended. I have heard that some universities had classes that were only half full then.

When looking at current university distance learning courses while recalling such times, I can almost hear someone unenthusiastically saying that only those who can adapt to the times and circumstances can survive. However, we still live in that era whether we can adapt or not, and I would rather feel the spirit of the times, if one exists, while trying to look at it negatively or positively.