GK had the chance to sit down with Professor Yasuki Ishizaki, the president of Gunma University, to talk about Japan’s education system, revitalization in the area, and the recent achievements at the university.
What is it that makes Japan stand out? What are the strengths of the Japanese education system?
Firstly, I think that the Japanese education system can provide high-quality, basic education to a large pool of students. We have a standardized curriculum for all schools, which allows them to gain an education of a high standard, regardless of geographic location or financial circumstance.
Also, we have an ‘all-round’ educational vision, which emphasizes learning about a wide variety of skills, not only within the academic field. This attitude leads to a safe, secure society within Japan. Regarding teachers, the training system is very robust, allowing teachers to focus on a wide variety of specialist subjects. Overall, providing a high level of education allows for a high level of society in Japan.
As an overall institution, how is Gunma University working to bring regional revitalization to the prefecture?
We celebrated our 105th anniversary last year, and to commemorate this we set up a new initiative to create new value. This is particularly focused on health and food science, given that Gunma Prefecture has a rich history of farming and agriculture. With our current expertise, we hope to work on food engineering and medicine topics more in the future.
Some specific examples include creating high added-value food processing technology, as well as improving food packaging to help lessen its environmental impact. We are currently working on developing biodegradable plastics to help in this regard.
As an entire institution, what are some of your proudest recent research achievements?
Professor Hatada has conducted extensive research in the genome field, looking at potential mutations in human DNA that can lead to future diseases. The ‘epi-genetics’ field; studying how environmental factors can affect your genes, is currently an exciting, promising field. Finding influencing factors from the diet, which also ties to our food science department, is one of our key research fields at the moment.
Furthermore, Professor Miyuki Sato has been studying the genome of mitochondria in human cells. It has been proven that this genome is only inherited from the mother’s side, however, the mechanism under which this occurs has yet to be established.
