Usually students in Japan wear suits, dresses, or traditional women's hakama kimonos for their graduation ceremony, but Kyoto University has gone its own way, and this path cannot but be admired. After all, universities have always, since ancient times, been centers of creative thinking - so why not give graduates the opportunity to express themselves after graduation?
"The university has a long tradition of being kind of anti-authoritarian. So I'm guessing the roots go back quite a long time, though the university officially doesn't condone it," says David Hajime Kornhauser, director on global communications of Kyoto University, with whom Bored Panda got in touch. "I didn't wear a gown at my graduation in America. So for me, it's a rather natural thing, actually. And in other words, it's kind of a personal preference, do people want to be sort of traditional or are they just doing something to express themselves in some other way or not?"
"It seems that for a long time, students at this university have chosen to just be whatever they want to be. But it's actually not a large number of people. I mean, it's mainly, I would say, it isn't even 10%. And they stand out because they try to sit up front. So it looks like there's a lot of people doing it, but actually, I think, it's probably only just the people right at the front, and then the vast majority of the graduates are more or less traditional," says David.
"Since the school does have a strong anti-authoritarian tradition, which manifests itself in many other ways, there are other areas where the university is kind of known as being anti-authoritarian. Every year around this time of the year, in November, there's a big festival, and a group of students try to climb up the building, and the university hates that, tries to prevent that from happening."
"But this is nothing compared to the '70s, when the students occupied the building, and there were riot police and water cannons, just huge turmoil and fires burning and all sorts of things like that. There were students all along the top of the roof there, with hard hats on and in riot shields. So you know, if you go back into the past 50 years, you'll find that things were much more, well, colorful than they are now," David reminisces.
"There are some rather interesting novels written about the university. And some of these had been made into popular animated series and also movies about the culture of the student environment. So it's more kind of an oral tradition sort of thing, that some students somehow sort of mysteriously appear in costume or that they mysteriously decorate the statue of a former president, which is another sort of traditional thing that happens. And that all of these things are not condoned. All of these things are not looked well upon by the authorities. But then, that's part of the tradition of the school," says David Hajime Kornhauser.
"The costume tradition definitely goes back to the early '70s, when there were a lot of student protests going on just in general. I mean, all over the world, essentially. Partly Vietnam War inspired, partly also in the case of Japan. There was a renegotiation going on in the United States about the mutual defense treaty. And it was very popular among students to be protesting against that. So it's just a combination of things, sort of just this feeling like everybody else is protesting with protest."
"I see the dressing up in the graduation as being maybe not watered down, but the current manifestation of that sort of spirit of being against the authority," David supposes.
"I am convinced that the opportunity given to students to express themselves, to demonstrate their individuality and fantasy to others, is not only a phenomenon of self-presentation of the graduate's personality, but contributes to the formation of a system for managing public attention, as well as promoting the university's unique brand on the educational services market as an educational institution that encourages manifestations of exclusivity, originality of thinking and creativity among students,” says Yanislava Goncharenko, CMO at the Odessa National Economic University, who was also asked by Bored Panda to comment on this tradition of her Japanese colleagues.
"Such a pedagogical approach is undoubtedly very successful, both in terms of educating students as bright and original personalities, and in terms of creating a non-standard image of the university, whose traditions the whole world knows about," says Yanislava Goncharenko.
