A Window Between Art and Society

I am not an “artist”. I wondered at first whether a “non-artist” like me can be a vice-president of an art university such as Kyoto University of Art and Design, and hesitated to take the position. However, at the urging of numerous people, I eventually decided to accept, because I had a feeling that there is “something that I can understand precisely because I am not an artist”.

Let me begin, then, by explaining the difference, as I see it, between someone who is an artist and someone who is not. For example, there are two restaurants next door to each other; At the one restaurant, the chef cooks a kind of cuisine he wants to cook. Here the menu is determined by the creative impulses that spring from his mind, without regard to the restaurant’s location or the kind of people who pass by.
At the other, the chef cooks food that he believes “everyone wants to eat”. Because he wants as many people as possible to eat his food, he designs the menu after analyzing the location and observing the people who pass by. That may be going too far, but my basic view is that the former chef is an “artist”, while the latter is a “non-artist”.

Of course, in reality, the distinction between them is not nearly so clear-cut. Insofar as both are creating something- that is, cuisine-they might both be considered as artists. This is merely an example to highlight the difference in simple terms.

In any case, of these two basic types, I consider myself as the latter.
I have spent my career analyzing the location and observing the passersby-in other words, gauging the tastes and needs of the era-in order to give rise to new hits and trends.
When I accepted the post of vice-president, I felt that my task was to figure out what new approaches I could bring to Kyoto University of Art and Design without compromising or undermining the school’s rigorously cultivated and maintained character as “the sanctuary for the arts”. And here is what I decided to do: to act as a window from which one can survey both the inside of the restaurant and the world outside.

Nothing nor nobody has to change here. Rather than that, I would not like any change that would compromise the confidence and pride as an art university this institution has built up. My aim is simply to be a window linking the university to the rest of society and to give some thoughts to society’s reaction to and reception of art. Based on this, I have proposed a new theme “Social Art.”
I would like all of you to ve involved in the arts not only during your study at the university but also throughout your lives. For this reason, I aim to make our university the one with the highest rate of employment among all of art universities in Japan.

In saying this, I may be scolded for misconstruing the purpose of an art university, but there is no question that “employment rate” can be an immediate goal for all of us. I would like Kyoto University of Art and Design to blaze its own trail as school that produces many talented professionals.
With the understanding and cooperation of all of you, I intend to do my best to fulfill the heavy responsibilities attending the position of the vice-president of the university.