Wandering Traveler of Knowledge - Ryu Mitsuse and the Situation of Higher Education in Postwar Japan (1950s-1960s)

Wandering Traveler of Knowledge - Ryu Mitsuse and the Situation of Higher Education in Postwar Japan (1950s-1960s)

In the 1950s and 1960s, Japan was in the midst of postwar reconstruction and rapid economic growth, and the education system was in the process of being reorganized. Ryu Mitsuse grew up in Tokyo, and at the end of the war, he was evacuated to Maesawa-cho, Iwate Prefecture. Although he later spoke of the area as his hometown, he stayed there for only a few years. After demobilization, he bounced around from university to university, from Toyo University, Meiji University, and Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and finally majored in zoology at the Faculty of Agriculture, Tokyo University of Education, but then switched to the philosophy department and dropped out. He called himself a "university-lessoner," symbolizing the anguish of postwar students whose obsession with learning intersected with a sense of discomfort with the system. At the time, there was a growing trend in Japanese society for students to believe that stable employment was the key to success, bu
t Mitsuse was not content with the system and continued to search for her own path as a wanderer of knowledge. He eventually became a teacher at an all-girls school, met Takumi Shibano, and joined "Space Dust," where his itinerant career finally came to fruition in the expressive space of science fiction. The free spirit that transcended the boundaries of the university system was the true legacy Mitsuse left behind for Japanese science fiction.