The Power to Imagine What Lies Beyond the "Sea"

We now obtain all kinds of words, images, and videos from our smartphone screens to such an extent that familiar phrases like a "sea of information" can no longer fully describe it. The infinite world that flows from nowhere and appears instantly before our eyes through social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and Snapchat feels as if everything is real, yet everything is also like a dream. As digital natives, you likely swim through this "sea" with ease every day.

However, I would like you to take a moment here to imagine the real "sea" once again. Try to envision the sense of physical expansion that continues beyond the palm of your hand holding your smartphone, outside your room, from your home to the town, the city, past the prefectural borders, through the coastline at the edge of Japan, and across the ocean. Remember that there are tangible people and things existing beyond that sea, and moreover, that they are constantly active, changing, moving, and interacting.

My specialty is American theater culture and theater history. The act of performing or watching a play is an experience shared at a fixed time and place, and theater is an art form fixed in a specific space-time.

At the same time, however, theater also travels. First, I imagined how theater crossed by ship from England to the New World during the colonial period of the 17th century. I researched transatlantic cultural negotiations, looking at how the theater introduced in this way was received and how it transformed into a unique form adapted to American conditions. Next, wondering about the other ocean, I am now considering the theme of how American theater expanded imperialistically into the Pacific world. Furthermore, I am focusing on what kind of theater crossed the sea from the opposite shore of Japan toward America, and what kind of contact and negotiation occurred between Japanese and American theater.

Just as words, images, and videos travel through the sea of information, people and things also move across the real sea. Nations and citizens, politics and economics, history and culture, thought and religion—nothing stays in one place, and their values are not absolute but fluid and ambiguous.

Therefore, I hope that you will confront the "sea of information" and share your own messages while remaining conscious of the fact that beyond the information you hold, across the real sea, there are living people whose lives are unfolding in different languages, ethnicities, and cultures. Once you enter university, please take various classes and talk to many professors. In addition to studying your major, try attending classes in the humanities or natural sciences that interest you even slightly. This is because a broad foundation of knowledge and a deep education will be a great help in imagining what lies beyond the "sea."

(Published: April 2026)