Waseda Guardian’s room(student assembly hall)

   On September 15th, I visited the English Newspaper Club of Waseda University also known as the Waseda Guardian. I met up with the editor in chief, Ayuko Kiyoshi and with one of the members of the editorial department, Kyosuke Higuchi in the afternoon. After we ate curry near the campus and exchanged ideas, they guided me to one of the rooms in the student assembly hall.
   Next, I would like to point out two things I felt after I exchanged with the two members of the Waseda Guardian.

   The main object in publishing the English Newspaper is for the exchange of international culture. The students who are involved are from various countries, therefore, I think it is very important to publish the newspapers in English. Since the establishment of 1936, Waseda Guardian has continued the publication with the desire of awakening the international public opinion by having Japanese students express their opinions in English. However, the topics that are brought up are not unified because a specific meaning of existence hasn’t been recognized. They also seem to have problem of only having Japanese students stay in the club. But if you actually look at the newspaper, the overall quality is fairly high and the topics are freely chosen since the meaning of existence are not restricted. Nevertheless, I was most surprised at the high proficiency of the interview. They used the name value of Waseda and interviewed scholars, television stars, sport athletes, and other genre of people and wrote articles on them.

   The high proficiency of the interviews is based on the manuals. The Waseda Guardian provides a manual that carefully explains everything from the way they welcome new members, the production process, how to plan out a project, the way to interview, and how to write a thank you letter. Since the format is well built, each individual can plan things the way they want and still have the vector pointed the same direction systematically. Our club also consists a secretariat based on students and it is important to organize things little by little. I think by doing this, the quality of the complete newspaper will improve. It might also be interesting to broaden out and interview celebrities in the Kansai area since there are many famous scholars in Kansai.

   Even though my visit was short, I was able to gain a lot of things from this. I enjoyed talking with the two people who guided me because they knew a variety of facts about the media, literature, and philosophy. The other members I met at the clubroom were vulgar at times but they were overfilled with vigor. It seemed like they had a line drawn between socializing and working. I hope we can deepen our exchanges with them more in the future.