On June 8 last year, the presidents of all 86 national universities received a "notice" from the minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology instructing them to prepare plans for reorganizing their departments of education, the humanities and social sciences, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. They are to do this by giving due consideration to the decrease in the number of 18-year-olds, a continued demand for human resources, the need to maintain the level of education and research and the roles the national universities have to play, and to endeavor positively to abolish those departments or to shift them to such fields that are facing high demand from society.
A mere mention of abolishing or shifting the humanities and social sciences departments at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels may lead many to think immediately of eliminating their literature department.
To me, though, such thinking is based on a misconception about the true value and usefulness of the humanities and social sciences, which is entertained by those who assert that while those who majored in law, economics and business administration offer useful skills, graduates from the department of literature are useless.