Why
Why take the challenge in English?
From a society of credentials, to a society of learning.
And to an age in which you choose the language of your learning.
The language of your learning is yours to choose.
Learning that thinks things through in Japanese — your mother tongue — has a depth of thought that only the mother tongue can reach. Learning that touches the world directly in English has a breadth of world that only English can open.
Neither stands above the other. Depth and breadth — this is not a ranking, but a choice of character: a question of what you, now, are seeking.
We at Shibuya Web3 University also run a path of learning deeply in Japanese. And this programme is the path for those who choose to take the challenge in English. What this page speaks of is what lies beyond that choice — and why we prepared this path.
There is a door that opens only to those who choose English.
Search in English, and the amount of information within your reach changes. The primary sources of the world's management thinking — the newest research, the new theories, the debates of the world's leaders — are born first in English, and go on accumulating in English. Without waiting for someone's summary or someone's translation, you go to the original and judge for yourself. That circuit opens, inside you.
Reading academic papers the way you read a newspaper. Touching the world's debate without time-lag. Writing through, in English, the thinking you did in English. — The wall is real. We have no intention of making light of how hard it is to take on a master's in a language that is not your own. But for every measure of that hardness, there is a world that opens. This is the path for those whose eyes turn towards it.
And one more thing. Before any reasoning — "I want to try this in English." If that feeling is there, it is enough, on its own.
A challenge needs no justification. The voice that says you want to try is, in itself, your answer.
The people who wanted the challenge were always there. The path was not.
Japanese business leaders who want to take on world-standard learning in English — they have always been around us. But many of them came to a stop before the challenge began. The reason was not a shortage of will, or of ability. It was that no one had handed them the foundation, and the support alongside, for learning all the way through in a language not their own.
The conventions of referencing. The habit of reading academic papers. The form of writing to a world standard. This foundation — taken for granted in the academic world — is one that Japanese business professionals have carried their careers forward without ever having the chance to acquire. Without the foundation, the challenge ends at the wall. With the foundation, the same wall becomes a wall that can be crossed.
So we built this path. On a British university and a British progression route: a path where the foundation is trained in Japanese, and where support alongside you is built in for everyone. To design the road by which the voice that wants the challenge arrives at completion — that is why Shibuya Web3 University Co., Ltd. provides this programme. That is our Why.
To erase the reason called "there is no path" from in front of everyone who wants the challenge.
An MBA is a process: thinking, writing and questioning in the same language as the world.
We do not think of the MBA as a title. It is a process of answering, again and again, questions set to a world standard, with everything your experience and intellect can bring.
Reading in English. Thinking in English. Building your own argument by the conventions of referencing. And at the last, answering a question of your own choosing with a single dissertation. What remains in the person who has run this process through is not only the certificate. The habit of going directly to the world's knowledge. The intellectual stamina to stand in the same language as the world. And your own boundary line, redrawn.
At the very end, the degree passes into your hands — as proof, carried across the world, that you ran this process through.
"I want to try." That voice is where everything begins.
You do not need to explain neatly why you would take the challenge in English. If the voice that says "I want to try" is already in you, then that is your Why.
We are waiting, with the road designed, for that voice to arrive at completion. Tell us about the reality you want to change — and about that spirit of challenge.
I stand at the entrance to this path, as its Director.
Founder & Director
Hajime Kitamura
(hajimex)
・Shibuya Web3 University Co., Ltd. President and CEO
・Co-founder of Shibuya Web3 University