This article is a record of interviews conducted by first-year SPSF students with their seniors who completed graduation theses. For more details, please see here.

Interviewee: Ducnhat Le Minh (Department of Economics, supervised by Management, Year 4)
Interviewer: Ikumi Nagase (Department of Sociology, Year 1)

There are various forms of public sector initiatives from governments and organizations supporting local industries, and to find out what those organizations are doing and what the purposes of these initiatives are, he has conducted research. This topic is relevant today because, although local craft industries are important in supporting Japanese society, their significance is often underestimated. By writing a research paper on this topic, he aims to draw greater attention to Japanese traditional craft industries.

In this research, despite the initial goal, as he continues his research, he gains more findings, and accordingly, the conclusion will evolve. In addition, bringing together information that initially seemed disconnected was another challenge he faced.

Outside of the research paper, he has contributed to the SPSF program by starting the SPSF student-run Instagram page. Since SPSF is still a new program, having started in 2020, there was no concrete platform to showcase its activities or connect with prospective students. By creating social media content, he aimed to share as much information as possible with people who were unfamiliar with the program while providing the community with current SPSF students.

His experiences outside of the research paper are also unique. Through a study abroad program, he spent four months at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. Interestingly, he found that people there are like the Japanese in that they are very open and kind. However, since the Finnish capital is much smaller than a major city like Tokyo and is closer to nature, this environment further broadened Minh-san’s perspective.