"To me, all 229 graduates here are a part of the Toyota Family." Chairman Akio Toyoda attended the graduation ceremony as their "father." Graduating students express their gratitude and shed tears in this special report.
On February 17, 2025, the Toyota Technical Skills Academy held its graduation ceremony while a cool breeze blew beneath a clear blue sky. At the auditorium, 229 graduates put their school days behind them as their parental guardians and junior students celebrated.
Chairman Akio Toyoda attended the graduation again this year and asked the graduates, “What did you learn here? Was it not the kindness to care for someone other than yourself, and gratitude to the family that has raised you until now?”
With graduation before them, the students were overcome with strong feelings about their families. Chairman Toyoda shared his message to the graduates, who “To me, all 229 of the graduates here are a part of the Toyota family,” he said. Later he added, “I hope you will carry this feeling with you always.”
Read Chairman Toyoda’s full speech.
Until this year, the student council president has given the speech on behalf of graduates, but this year the speaker was selected from applicants responding to an open call. Chosen for the task was Yuito Sakai, who decided to enroll at the Academy out of a desire to be more independent and reduce the burden on his parents. Looking back on the past three years and the many times he wanted to give up but persevered, he said, “To my father and mother, please do not worry about me anymore.” As he spoke, his expression showed his readiness to leave school and take flight.
This week’s video also covers life at the Academy in the days leading up to graduation, all the way to the students moving out of the dormitories the day following the ceremony.
See the tears and smiles revealing the deep feelings welling up in 229 graduates in this week’s episode.
Entering School Together, Graduating Together
The Toyota Technical Skills Academy graduation ceremony allots about thirty minutes for graduates to express their gratitude to their families. In fact, all of the graduates wrote letters to their families before the ceremony.
Here, we’ll peek into some of the student stories that couldn’t fit into the video program.
We interviewed a graduate who enthused, “I’ll be at the same workplace as Oyaji Kawai” before reuniting with his family.
Taiga Hirose
My family lives in Indonesia and I can’t see them often, only once a year or so. I always intend to tell them how grateful I am when I see them, but I get embarrassed and part of me has trouble saying it.
Today, my family is here, so just like our respected Chairman Toyoda said, at the Academy we have learned “kindness to consider those other than yourself, and gratitude to the family that has raised you until now,” so I realized that I have to put my feelings into words and communicate them.
With the long-awaited reunions with family, the venue is bubbling with excitement. In one corner, there is a celebratory group.
It is a gathering of baseball team members. At their center are Kazuyoshi Higashimoto and Yoshiki Matsui, holding mysterious boxes.
Inside are gifts of cups decorated with student portraits for coach Yuki Futaba and advisor Yusuke Hisano. Higashimoto explains with a smile, “Once we graduate and leave this place, we want them to remember us by using these.”
Yusuke Hisano (Baseball Team Advisor)
I had no experience teaching, so I was uneasy about becoming an instructor. But I am also a graduate of this Academy, so there were a lot of things I felt I could understand, and I decided to put the trainees first in all out interactions.
I’ve been with these graduates since they enrolled, so I do feel sad and deeply moved.
I became an instructor three years ago, and this year I’ll return to my former workplace. We entered together and we’ll graduate together. I’ll never forget these three years.
Eleven Students Who Spent Every Waking Moment Together
The number of female graduates in the high school course is 11 out of 105 total students. These women seemed to have some reflections unique to this environment.
Koharu Nakajima
In this environment, nobody gave us special treatment just because we’re girls, and we all had to work hard together. Sometimes it was hard because of the value differences between men and women.
But since there were so few female students, we all became very close... There were a lot of things I was able to overcome because I had my female friends.
Nakajima and the other high school course girls were all wearing cute decorations around their necks.
They were a surprise gift made by Aoi Kudo’s mother, Satoko.
Satoko Kudo
The eleven girls were together twenty-four hours a day in the dorm and at school, every waking moment. They spent more time with each other than any parent.
I made the decorations to express my gratitude for their being so close and at each other’s sides for the past three years.
The girls received the surprise with bright smiles.
On this day, the letter graduate Aoi wrote was all about the message, “I want to give back to my parents.” Moved by the maturity in her daughter’s words, Satoko and her husband Koichi both shed tears.
Attending the Graduation Ceremony as a Father
After the ceremony, everyone posed for a group picture. Chairman Toyoda quipped, “You can go back to being ordinary children now,” and the faces of the graduates showed relief at being released from the tense atmosphere. Chairman Toyoda went on to say, “I love the moment when they go back to being ordinary teenagers.”
Yuta Tomikawa asked why the chairman continues to attend the graduation ceremony every year. His reply? “Because I’m their father.”
When Tomikawa told him, “Well, since you’re their father, congratulations,” and he smiled as he replied, “Thank you very much.”
