What we know: photo was taken during the 1988 Commencement ceremony. The script is in Kangi and we think it says “finished” or “complete” in Japanese.
What we’d like to know: Names and graduation years of the students? Is the script translation correct?
Danny McGrath
Hi, This is Danny McGrath, Grinnell Class of ’86. I had the great privilege to do my junior year abroad on the Japan Study program at Waseda University during which time I studied the Japanese language intensively.
I can tell you that the the first two kanji characters from the top read as “de-ki” and the third is the hiragana character “ta”. Put them together and they read as “dekita” which means “I did it” which presumably in this context refers to the student doing all the work to reach graduation from college.