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The story
Cosmetic surgeon and clinic director Katsuya Takasu (81) shared his views on medical school prestige rankings on X. Comparing medical school — which he himself graduated from — to “a cram school for earning eligibility to sit the national medical licensing exam” and “basically a driving school,” he bluntly dismissed doctors who brag about their alma mater’s ranking as “idiots.” On the 5channel Geinou/Sports News+ (Geisoku) board, the thread drew plenty of support for the remark, but also pushback — comments like “university quality still matters if you’re aiming for a research career” and “there’s a real difference between national and private universities” — leaving posters split on whether academic pedigree or hands-on experience should matter more.
Sept 8 (Tue), 7:02 PM
Katsuya Takasu (81), director of the cosmetic surgery clinic “Takasu Clinic,” updated his X (formerly Twitter) account by September 8 with his views on medical school prestige rankings.
Takasu, himself a graduate of Showa University School of Medicine, argued: “The truth about university medical schools is that they’re just cram schools for obtaining eligibility to take the national medical licensing exam. In other words, they’re nothing more than driving schools for getting a driver’s license. Any driver who brags about the ranking of the driving school they graduated from is an idiot.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Yeah, pretty much true — unless you're going into research.
Honestly I'd rather the really smart ones skip the grubby business of clinical practice and go into research instead.
Only Keio, Jichi Medical, and UOEH [University of Occupational and Environmental Health] carried any real prestige.
Even Nippon Medical, Juntendo, and Jikei got looked down on.
Right
Anything outside those three had entrance scores around 40 [roughly bottom-third nationally].
Hold on, out around Mishima in eastern Shizuoka,
for people in Izu,
Juntendo Hospital is basically the only place they can turn to for a serious illness.
If Juntendo's full,
they end up admitted to some hospital over in Fuji city or elsewhere entirely.
That's how important that hospital is to the people of Mishima and Izu.
You clearly don't know your facts.
Jichi Medical University was founded in the early 1970s — it didn't even exist yet when Takasu was in high school.
Sounds like something out of 'The White Tower' [a famous Japanese novel/drama about medical hierarchy and ambition].
But even within the same family of doctors, if everyone else went to Todai or Keio, the one who went to some middling private medical school would probably get looked down on hard.
Clinical work and research go together, though.
Doctors see patients clinically while also doing their own research and writing papers.
I think clinical practice and research call for different skill sets.
where as a condition for some university pulling its department out,
there's a plan to build a disaster-preparedness hospital?
Juntendo rode Shizuoka Prefecture's policy well —
raking in public subsidies for regional healthcare, emergency medicine, perinatal care, and disaster response,
and it's been steadily buying up the hot-spring inns around it.
It started out as a run-down municipal hospital in Izu-Nagaoka town, and now it's turned into a real 'straw millionaire' story (a Japanese folktale about trading up from nothing to riches).
No, that's not it.
The point is to compete on your work, not your academic pedigree.
It's not even about bragging — what you do after graduating matters more.
Would you actually respect some Todai grad who's just been a shut-in ever since?
Anyone still going on about their alma mater is just a failure who can't let it go.
Agreed!
What you learn from hands-on experience is far more valuable than what you learn at university.
If someone with no track record said the same thing, they'd get torn apart.
He can say it because he's already successful.
That's exactly the point — what you achieve after graduating matters more than your alma mater's entrance score.
Agreed!
But medicine splits into clinical and research tracks — clinical work feels blue-collar,
while research feels more like real scholarship.
the argument is that learning from hands-on experience is useful,
while what you learn at university isn't.
Everyone can relate to that, right?
The stuff you learned in class never actually turned out useful, did it?
If you jump straight into 'hands-on experience' and use patients as practice dummies to sharpen your skills,
that's a real problem for the patients.
The cutting specialists would
Director Takasu says the surgeon shortage could be solved by splitting the role into 'cutting specialists' and 'treatment doctors.'
Cutting specialists would be hired based on manual dexterity, while treatment plans would be handled by people who compete on brainpower.
He said that would fix the problem.
I'm not so sure about that.
It might be better for the person setting the treatment plan to also know the limits of their own hands-on skill.
Wouldn't even the dexterous ones want to go where it's easier and pays better?
Background and Key Points of the Debate
Katsuya Takasu is a graduate of Showa University School of Medicine, and despite being a private-school graduate himself, he’s built a career as a leading figure in cosmetic surgery. Debate over medical school prestige rankings is a perennial hot topic in Japan — fueled by the high tuition at private medical schools and long-standing suspicion of “donation-based backdoor admissions” — and this latest remark is just the newest chapter in that ongoing argument. In the thread, many voices sided with Takasu’s claim that post-graduation achievement matters more than which university you attended, but others pushed back, pointing out that clinical and research careers demand different skill sets — arguments like “research really does require an elite academic background” and “there’s a real difference in upbringing between national/public and private school grads.” The result is a picture more nuanced than a simple “credentials don’t matter” takeaway. The thread also dug into finer institutional details not obvious from the article alone — fact-checking exactly when Jichi Medical University was founded, and tracing how Juntendo University expanded into a regional healthcare hub across Shizuoka’s Mishima and Izu areas — showing the discussion went beyond pure gut reactions.
*This article was compiled by excerpting and summarizing the 5channel (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “Director Takasu Shares His Views on the Medical School Prestige Issue, Bluntly Telling Pedigree-Braggers ‘That’s Idiotic’.”
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