University of Tokyo Disciplines Professor in His 60s Over Code on Graduate Admissions Site That Impeded Access From China
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The University of Tokyo announced that it had disciplined a male professor in his 60s at the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences with a three-day suspension, effective July 29, 2026. According to the university, the professor embedded the characters "6/4 Tiananmen" (referencing the Tiananmen Square crackdown) into the source code of a graduate admissions webpage between 2020 and November 2023. These characters are believed to trigger Chinese government internet censorship systems, potentially impeding access to the page from within China.
The issue first came to light in 2024. If the embedded code functioned as alleged, Chinese prospective students and researchers who needed to view the admissions information may have unintentionally faced restricted access. As of this writing, the university has not published a more detailed public explanation of the disciplinary rationale beyond the fact of the punishment itself.
Current status: The professor's stated intent, whether an appeal has been filed, and the actual scale of any restricted access among prospective students remain unclear as of this writing. This article will be updated as further details emerge.
Editorial Perspective
The Technical Intern Training Program is set to be replaced by the new Employment for Skill Development system in April 2027 (related article), and developments like this one can be seen as part of the institutional design process during that transition. Expanding acceptance also requires resolving practical issues such as broker problems in sending countries and building proper oversight systems among accepting employers. For the new system to work as intended rather than merely on paper, it will be important to continue examining how it actually operates once implemented.