Ikuko Muroga

Sophia University

The Educational Ideals of Sophia University Based on Christian principles of education, Sophia University attests to the four-hundred-year-old interest of the Jesuit Order in Japan. Its aim is to prepare men and women coming from different countries to recognize in the different cultural traditions of the world the fundamental unity of the human race and to work for the concrete achievement of that unity. The roots of the university go back to 1549, when St. Francis Xavier, a Jesuit, landed in Kagoshima with the hope of starting a Catholic university which would introduce Western culture to Japan. In 1908, nearly 360 years later, three members of the Society of Jesus－the German Father Joseph Dahlmann, the French Father Henri Boucher, and the English Father James Rockliff－came to Japan with the mission of fulfilling St. Francis Xavier's aspiration. As a result of their efforts, Sophia University was established in 1913, when the Japanese Ministry of Education gave the Jesuits permission to found a new educational institution under the Japanese name of Jōchi Gakuin. Sixteen students enrolled in the first class. From this modest beginning Sophia University has grown to be one of the foremost of Japan's private universities with a student body of over 12,000 undergraduate and graduate students and a teaching staff of more than one thousand. In the radition of the international character of Sophia's founders, the faculty members represent twenty different nationalities; they are committed to conveying to the next generation through their scholarship and teaching both humankind's cultural and intellectual heritage and a concern for the problems facing the world today.