University of Tokyo, Japan

The University of Tokyo was established in 1877 as the first national university in Japan. It offers courses in essentially all academic disciplines at both undergraduate and graduate levels and provides research facilities for these disciplines. The university aims to provide its students with opportunities for intellectual development as well as for the acquisition of professional knowledge and skills. The university has a faculty of approximately 2,800 professors, associate professors, and lecturers, and a total student enrollment of about 28,000. As of 2003, approximately 2,100 international students, and 2,200 foreign researchers come annually to the university for short and extended visits. The university is known for the excellence of its faculty and students; many of its graduates are and have always been leaders in the government, in business, and in the academic world.

The university organization consists of the College of Arts and Sciences, nine faculties, and 15 graduate schools. The nine faculties are Law, Medicine, Engineering, Letters, Science, Agriculture, Economics, Education, and Pharmaceutical Sciences. The traditional eleven graduate schools are Law and Politics, Medicine, Engineering, Humanities and Sociology, Science, Agricultural and Life Sciences, Economics, Arts and Sciences, Education, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Mathematical Sciences. In the past decade the University saw the establishment of four new pioneering graduate schools: Frontier Sciences, Interdisciplinary Information Studies, Information Science and Technology, and Public Policy.

The university operates the following eleven institutes: The Institute of Medical Science, the Earthquake Research Institute, the Institute of Oriental Culture, the Institute of Social Science, the Institute of Industrial Science, the Historiographical Institute, the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, the Institute for Solid State Physics, the Ocean Research Institute, and Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology.

The university of Tokyo is composed of three campuses: Hongo, Komaba, and Kashiwa. In addition, the university of Tokyo facilities are situated in other parts of both Tokyo and the nation. The main campus of the University is located in Hongo, Bunkyoku, Tokyo; it occupies about 56 hectares of the former Kaga Yashiki, the Tokyo estate of a major feudal lord. Parts of the seventeenth century landscaping of the original estate have been preserved and provide greenery and open space, much needed in an otherwise crowded campus. The celebrated Akamon, or Red Gate, which graces the campus, was a special gate on the Kaga estate and dates back to 1827. It has been designated as an “Important Cultural Property” by the Japanese government. Most of the faculties, graduate schools and research institutes of the university are located on the Hongo campus.

The Komaba campus, located in the Komaba section of Meguro-ku, Tokyo, occupies an area of about 35 hectares. Facilities such as the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences, the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, and the Institute of Industrial Science stand on this campus.

The Kashiwa campus, the newest of the three, is located in Kashiwa City, Chiba Prefecture, a suburb of Tokyo. Located on this approximately 24-hectare campus are the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, and the Institute for Solid State Physics, etc. The University of Tokyo in the 21st century is being built up on the tight links among these three campuses.

Having entered the 21st century, the University of Tokyo is facing its most decisive turning point since its founding, leading to great leaps, as various universities around the world are advancing reform. It is both the goal and task of the University of Tokyo to raise its autonomous management qualitatively, to aim for further advancements in education and research activities, to expand exchanges with the world—particularly with Asia, to create diverse links with society, and to cultivate human talent that can contribute to the peace and welfare of humanity.

For further information visit:
http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index_e.html