Message from Chancellor and Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Doshisha

Doshisha’s Education and Ryoshinhi

　 Doshisha Eigakko (Academy), initially consisting of just eight students and two teachers, opened in November of Meiji 8 (1875) with a prayer service held at the founder Joseph Hardy Neesima’s house. Neesima’s prayer was powerful and spoke to people’s heart like the prayers of puritans on the American grassland. J.D. Davis, a missionary who empathized with and supported Neesima, wrote “I never shall forget Mr. Neesima’s tender, tearful, earnest prayer in his house that morning as we began the school.”
Having begun with a prayer, Neesima’s educational undertakings have since been continued by the school’s teachers and staff over a century. Now with two universities, four junior and senior high schools, two elementary schools and a kindergarten, the Doshisha has sent many talented people out to society under its founding spirit of “nurturing independent and self-reliant individuals” and educational philosophy of liberalism, Christian principles and internationalism. The name of Doshisha and its prominent history have been renowned as one of the best in the educational circles of Japan.
Having greatly contributed to the formation of modern society in Japan, Doshisha’s strong belief in its education is represented in the inscription on the Ryoshinhi monument, “I earnestly desire that many young people filled with conscience will be raised and sent out by our school.” Ryoshinhi is and has always been the basis of Doshisha’s education. As Neesima repeatedly said “each and every person is precious,” those who are full of compassion for others and always on the side of the weak are the Doshisha people that we aim to nurture and that Neesima loved so deeply.
The present time is called the era of uncertainty, with a mountain of problems ahead. What society demands now are people who take the initiative in making every effort to solve these problems. Developing such individuals is the mission assigned to educational institutions of the 21st century, and the Doshisha as a private school continues to vigorously push forward its educational projects in order to meet that expectation.

 

Chancellor and Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Doshisha
Eiji Hatta