Doshisha University

Doshisha University (同志社大学, Dōshisha daigaku?), or Dodai (同大, Dōdai?) is a private university in Kyoto, Japan. Approximately 27,000 students take classes on three campuses, in faculties of theology, letters, law, commerce, economics, policy, and engineering. The classes also include graduate programs in American studies, policy and management.

The university maintains many international relations for research and exchange of students with American and French institutions, notably with the Harvard University, Princeton University, Stanford University, the groupe des Écoles Centrales, Sciences-Po Paris and the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris.

Doshisha was founded by an ex-samurai named Niijima Jō. Niijima left feudal Japan in 1864 when going abroad was illegal by Sakoku policy, at the age of twenty-one, and found his way to Boston, Massachusetts, where he attended Phillips Academy, Amherst College, and Andover Theological Seminary under the name Joseph Hardy Neesima. After he returned to a westernizing Japan in 1875, he founded Doshisha English School in Kyoto. Canadian Methodist missionary G. G. Cochran played a role in the establishment of Doshisha University, and his contribution to the improvement of Japan's educational system is considered an important episode in the early history of people of Japan-Canada relations. The institution took its present form in by incorporating a law school, normal school, and women's college.

By 1920, Doshisha was a full-fledged university in the Anglo-American tradition. During World War II, its buildings were given Japanese names and its curriculum was stripped of its pro-Western elements, however the pre-war conditions were restored after Japan's surrender.

Amherst College has maintained close ties with Doshisha since its founding. Amherst and Doshisha are considered sister schools and have had a long running student and faculty exchange program that was interrupted only by the Second World War. Additionally, Doshisha collaborates with a consortium of prestigious American liberal arts colleges (including Amherst) to host the Associated Kyoto Program, an 8-month long study abroad program offered every year to students of American colleges.