★★★★★ 5.0
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Keio University
The year is 1871, and horse-drawn carts are climbing the slopes of Mita district, carrying wooden crates packed with forbidden Western books to a revolutionary new campus. Standing here at 2-chōme-15-45 Mita, you're at the exact spot where Yukichi Fukuzawa moved Japan's very first private university after thirteen years of dodging government suspicion in downtown Edo. That red-brick Gothic facade you're looking at masks something remarkable... Fukuzawa deliberately designed these buildings to look like Western universities, complete with arched windows and bell towers, because he wanted students to FEEL like they were studying in Europe or America before they'd ever left Japan. Inside those heavy wooden doors, the original lecture halls still echo with the philosophy of "jitsugaku" – learning through real experience rather than just memorizing books. Here's what most visitors miss: this entire campus sits on former samurai estates that Fukuzawa bought using money from his bestselling book "An Encouragement of Learning," which outsold every publication in Japan except the Bible. The man who couldn't even read English when he founded his school in 1858 created an institution that now counts four Japanese Prime Ministers among its graduates, all from this very Mita campus where tradition meets rebellion.
Did You Know?
- Keio University is Japan’s oldest private institution of modern higher learning, founded in 1858 by Yukichi Fukuzawa, a progressive thinker who defied the isolationist policies of the time to promote Western studies—originally teaching Dutch before shifting to English, which was revolutionary in Edo-period Japan.
- Keio’s main Mita campus in Tokyo is home to the iconic Mita Enzetsu-kan, Japan’s oldest public speech hall, built in 1875 and still used today for lectures and events—a living monument to the university’s long-standing commitment to open debate and intellectual freedom.
- The name ‘Keio’ comes from the historical era ‘Keiō’ (1865–1868), the period in which the school was renamed, and ‘Gijuku’ means private school; this makes Keio University one of the few Japanese universities whose name is directly tied to a specific historical era, offering families and children a tangible link to Japan’s dramatic transition from feudal society to modernity.