Tohoku Gakuin University

Tohoku Gakuin University is a private institution in Sendai, Tohoku, Japan.

Founded in 1886 by the German Reformed Church, the university has Christian roots but is open to students of all beliefs and backgrounds. It is the largest private university in the Took and Hokkaido area.

Undergraduate teaching at the institution is organised into six faculties: economics, business administration, law, engineering, liberal arts and literature. The same subject areas are taught at the university’s graduate school, excluding liberal arts.

More than 11,100 undergraduates and 117 graduate students were enrolled at Tohoku Gakuin as of 2019, alongside 309 full-time faculty members.

Tohoku Gakuin operates across three campuses: Tsuchitoi Campus in Sendai, Tagajo Campus in Tagajo, and Izumi Campus, also in Sendai.

Sendai is the capital city of Miyagi region and the second largest city north of Tokyo, home to 1.09 million people. Known as the “city of trees”, Sendai is surrounded by forests and picturesque mountains. Tokyo is 350km south – but only 90 minutes on the Bullet Train.

On campus, students are encouraged to take part in extracurricular interest groups, of which there are around 200. Sports clubs range from sumo to golf to skiing, and social clubs cover a wide range of other interests, from choirs to magic arts.

The university is international facing, and runs study abroad programmes with partner institutions in the US, France, Germany, Australia, Thailand, Canada and the UK, to name a few.

On-site facilities include three libraries and 13 research institutions which are said to hold a combined total of 122 million volumes of work.

The university has produced a number of famous alumni, including the Japanese science fiction author Shunrō Oshikawa and the actress Kyōka Suzuki.