Ritsumeikan Anniversary Site

Greeting from the Chairperson and the Chancellor

Ritsumeikan traces its history back to 1869 when Prince Saionji Kinmochi, a major politician and cosmopolitan of early modern Japan, founded a private academy called Ritsumeikan. Carrying on the spirit of liberalism and internationalism championed by Prince Saionji, Kojuro Nakagawa founded the predecessor to Ritsumeikan University, the Kyoto Hosei School, in 1900. Ritsumeikan would go on to overcome many hardships under its founding spirit of "Freedom and Innovation" and its educational philosophy of "Peace and Democracy," and it has since evolved into a comprehensive private academy with a highly diverse student body of approximately 50,000 students across two universities, four affiliated junior and senior high schools, and one affiliated primary school.

To realize the ideal society of the future, we formulated the R2030 Challenge Design to serve as our vision, and we are working to elaborate upon this plan, under which Ritsumeikan University aims to become a next-generation research university that creates new value for coexisting with society and a university that creates innovation and produces emerging talent, and the R2030 Academy aims to become a next-generation inquiry-based learning academy.

In 2025, which marks the 155th anniversary of the founding of Ritsumeikan and the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Academy, we must embody the spirit of the R2030 Challenge Design and use this as the guiding principle for ushering the world into a new era. Based on the concept of “Ritsumeikan for Social Impact,” which depicts what shape the society of the future should take and expresses our determination to become an academy that can truly contribute to the world, we will implement a wide range of projects to solve the issues facing society.

At Ritsumeikan University, on the occasion of the relocation of the College and Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering and the College and Graduate School of Image Arts and Sciences to Osaka Ibaraki Campus, we will further promote open innovation and demonstrate new kinds of social co-creation. At Kinugasa Campus, we are deliberating and planning the establishment of the College of Arts and Design and the Graduate School of Science in Arts and Design in 2026. This new college and graduate school will transcend the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences based on the pursuit of a new kind of design studies and the technology and sensibility of art. At Biwako-Kusatsu Campus, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, we have established the Ritsumeikan University Earth & Space Exploration Center (ESEC), the first-ever institute in Japan that aims to expand the humanosphere into outer space, and we are pursuing cutting-edge research to this end. Furthermore, we will implement various projects to realize our goal of becoming a "next-generation research university" by engaging in intellectual collaboration that only a comprehensive university can achieve, such as pioneering new research areas in the field of well-being and creating startups for the future.

Meanwhile, with the opening of the College of Sustainability and Tourism, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) has declared its "second inception" under the leadership of a new president and has undertaken reforms to both education and research. Going forward, it will strengthen partnerships with science and engineering universities and strive to develop global human resources equipped with an interdisciplinary knowledge of science and the humanities. Based on its vision of producing “graduates who possess the power to change the world,” APU is accelerating its efforts to build a Global Learning Community.

The affiliated schools will work to deepen inquiry-based learning at each school and further enhance integrated primary, secondary, upper secondary, tertiary, and post-graduate education that harnesses Ritsumeikan’s potential as a comprehensive academy. As a leader in primary and secondary education in Japan, Ritsumeikan will develop human resources who can undertake the challenge of solving myriad social issues.

Under the banner of Ritsumeikan for Social Impact, at this major milestone, the Ritsumeikan Academy will pave the way to the society of the future by creating new value and solving global issues. We hope you will look forward to Ritsumeikan's ambitious endeavors that embody the key concept of our mid-term plan: “Challenge your mind. Change our Future”