May 19 is Ritsumeikan's Foundation Day.

Ritsumeikan traces its history back to 1869 when Prince Kinmochi Saionji, a major politician and cosmopolitan of early modern Japan, founded a private academy called Ritsumeikan on the grounds of the Kyoto Imperial Palace when he was only 20 years old. The following year, the Kyoto representative for the Grand Council of State, who deemed students engaging in free discussion as dangerous, issued an injunction ordering the academy to close. However, carrying on Prince Saionji’s founding spirit, Kojuro Nakagawa, who had served as the prince’s secretary, established the Kyoto Hosei School on the banks of the Kamo River in 1900. Grounded in the ideals of freedom and open to ordinary citizens, it was a private evening school for workers. In 1913, with the full approval of Saionji, the Kyoto Hosei School inherited the name of “Ritsumeikan,” which we have carried on to the present day.

In 2025, we celebrated the 155th anniversary of the founding of Ritsumeikan and the 125th anniversary of the founding of the academy. Revisiting our founding spirit, we continue to explore the roles that the university and its schools should fulfill, while steadily advancing toward the further enhancement of education and research. Then, on April 1, 2026, we enacted a new version of the Ritsumeikan Charter to share the ideals and mission of the Academy far and wide. With these revisions, we have articulated a clear commitment to realizing our goal of becoming a next-generation research university and a next-generation inquiry-driven academy as well as our stance of striving for institutional development that respects diverse backgrounds and values. The 2026 academic year marks the beginning of the R2030 Academy Vision Second Half Plan, and by pursuing initiatives that draw on the distinctive features of each campus, the contours of the academy that we aspire to become are steadily taking shape.

At Kinugasa Campus, we opened the College of Arts and Design and Graduate School of Science in Arts and Design in April 2026. In the context of advances in digital information technology, the college and graduate school aim to generate ideas that will contribute to the formation of richer cultural and lived worlds across a diverse array of societies and organizations, centered on the exploration of new approaches to design studies as well as the technology and sensibility of art. This year, we will hold the second installment of the Kinugasa Art Village Festival, which is one of pillars of the Kinugasa Redesign Project that was launched in AY2025. By collaborating with local cultural institutions such as shrines, temples, and museums, we will communicate the appeal of Kyoto and the Kinugasa area to the world through art-based community development that brings students and the local community together.

At Biwako-Kusatsu Campus, led by the Earth & Space Exploration Center (ESEC), we are pursuing advanced research focused on areas such as lunar exploration and development and engaging in technological development that bridges the fields of science, engineering, and management. We have also announced our plan to establish the new Graduate School of Frontier Exploration in Earth and Space, which is scheduled to open in April 2028. In addition, the Grassroots Innovation Center (GIC) and the Cross-verse Innovation Commons (CVIC), both of which opened in July 2025, are providing venues where students, researchers, companies, and the local community can work together to find solutions to social issues. They are also working to create university-based startups and implement practical applications by way of industry-university collaboration. As new hubs for realizing the next-generation research university concept, they will integrate research, education, and social collaboration to advance the co-creation of knowledge and its implementation in the real world.

At the Osaka Ibaraki Campus, diverse forms of co-creation have emerged around Building H, which opened in April 2024. Centered on the semi-outdoor plaza called Try Square, the campus, which features spaces for interaction that are open to the local community, encourages the creation of new connections. At Co-Creation Hub with Ritsumeikan, industry-government-university collaborative research projects are underway, while advanced research facilities such as SP Lab and SP Lab X, an XR research hub, have been brought together to promote the creation of value in a cross-disciplinary manner. The campus has also received high acclaim for its design based on the Socially Connected Campus concept, and it was awarded a Good Design Award in 2025. As a platform for demonstration projects and value creation aimed at solving social issues, the campus is actively undertaking initiatives to cultivate emergent talent and promote social co-creation.

Through the collaborative pursuit of knowledge that a comprehensive university makes possible, Ritsumeikan University will continue to articulate a vision of what the society of the future should look like as it strives to provide solutions for social issues.