Keio University (Tokyo)

Keio University (慶應義塾大学). A private research university located in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It is the oldest institute of western higher education in Japan. Its founder, Fukuzawa Yukichi, originally established it as a school for Western studies in 1858 in Edo. It was granted university status in 1920, becoming one of the first private universities in the country.

Keio traces its history to 1858 when Fukuzawa Yukichi, who had studied the Western educational system at Brown University in the U.S. In 1868 he changed the name of the school to Keio Gijuku and devoted his time to education. While Keio’s initial identity was that of a private school of Western studies, it expanded and established its first university faculty in 1890.

In 1916, Keio was visited by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. Another visit in 1922 included physicist Albert Einstein, who presented a special lecture on the theory of relativity. In 2008, Keio University was visited by Prince Charles.

In 2021, there were 33,469 students at Keio University, with 28,667 undergraduate students and 4,802 graduate students. Although two-thirds of the student body are males, the gender ratio differs between different majors (e.g. 56% of students are female in the Faculty of Letters, whereas in the School of Medicine, three-quarters of students are men.).

There were 1,908 international students in 2021, with 874 undergraduate students (3% of total undergraduate students and 18% of total graduate students), the majority of whom are Chinese.

The interest of Keio’s students in baseball stretches back to the early years of the 20th century. In 1913, an American touring team of players from the New York Giants and the Chicago White Sox played an exhibition game against the Keio team. In a 1932 exhibition game, the Keio team beat the University of Michigan team, which was then touring Japan. Keio’s baseball team plays in the Tokyo Big6 Baseball League.

Traditionally, there has been a strong rivalry between Keio and Waseda University. The Kei-So baseball rivalry, which dates back more than a century, is especially famous because of its importance in Japanese baseball history.

Keio is ranked the 192nd in QS World University Rankings 2017/18. Keio, with Waseda University, is one of the prominent private universities within Japan. The difficulty level of entrance exams at Keio University is one of the highest among private universities in Japan.