Nihon University

Nihon University, founded as Nihon Law School in 1889, now consists of 16 colleges with 87 departments, 20 graduate school programs and junior colleges, and a distance learning program. It is one of the largest universities in Japan, covering most areas of studies and disciplines such as liberal arts, science and technology, medicine, and dentistry. Through interdisciplinary cooperation, it has been providing numerous academic and educational activities of high quality that are devoted to social development in areas such as medicine, health, and life-long education.

Its purpose is to educate students to contribute to society in Japan and around the world through problem-solving talent. In order to pursue this, it has set a new and concrete vision for Nihon University students, the “Nihon University Mind,” a spirit of independent creativity. Nihon University will continue to lay out concrete plans toward these goals and carry them out, through its academic capacity and diversity.

In 2016, Nihon University offers “Introduction to Cultural Translation for Transcultural Understanding” as a JMOOC course.  This series of lectures will explain how culture is translated, adapted, and transformed across boundaries. The following are some of the various topics to be discussed: Japanese modernity and translation, Japanese and Chinese Haiku, the films of Kurosawa Akira, TV dramas such as Hanzawa Naoki, Taniguchi Jiro’s manga, Pacific Overtures and Kafka on the Shore as global performance.

The course is created and administered by the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, which was established in 1999 as the first online graduate school program for adults, and it has graduated over 1,200 students with masters and doctoral degrees, as it continues to support life-long education and learning.