About UTokyo

Established in 1877 as the first national university in Japan, The University of Tokyo (UTokyo) is regarded as one of the leading research universities in Asia. UTokyo consists of 10 faculties, 15 graduate schools, and 11 affiliated institutes, and there are approximately 28,000 students and 10,000 academic and administrative staff in three core campuses around Tokyo. With internationalization as one of its highest priorities, UTokyo now offers a number of degree programs in English for both undergraduate and graduate students.

Each year, approximately 3,000 new undergraduate students enter The University of Tokyo. Their time in the Junior Division, that is, the first two years of their four-year-long college life, is spent in Komaba. The students are required to take a foreign language besides English, and Spanish has become the most popular choice over the recent years. That said, UTokyo LAINAC offers a seminar-style course which focuses on practicing Spanish conversation via Skype with students at UNAM, for those who wish to acquire a good command of Spanish. Additionally, UTokyo LAINAC provides our students with opportunities to visit Spain and Latin America, known as “Global Praxis”, where students are able to master Spanish as they get exposed to the interaction with the local people and culture.

The Senior Division, which is for juniors and seniors, holds a major in area studies with a specific focus on Latin American Area Studies where students are given abundant opportunities to acquire Spanish and dense knowledge about Latin America as well as Spain. Area Studies Section which is one of the divisions in Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at College of Arts and Sciences provides our students with various courses that enable them to deeply and specifically learn about each region in the world; Latin American Area Studies Course is one of them. There are faculty members from Spain and Latin America; students have the benefit of learning within small-size, seminar-style classes, which create a very fruitful environment for learning. It’s a course where students are given a high-level training in a very at-home environment. UTokyo LAINAC plans various symposiums and students-interacting events on Spain and Latin America for those students in The Senior Division.

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences holds the following four majors in humanities and one science major: Advanced Social and International Studies, Language and Information Sciences, Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, Area Studies, and Multi-Disciplinary Sciences. UTokyo LAINAC administrative members belong to each division of the four humanities major which allows for a collaborative research among those four divisions. More specifically, area studies division holds many staff members as well as graduate school students who specialize in area studies of Spain and Latin America; this has enabled this division to become the core of Spain/Latin American area studies at The University of Tokyo. UTokyo LAINAC encourages UTokyo students to actively get involved in various collaborative projects. We believe that doing so will strengthen their potential ability to disseminate the products of their work to the rest of the world.

Moreover, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences offers two programs which allow students to obtain the degree in Japanese- free environment. They are known as GSP and GPES. Students are able to pursue their studies with using ONLY English and work towards obtaining their masters or PhD degree. Those two programs have attracted international students from various regions of the world who have begun their voyage to engage in learning and researching. GSP and GPES are the best options for those who would find learning or doing research in Japanese challenging yet have the wish to conduct their research in Japan. For other English-based programs offered in other departments besides Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, please click here.

The University of Tokyo has global partnerships with many universities in the world. Moreover, UTokyo has been actively involved in various world-wide-scale associations such as AEARU, APRU, IARU, and BASETOHA. These attempts and endeavours have led to the offering of a considerable number of study-abroad opportunities. For more details, please check the following websites: “Prospective Students” and “Global Komaba”. To give an example, using USTEP, students are able to study abroad in Mexico (e.g. El Colegio de Mexico and UNAM), Chile (Chile University and The Catholic University of Chile) and Brazil (San Paulo University). Likewise, the students at these universities can study-abroad at UTokyo. For more information regarding study-abroad AT UTokyo, please refer to this page as well.

The University of Tokyo has been promoting many activities and accomplished outstanding results that have led us to get engaged deeper in globalization. One of those is that we have been selected as part of The Top Global University Project, launched in 2014 by the Ministry of Education. This has been set forward with the vision to deepen and intensify globalization of UTokyo through building partnerships with prestigious universities abroad, aiming to evolve into an educational institution which conducts a world-level education and research. UTokyo LAINAC was initiated as part of this large project; its role is to create many opportunities to collaborate and exchange with top-level universities in Mexico, Chile and other countries of Latin America as well as Spain. UTokyo LAINAC is based in Graduate School of Arts and Sciences/College of Arts and Sciences, and continue carrying out its activities, thanks to the support from Graduate School of Science/School of Science, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology/Faculty of Letters, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, and Institute of Social Science.