Sophia Magazine vol.5 / SUMMER 2017

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the Summer Session was the first homepage that popped up when you typed Sophia University into a search en-gine. This showed that the Summer Session was still serv-ing as a madoguchi in many ways. The Summer Session has also produced impressive alumni. I know that some participants whose very first course on Japan was in the Summer Session have gone on to become major Japanolo-gists. Many of the Japan Airlines scholarship students also went on to become prominent figures in business, government, and education.From its origins primarily educating high school teachers, the program today engages an increasingly diverse student body. Although participants were mainly Americans in the early years, students from other parts of the world gradu-ally began to participate in larger numbers. A scholarship program offered by Japan Airlines did much to increase the participation by students from East Asia, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, and Australia. For many participants, the Summer Session is their first time in Japan or Asia, or even their first time travel-ing out of their own country. In that sense, it has offered many people a life-changing experience. This was espe-cially true in the program’s early years in the 1960s and 1970s, when studying abroad was not easy to do. I think in some ways, the Summer Session was even ahead of the University in drawing in an international audience. And that international audience has become increasingly diverse, both in the Summer Session and throughout the University.The support of Japan Airlines was noteworthy for at-tracting students from across the Asia Pacific region from India to New Zealand. For many years, the company pro-vided full Summer Session scholarships for 50 to 60 stu-dents from 12 Asia Pacific countries. This program was the idea of a Sophia alumnus who had volunteered at the Summer Session as a student and then went on to be employed at JAL. These scholarships were very competi-tive and attracted truly outstanding students. From Tai-wan, we might have had 5,000 applicants for just three or four spots. I remember hearing about a certain meet-ing between the minister of education of Malaysia and the president of Sophia, and the first thing the minister asked about was the Summer Session. He had attended the Summer Session years before. I think the JAL scholar-ships played a role in making Sophia University itself become well-known throughout Southeast Asia.One of the chief attractions of Sophia University’s short-term programs is the opportunity to study in the very heart of Tokyo. A range of activities including field trips and op-portunities to attend cultural and artistic events such as kabuki performances also supplements Summer Session courses. Students are thus able to go out and experience what they study in the classroom.When I was a professor for the Summer Session, I taught a course on Edo and Tokyo because Tokyo is right out the window. Tying the course content to what you can walk across town and see for yourself is something that has been a focus for all the Summer Session’s courses, from literature to history. This is crucial. I think that for students studying Japan outside the country, the fundamental issue is that Japan is not yet real to them. But here, you can go out and see it and that makes it real. That aspect is absent in other edu-cational settings, and in that sense you cannot teach these kinds of courses as effectively anywhere else. The value of this is incalculable. Recognizing the diversity of academic interests among A Look at the Summer Session StudentsStudying Japan with Tokyo Outside the Classroom WindowParticipants visit Meiji Shrine in 1988Participants experience a Japanese tea ceremony in 2000 (top) and 2015 (bottom)Continuing a History of Quality and Tradition 10Approach