Tradition and Perspective

The academic tradition of Hijiyama Gakuen as a non-profit educational organization dates back to the 1939 establishment of Hiroshima Showa Women's Middle School, specially designated as a teacher training school for the students of Hiroshima Bunrika Daigaku (Hiroshima University of Literature and Science) and Hiroshima Higher Normal College. The latter college campus was the site of the original Showa Women's Middle School, but in April 1940 the school was moved to a new site near Hijiyama Hill. In December of the following year, it was granted the status of a non-profit educational foundation by the Ministry of Education, and in June 1943 it was renamed Hijiyama Women's Middle School. In June 1947, it was changed to Hijiyama Women's Junior High School and, in the following June, Hijiyama Women's Senior High School was established.

Until present, these two institutions have been important members of an educational consortium called Hijiyama Educational Foundation, a new name adopted in March 1951 for the consortium. The governing body of the consortium is the Board of Regents.

Hijiyama Educational Foundation included Hijiyama Women's Junior College, which was founded on its present site in April 1966, and which began as a single department (Japanese Literature) junior college. In the ensuing years, the Department of Early Childhood Education, the Department of Home Economics, and the Department of Fine Arts were added.

In April 1994, Hijiyama University was founded as a four-year university. With the development of Hijiyama University as a full four-year institution, the next step was making both Junior College and University completely coeducational from April, 1998. The new millennium has brought about further changes, including a graduate school for the Department of Contemporary Culture, offering a Master's Degree in literature. In 2004, a further reform was made in order to cope with the demands of the times and society: University was reorganized from two to four departments, Junior College made a minor change in one of the Departments, and completely new liberal art education started. One change made to the university in the last few years was the addition of a new the Department of Child Development & Education from April, 2009. The most recent change, however, is the addition of yet another entirely new 4-year department, the Department of Nutrition Management from April, 2014.

When it comes to hosting international students, in the last few years, Hijiyama has welcomed students from Australia, America (Hawaii), China, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam to its growing student body. In line with this internationalization, we also began exchange programs with multiple institutions abroad, offering our students the chance to study and practice cultural exchange outside of Japan. These schools now include South and City College Birmingham, U.K.; Ayutthaya University, Thailand; Jilin Huaqiao Foreign Languages Institute, China; the University of Hawaii at Hilo; California State University, San Marcos; Inje University in the Republic of Korea; Udayana University, Bali, Indonesia; the University of Santo Tomas and Far Eastern University, Manila, the Philippines; and a volunteer program in Cambodia.

With such forward-looking and constructive educational policies, we are ready to respond to the varied needs the new millennium requires of the traditional and modern educational institution that is Hijiyama.