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The College of Arts and Sciences

The University of Tokyo aims to cultivate future citizens who will not only understand and respect their own country's history and culture but can also adopt an international outlook and a broad worldview, combine specialized knowledge with flexible problem-solving skills, and pair a pioneering spirit with strong critical thinking abilities in order to take on positions of leadership in public life.

To put these educational principles into practice, the University of Tokyo has all new entrants to the university spend their first two years in the College of Arts and Sciences where they receive a liberal arts education. Our liberal arts program, while providing students with a wide and deep general education and developing their sense of the richness of humanity, also prepares them to move on to specialized fields of study. This foundational education gives students the critical thinking skills they need to evaluate information independently and intelligently and nourishes in them the ability to discern the individual paths they each must follow as they progress into specialized fields.

The College of Arts and Sciences is responsible for educating all junior division (first- and second-year students), but we are also proud of the independent senior division (third- and fourth-year) specializations we offer. The senior division, which includes humanities and social sciences as well as natural sciences departments, further expands the spirit of a liberal arts education that has guided our university since the foundation of the Department of Liberal Arts in 1951. Under the key concepts of "interdisciplinarity," "internationalism," and "the spirit of innovation" and with strong cross-disciplinary interests, we have continued to strive towards our aim of creating a multilingual, multicultural environment and pioneering new directions in promoting "boundary-crossing knowledge." We were the first university in Japan to establish such academic disciplines as, for example, International Relations and Cultural Anthropology, and we have played a leading role in their expansion. We also established a new natural sciences field at Komaba, the science of complex systems, and have seen our campus grow into a global hub for this specialization.

At the same time, as the senior division of the College of Arts and Sciences approached its 60th anniversary in 2011, and in order to combine our commitment to the traditions we inherited with an intelligent response to the demands of contemporary society, we carried out major reforms to our existing academic structure.

Our newly reorganized senior division now contains three specializations in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, Area Studies, and Social and International Relations), four courses in the Department of Interdisciplinary Sciences (Science and Technology Studies, Geography and Spatial Design, Informatics, Earth System and Energy Sciences), as well as four courses in the Department of Integrated Sciences (Mathematical Sciences, Matter and Materials Science, Integrated Life Sciences, and Cognitive and Behavioral Sciences) and one sub-course in that department (Sports Science). Each of these courses is providing our students with a highly unique educational experience.

 

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Junior Divisoin, College of Arts and Sciences
Senior Division, College of Arts and Sciences

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