Oberlin University and Affiliated Schools, was established in Japan in 1946, but its roots can be traced to a school opened eighty-nine years ago in Beijing, China. Oberlin University and Affiliated Schools educational complex consists of a kindergarten, a junior high school, a senior high school, a four-year university, and a graduate school. In total, there are over 10,000 students studying here
. Yasuzo Shimizu, founder of our institution, began his career as a Christian missionary to China in 1917. Two years later, he established a Christian-based welfare center to care for children of families suffering from a widespread famine that had hit Northern China. Building on this experience, he established the Chongzhen Girls School in 1921. This small school provided young Chinese girls with basic educational and handicraft skills, thus enabling them to earn a decent living. Over the next two decades, the school enjoyed success, turning out more than seven hundred graduates. Following Japan's defeat in the Pacific War, however, Chongzhen Girls School was placed under the administration of the Beijing government, and Shimizu was forced to return to Japan. Soon after they came back to Japan in the spring of 1946, Yasuzo and his wife, Ikuko―a noted pioneer of co-education in Japan―established Obirin Gakuen. At the outset they were aided by the great Christian internationalist Toyohiko Kagawa. Drawing on their rich educational experiences in China, Yasuzo and Ikuko carried on Chongzhen's spirit, represented in the school motto, "Learning and Labor." The Shimizus adopted this motto from their U.S. alma mater, Oberlin College, from which they also drew inspiration for the name of our institution (Obirin is written with Chinese characters meaning "beautiful cherry forest"). Our legacy from the earliest days of J. Oberlin University and Affiliated Schools commits us to the education of students who are instilled with the universal ideals of Christianity and open-hearted internationalism. After the collapse of Japan's "bubble economy" at the beginning of the 1990s, the ups and downs caused by speculative bubbles elsewhere have had a variety of disruptive effects around the world. Triggered by the so-called Lehman Shock of the second half of 2008, the global economy has recently been in serious crisis. We are still dealing with unhealed wounds inflicted by that crisis. Precisely because of the severity of this situation, at J. Oberlin University and Affiliated Schools, we aim to train graduates who have the communication skills required to respond to the diverse value systems, cultures, and languages found around the world. Further, we believe it important to educate our students so that they have not only broad knowledge and intellectual sophistication, but also the ability to appreciate others' points of view and not be limited to their own particular set of values. Highest among our educational priorities is the producing of students who hold in their hearts a sustaining personal faith in the individual and his relationship to a supreme power, students who will never lose their hope in eternal goodness, even in face of many adversities and hardships. In the Bible it is written, "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go" (Genesis 28:15). Such is the spiritual legacy left by Yasuzo Shimizu, and it remains the central feature of J. Oberlin's educational philosophy.
