Tsuruoka and Keio University

The Tsuruoka Town Campus of Keio (TTCK), located in Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture, held its opening ceremony on May 13, 2001.

The origin of this campus in Tsuruoka, a place that was not previously thought to have much of a connection with the Juku, was a plan by Yamagata Prefecture and 14 municipalities in the Shonai region to establish a university under a public-build, private-operate system. In response to requests for cooperation in intellectual support contributing to industrial promotion, scientific and technological improvement, and human resource development, the Juku decided to open TTCK in Tsuruoka City, centered around the Institute for Advanced Biosciences (IAB), and signed an agreement in March 1999. It was decided that the graduate school, to be established four years after the newly founded Tohoku University of Community Service and Science in the neighboring city of Sakata, and the IAB would be located in Tsuruoka City.

The Shonai region has a cultural foundation and is rich in "soil, water, wind, and life" that cannot be found at existing campuses, and research utilizing these elements began. Local symposiums were held several years before the opening to discuss what could be done if the Juku came, and for two years from the signing of the agreement until the opening, TTCK workshops were held mainly by volunteers, generating many ideas. Among the proposals for a bio-research information city, various summits, and the preservation of native species, many have been realized. The "Lightning Summit," unique to Tsuruoka, which has the highest number of lightning strikes in Japan, and the Summer Bio College, in which students from Keio University affiliated schools and four schools in the city participate, also originated from there. Summer residential experiential seminars for Keio undergraduate and graduate students also began to be held. At SFC, students can also take bio-experiment practical courses based at the IAB.

New companies that successfully synthesized spider silk and metabolome technology companies have been launched, forming the core of the Tsuruoka Science Park, which is administratively supported by the prefecture and city and opened with the establishment of the IAB. The IAB has gained worldwide attention as a pioneer in new life sciences. With the increase in such research and employment opportunities, the number of young researchers and families moving to Tsuruoka City is also increasing.

On the other hand, the connection between Tsuruoka and the Juku was also unearthed. Kazusada Tanaka, the first director of the Mita Media Center (Keio University Library), was from Tsuruoka and invited local talent to the library. These included Takayoshi Ajiki, Yusuke Hashiba, and Goji Kokubun, who were referred to as the "Shonai Clique" of the library. Ajiki worked at the library while a student in the Department of Literature at the Juku and eventually became the head. Hashiba and Kokubun were also local historians who were invited during the Taisho era and collected books and historical materials related to Shonai for the library. As a result, the Mita Media Center (Keio University Library) houses many valuable materials that had been scattered and lost in the Shonai region. One such example is the "Kitayaku Nisshi," a record from the early Meiji era when former Shonai samurai, who had reclaimed mulberry fields and silkworm farms after the Meiji Restoration, were dispatched to develop Hokkaido. In 2011, the "Exhibition of Shonai Historical Materials from the Mita Media Center (Keio University Library) Collection" was held in Tsuruoka City.