Distinguishing Features of the Faculty of Letters

In today’s rapidly changing society, it is becoming increasingly important to study how we live and think about society by focusing on the essence of humanity and the cultures we create. This page introduces the distinguishing features and appeal of studying at the Faculty of Letters, which cultivates comprehensive and integrative critical thinking skills.

The Keio University Faculty of Letters is an academic research institution that explores every area of literature and the humanities. The wide-ranging research fields necessary to cover these areas transcend the conventional image of “the letters” and ventures into the concept of knowledge itself, encompassing scholarly learning, art, and science. It includes everything from the literary fields in a variety of languages to philosophy, history, library and information science, and the human and natural sciences.

An interdisciplinary academic system that offers courses across diverse and independent departments. All converge into an integrated body of knowledge mediated through the power of the letter. This distinctive approach is what defines the Faculty of Letters at Keio University.

New students to the Faculty of Letters spend their first year at Hiyoshi Campus, where they gain a broader perspective. There students transition into their major through basic courses alongside specialized courses and general education seminars. Full-time academic staff conduct small classes in their respective fields of research. This unique curriculum allows students to choose their major later than most, in their second year at university. Students enroll to Faculty of Letters without having chosen a major and spend their first year exploring their desired academic path.

There exists a freedom to grow academically and make learning your own.

The Faculty of Letters began with the founding of Keio’s university departments in 1890. We pride ourselves on our history as the oldest private Faculty of Letters in the country. Not only literature but all of the liberal arts have been at the core of the curriculum since the faculty’s founding, when renowned writer Ogai Mori was a professor of aesthetics. Following Mori’s footsteps were students who would later became prominent poets, writers, ethnologists, philosophers, and scholars. That list includes such people as Kafu Nagai, Junzaburo Nishiwaki, Shusaku Endo, Shinobu Origuchi, and Toshihiko Izutsu, all of whom created worlds of their own.

Keio founder Yukichi Fukuzawa’s principle of hangaku hankyo—a term used at Keio to mean teaching each other, learning from each other—lies at the heart of education and research done at the Faculty of Letters, where students and faculty alike work hard in friendly collaboration and competition with one another. In its more than 125-year history, the Faculty of Letters has produced countless talented graduates who have been successful not only in the academic and cultural arenas but who have also gone on to make great impacts on society and the economy.