Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University Becomes 69th Sylff Institution

The Sylff endowment has been awarded to Japan’s Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University with high hopes that this will bring the perspectives of Japan and Asia into the global Sylff program.

The Tokyo Foundation is the administrator of the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (Sylff), a program covering 44 countries around the world to nurture global leaders. Endowments provided by the Nippon Foundation are used to grant scholarships to graduate students in the disciplines of humanities and social sciences. More than 13,000 students who have received fellowships in the 22 years since the launch of the program are now active leaders in a wide diversity of fields.

The Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU), located in Beppu, Oita Prefecture, has recently been selected as the 69th institution to receive a Sylff endowment. High anticipations are held that the university will link with the global Sylff network, using the Sylff program to globally communicate the perspectives of Japan and Asia.

APU is a unique university carrying out internationalization to a degree that has not existed before in Japan. While planting its roots in the local community of Beppu, it aims to nurture its students, hailing from all corners of the world, to become people who would be active on the global stage. A new university founded in 2000, it holds the top position among Japanese universities in its number of foreign students. With about 3,000 students from 97 countries and regions outside Japan, the percentage of overseas students among the total student body of 6,000 is now roughly 50 percent. The university has a bilingual curriculum, and about half of the instructors are also foreign nationals.

The university believes it essential for the Asia-Pacific region, with its ethnic and linguistic diversity and different value systems, to be actively involved in resolving the increasingly serious issues of the world. This concept matches the philosophy of the Sylff program, which engages in nurturing leaders who can transcend borders such as those of nation, ethnicity, and religion to address common challenges facing the world. This is one of the major reasons behind awarding the Sylff endowment to APU.

On Monday, October 19, the Sylff endowment award ceremony was held at the APU campus in Beppu. From here on, three graduate students will be selected as Sylff fellows annually, with fellowships provided through the revenues generated from investment of the endowment.

It is highly anticipated that this program will lead to fostering global leaders from APU with Japanese and Asian perspectives and will enhance opportunities for the university as a whole to conduct various activities for research exchange and social contribution.