Doshisha University (同志社大学 Dôshisha Daigaku) is a private university in Kyoto, Japan. It has 24,000 students on three campuses, in faculties of theology, letters, law, commerce, economics, and engineering. It also has graduate programs in American studies and policy and management. Tuition and fees average ¥850,000 ($7,000) a year for liberal arts majors, and are higher for science and engineering majors.
It was founded by an ex-samurai named Niishima Jou. Niishima snuck out of Japan in 1864, at the age of twenty-one, and found his way to Boston, Massachusetts, where he attended Phillips Academy, Amherst College, and Andover Theological Seminary under the name Joseph Hardy Neeshima. After he returned to a Westernizing Japan in 1875, he founded the Doshisha English School in Kyoto, which eventually incorporated a law school, normal school, and women's college.
By 1920, Doshisha was a full-fledged university in the Anglo-American tradition. During World War II, its buildings were given Japanese names and its curriculum was stripped of its pro-Western elements, but the pre-war conditions were restored after Japan's surrender.