From June 17-18, a delegation from the Josai University Educational Corporation led by Chancellor Noriko Mizuta paid a visit to the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada.
   This most recent visit was made to discuss the expansion of academic exchange between UBC and Josai University Educational Corporation. The delegation met with university President Stephen J. Toope and Provost David Farrar and later toured the facilities of the School of Social Work, meeting with Director Timothy Stainton.

On the 18th, the delegation attended a lecture hosted by UBC regarding the Princess Takamado collection of ornamental miniature hand carvings (known as “netsuke” in Japanese). The lecture was held at the Liu Institute, located adjacent to the Department of Asian Studies, and drew a large audience of students, faculty, scholars of Japanese culture, and members of the local Japanese-Canadian community who contributed to a lively discussion that ran over the allotted time. Princess Takamado is highly regarded as both a collector and scholar of netsuke and opened an exhibition about photos of netsuke entitled “The Princess Takamado Special Exhibition—Birds that Fly and Netsuke that Travel” in addition to her collection of netsuke at the Mizuta Museum of Art in Josai University in September 2012.

The University of British Columbia was founded in 1908. Its current enrollment of 40,000 undergraduate and 10,000 graduate students makes it the largest multidisciplinary university in Western Canada.
   Josai’s relationship with UBC began in 1991 when Chancellor Noriko Mizuta worked there as an eminent professor. Josai has since maintained the deep connection between the two schools by inviting visiting professors from UBC on a regular basis. In recent years, Josai International University’s Faculty of International Humanities formed an academic exchange agreement with the UBC’s Department of Asian Studies thus establishing a number of cooperative programs including the dispatching of Japanese language lecturers to UBC and a summer research and training program at the JIU Faculties of International Humanities and Social Work Studies.