Tohoku University, which was the first university in Japan to admit female university students, celebrates the 100th anniversary of their admission. In commemoration of this event we will launch the 100th Anniversary of the 1st Women Students 2013 Project.

The history of women students at our university has started 100 years ago in the second year of the Taisho Era (1913) with Chika KURODA, Ume TANGE and Raku MAKITA being the first three women students to enter our Graduate School of Science. At that time only male applicants were accepted, but the first President of Tohoku University, Seitaro SAWAYANAGI, adopted the innovative principle of “Open Doors” to gather excellent students from Japan and abroad. Women students became a symbol of this principle.

In correspondence to this paradigm shift the ministry of education sent an official document to the Imperial Tohoku University on how to deal with the admission of women students in general. This got into news and was reported by newspapers all over Japan.

Afterwards these three became the first female students to be awarded a Doctors degree, in particular Chika Kuroda, who became the second woman to be awarded a Doctor of Science degree in Japan and Ume TANGE, who was the first woman to receive a Doctor of Agriculture greatly contributed to the development of a women research landscape in Japan.

Since then, Tohoku University (former Imperial Tohoku University) has welcomed many women students, established a gender equality committee in 2001, the Office for Women Researchers at Tohoku University in 2006 and has been engaged in various activities as core for the promotion of gender equality in the academic field. The number of three women students in 1913 jumped to 1,184 women students in 2013, with a total of 4,343 women students and 392 women researchers, who are involved education, research, and in disaster reconstruction actions and various other activities.

We will succeed this shining tradition and history, work to further raise the numbers of women students and researchers and promote gender equality in general. For the realization of a self-sustainable world, we hope to contribute to the development of excellent human resources capable of heralding a new era, and for that we will launch the 100th Anniversary of the 1st Women Students 2013 Project which includes holding forums on behavior guidelines for the promotion of gender equality, commemorative symposia and creating a memorial logo mark.

I hope for your kind support