Tsukuba Daigaku

The University of Tsukuba (筑波大学, Tsukuba daigaku) is a national research university in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. Chartered in October 1973 as Japan's first "new concept university" (新構想大学, shinkōsō daigaku) with the Tokyo University of Education as its parent institution, it traces its origins to the first normal school in Japan, established in Tokyo in 1872, which gives it one of the oldest institutional lineages of any Japanese university. It is one of the pre-war government-established (kanritsu) universities and, together with Hiroshima University, one of the two successors of the former "universities of literature and science" (bunrika daigaku). The university has been selected as a "Top Type" (Type A) institution under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Super Global University program and was designated a designated national university corporation in 2020. In the monthly "university popularity ranking" published by JS Corporation, it placed second among national and public universities nationwide in the January 2025 tabulation. The university comprises ten undergraduate schools subdivided into colleges, an additional school located overseas, and graduate programs organized under three academic gateways, with around 16,500 students. The main Tsukuba campus covers 258 hectares (636 acres), making it the second-largest single university campus in Japan. A branch campus in Bunkyō, Tokyo, offers evening graduate programs for working adults and administers the university's eleven laboratory (attached) schools in the Greater Tokyo area. In September 2024 the university opened a school on the campus of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, the first case of a Japanese university establishing a degree-awarding undergraduate school abroad. Three Nobel Prize laureates have taught at the university or its predecessor: Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Leo Esaki and Hideki Shirakawa. A fourth laureate, Satoshi Ōmura, studied at the Tokyo University of Education as an auditing student.