To our incoming students, current students and parents,

The beautiful season of cherry blossoms has passed, young leaves have sprouted, and now the season is shifting to a time when you can enjoy dazzling fresh green.
I can imagine that you are having an inconvenient life in limited living situation. Let’s wait for class restart at the university facility, while observing the three precautionary measures against COVID-19: do not gather in large numbers, ventilate a room, keep a social distance. 

As we informed to all of you in the first announcement, we decided to start distance classes from Monday, May 11th, and we requested the environmental setting for online classes. In the second announcement, we explained how to set up the environment and informed that 50,000 yen will be provided as an aid to all students to prepare for it. We would like to ask for your understanding and cooperation for the preparation despite your restricted life.

Currently, we faculty members and administrative staff are preparing for the opening of online classes with all our might. Regarding workshops and studio-based classes, we are making all effort to realize fruitful and productive lessons. We are also exchanging information with our partner universities overseas to share solutions good practices for distance teaching in order to offer quality provision under this global situation. Instructors in each department, concentration and field of studies are preparing materials for online classes, so we would like you to wait for the classes to start.

Since its founding in 1900, our school has overcome many difficulties and continues to the present day. Four years after the foundation, it suffered from the Russo-Japanese War, and after that, although many national crises occurred such as World War I, the Great Kanto Earthquake, the Great Depression, World War II, the students at that time continued to make artworks with materials around them, even in the difficult lives of evacuation places. We also heard that some of them had escaped with their assignments to the bomb shelters. Even us, we moved to Kikuzaka and then to Suginami after the fire at the Yumicho campus, however, Kikuzaka campus protected our own place until the Sato Girls High School, the predecessor of the current Joshibi High School of Art and Design was destroyed by the incendiary bombs of the Tokyo Air Raid in 1945. In 1990, Sagamihara campus was added to Suginami campus and these two campuses continues up to the present time.

Looking back at the history of 120 years, there are quite a few records of overcoming difficulties. It is recognized that faculty members and students had been working together and putting a lot of thought into acquiring knowledge and skills, and then they had acquired the power to live strong. On different times, there are many anecdotes that show the Joshibi power, but we would like to overcome this difficulty by keeping in mind that that we will not lose to those predecessors.

Now that we have to be patient, but in this difficult situation, the entire world is starting to act with the expectation that a new society will begin. Even in our university we sincerely hope each and every one of us to take on making a new environment and to overcome this challenge in anticipation of the future.

We ask all of you to take good care of your health and prepare for the new classes starting May 11th. And above all, we sincerely wish that all of you and your family will remain healthy.