About Us

What We Do

Soga Japan Center is an interdisciplinary unit designed to promote knowledge of Japan to the WMU community, the city of Kalamazoo, and southwestern Michigan more generally. The Soga Japan Center regularly brings scholars, artists, and writers to campus to give Japan-related lectures, demonstrations, and readings to students, faculty, and the surrounding community. The Soga Japan Center also hosts film series, displays, musical performances, and other fun events related to Japanese culture.

「曽我日本センター��活動

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History

Western Michigan University’s links to Japan date back more than 50 years, with WMU’s first Japanese alumnus earning a graduate degree in psychology in 1955. In 1961, the first academic partnership with a Japanese university occurred when Keio University sent a group of 66 students and three professors to WMU for a Summer Institute program. Currently, more than 500 WMU alumni reside in Japan.

More recently, efforts on both sides of the Pacific Ocean have resulted in the establishment of WMU’s Michitoshi Soga Japan Center. For more than 35 years, Dr. Soga, a WMU professor emeritus of physics, worked tirelessly to establish a network of connections in West Michigan for individual visitors, as well as for businesses and Japanese partner universities and colleges. The Center is one of a number of centers that exist under the auspices of the Diether H. Haenicke Institute for International and Area Studies. The Haenicke Institute was established in 1998 by the WMU Board of Trustees to promote globalization and internationalization of the academic domain of Western Michigan University.

「曽我日本センター��紹介

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