The , or IUC, is a Japanese language

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 school located in the Minato Mirai area of Yokohama

Yokohama

is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. Operated by a consortium

Consortium

A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal....

 of universities, the IUC provides advanced-level instruction to both undergraduate and graduate students and is considered one of the top Japanese language programs in the world.

History

The IUC was established in 1961 in Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

, Japan by Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. Administration of the Center first moved to a consortium model in 1963; currently, 16 schools participate in the operations of the Center. The Center eventually moved to Yokohama, where it set up in the Pacifico Yokohama

Pacifico Yokohama

Pacifico Yokohama is a convention center in Japan located in the western region of Minato Mirai Nishi-ku Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture....

 complex in the Minato Mirai port area.

Program

The IUC offers one 10-month program during the academic year and another shorter program during the summer months. The programs are focused on advanced Japanese suitable for professional or academic use, and prospective students must have completed at least two years of college-level training and pass a language exam to be eligible for enrollment. Although often supplemented by a scholarship

Scholarship

A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...

, the tuition for the 10-month program is $21,000, with a partial remission for students who are current students or recent alumni of a consortium school.

The IUC is considered one of the top Japanese schools in the world. Former U.S. ambassador to Japan

United States Ambassador to Japan

The United States Ambassador to Japan is the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary from the United States to Japan. Since the opening of Japan by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, in 1854, the U.S. maintained diplomatic relations with Japan, except for the ten-year period following the attack on...

 and vice-president Walter Mondale

Walter Mondale

Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale is an American Democratic Party politician, who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States , under President Jimmy Carter, and as a United States Senator for Minnesota...

 called it "imperative for the sake of America's future relations with [Japan]", and former ambassador and Speaker of the House Thomas Foley

Tom Foley

Thomas Stephen Foley was the 57th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1989 to 1995. He represented Washington's 5th congressional district for 30 years as a Democratic member from 1965 to 1995....

 noted that its graduates play a "central part" in the U.S.-Japan relationship.

Publications

As a language school, the IUC continues to perform research into the Japanese language and has published a number of books and materials on the subject through the Japan Times Press.

Consortium Members

• Columbia University
  Columbia University
  Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
  
  
• Cornell University
  Cornell University
  Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
  
  
• Harvard University
  Harvard University
  Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
  
  
• Indiana University
  Indiana University
  Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
  
  
• Ohio State University
  Ohio State University
  The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
  
  
• Princeton University
  Princeton University
  Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
  
  
• Stanford University
  Stanford University
  The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
  
  
• University of California, Berkeley
  University of California, Berkeley
  The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
  
  
• University of California, Los Angeles
  University of California, Los Angeles
  The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
  
  
• University of Chicago
  University of Chicago
  The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
  
  
• University of Hawaii
  University of Hawaii
  The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...
  
  
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
  
  
• University of Michigan
  University of Michigan
  The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
  
  
• University of Southern California
  University of Southern California
  The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
  
  
• University of Washington
  University of Washington
  University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
  
  
• Yale University
  Yale University
  Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
  
  

External links

• The Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies
• The Stanford University page on the IUC
• The IUC at Cornell University
• Review of IUC textbook (JSTOR
  JSTOR
  JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...
  
  )
• The IUC on the International Resource Information System