Dokkyo University

is a private university in Sōka, Saitama, Japan, which is a liberal, co-educational institution noted for its language education programs and international exchanges. The university was founded in 1964, its roots can be traced back as early as 1881. Undergraduate admissions are selective, with an admission rate ranging from 30–40%. History The name "Dokkyo" is the Japanese-style dual kanji-based abbreviation of Verein für deutsche Wissenschaften, or . What was to become today's Dokkyo University was founded on 18 September 1881 by various people, among them scholars Nishi Amane and Katō Hiroyuki, diplomats Inoue Kaoru and Aoki Shūzō and statesmen Shinagawa Yajirō and Katsura Tarō as Verein für deutsche Wissenschaften, or The first chancellor was Prince Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa. It developed into Schule des Vereins für deutsche Wissenschaften, or in 1883, which opened its doors exclusively to boys in line with the custom at the time. They also founded a highly prestigious law school to study Japan's first constitution The Constitution of the Great Empire of Japan, modeled after the Prussian one with criminal codes also modeled after the German ones, but the elite law division was absorbed by the Imperial University of Tokyo Faculty of Law in 1895. The school went through a minor negative campaign due to World War I, when Japan sided with the British Empire against the German Empire from August 1914 to November 1918, but the majority of the Japanese public was either pro-German or neutral despite Japan's position in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The 1920s saw its heyday when the school sent the highest number of boys into the nation's top ("High School No.1") in Tokyo, popularly known as "Ichikō", which is today's Liberal Arts campus of the University of Tokyo. The collapse of the two great empires of Germany and Japan in 1945, however, rendered the elite school into a mere boys' high school of middle rank.