Atomi University is a private women’s university divided between two campuses, 20 miles apart. The university owes its name and earliest origins to the painter and calligrapher Kakei Atomi (1840-1926) who promoted her concept of education mixing Japanese tradition with fostering highly-educated, free-spirited and independent women by setting up her own school at Kanda, a district of Tokyo, in 1875.
It subsequently developed in Niiza in the Saitama Prefecture, with the creation of Middle, Junior and Senior High Schools and a Junior College between 1944 and 1950. University status was attained in 1965. In 2008 a new campus was set up at Bunkyo in Tokyo, which became the headquarters in 2011.
Describing itself as "a university open to the community and society and indeed to the world" the modern institution aims to create "intellectuals with practical competencies", who are "virtuous members of society" and ‘self-sufficient independent-minded women’. Students spend their first two years in Niiza, a city known for its cherry trees and offering "a good atmosphere in which to master basics" before moving to Bunkyo, a district which is home to 20 different universities and the Tokyo Dome, for the third and fourth.
Courses are offered by the faculties of letters, management and tourism and community studies.
Campus facilities include the Atomi English Conversation Salon. A Japanese University Accreditation Association review in 2015 noted strengths in the development of practical content, in particular internships for second-year students and student support such as the Job Hunting Supporters system in which senior students assist juniors one-on-one with their career planning.
