Hokusei Gakuen University is a private university in Sapporo, Japan, which runs a four-year system.
Hokusei means north star, derived from the biblical reference "Shine like stars in a dark world", and points to the Protestant educational philosophy of the university.
The university traces its roots to 1887, when a missionary of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, Sarah Clara Smith, founded the Smith Girls’ School. After several expansions, the co-educational university was founded in 1962.
Lilac trees, designated as the official tree of Sapporo, are believed to have been brought to the city for the first time by Sarah Smith from her hometown, Elmira, New York. Many of the lilac trees now blooming on the university campus were grafted from the offspring of trees that Sarah Smith introduced.
Back then, it had only a School of Humanities, which included a Department of English and a Department of Social Welfare, each with capacity for 50 students.
Today it has over 4,000 students across three undergraduate schools: humanities, economics and social welfare. The library has nearly 540,000 books.
Hokusei Gakuen provides a variety of study-abroad programmes and welcomes international students to its campus.
The campus is shared with the two-year Hokusei Gakuen University Junior College and the Hokusei Gakuen University Graduate School, which has three schools: Literature, Economics and Social Welfare.
Alumni of the university now work in businesses such as Amazon, booking.com, IBM, Accenture and more. Notable alumni include popular Japanese manga artist Waki Yamato.
