Temple announced a second campus in Japan. Here’s a look at its Tokyo campus through the years.

Temple University’s campus in Tokyo got its start in 1982, and remains one of two foreign campuses that the North Philadelphia-based university maintains, the other being Rome.

Here’s a look at the campus’ history as drawn from The History of Temple University Japan, a 2023 book written by Richard Joslyn and Bruce Stronach, two of its former deans. Joslyn was dean from 1996 to 2001 and Stronach from 2008 to 2020.

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Japanese businessman Hirayasu Yamamoto, who connected students with colleges in the United States, many of whom attended Temple’s intensive English-language program, suggested that the university start an English-language program in Japan. The idea was to help prepare those students to attend college.

He was alleged to have “absconded” with $300,000 of Temple tuition money, according to a letter from Kazuko Asai, Temple’s lawyer in Japan at the time, as reported in the book. It wasn’t the only problem the university encountered with its partners there. The university had three partnerships with Japanese businessmen and politicians, all which ended in conflict.

Soon after its intensive English-language program started in 1982. By 1986, 13 students had received a bachelor’s there.

Nine. Some served as little as a year, while the longest tenure was 12 years. Matthew J. Wilson, the current dean, has been on the job since September 2020.

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No, but it was the first. There eventually were dozens, and in 1990, 21 of them formed an association. Eventually all but TUJ closed. “The money to fund foreign universities in Japan dried up rapidly after the real estate and stock market collapses,” according to the book.

Temple in 1995 took direct control of the campus rather than relying on local partners, which may have been the single most important decision in the school’s history, according to the book. Also in 2005, the Japanese government began recognizing branch campuses of foreign universities, allowing them to sponsor student visas. Stronach also knew the country well, having previously served as president of a Japanese university. Wilson continued with that knowledge when he became dean, having previously served as an administrator on the campus and having spent time there as a Temple law student.

The Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 and subsequent nuclear reactor complex meltdowns and COVID-19.

As of last year, the campus had conferred more than 7,000 undergraduate and graduate degrees.

More than 100.

Six. They range from a “poorly air-conditioned, nondescript office building,” according to the book, to its current main six-story building that it rents from Showa Women’s University.

Temple announced that it is opening a second site in Japan in the ancient city of Kyoto in January.

2,240 undergraduates, about 36% from Japan and 34% from the U.S. Among them are about 200 study abroad students, roughly half of them from Temple and the rest from other U.S. universities. It also has about 250 graduate students in business, law and education, and another 1,800 non-degree seeking students, including some students from Japanese universities there for English-language instruction.