Tenri Universiuty is the only university in Tenri, Nara Prefecture, around 30 miles from Osaka. Like the town it takes its name from Tenrikyo, a Japanese religious movement promoting the "joyous life" which has close to 17,000 churches and two million adherents in Japan.
It was founded in 1925 as Japan’s first private foreign language school, with the aim of providing Tenrikyo overseas missionaries. It attained university status, with a single faculty of humanities, in 1949. Its campus is part of the Oyasata-Yakata complex, since 1954 the headquarters of the religion with other facilities including a seminary, schools and a hospital.
There were just over 3,000 students in 2017, with around a third believed to followers of Tenrikyo. It offers a "humanistic education" spread across faculties of human studies, letters, international studies and budo (a form of Japanese martial arts) and sports studies. Budo and sports studies (902 students) and area studies (718) were the largest departments, accounting for just over half the total roll.
The university library has more than 1.45 million volumes, including a significant religious collection and more than 100 items classified as national treasures, and it also oversees the Sankokan Museum, which has important ethnology and art collections.
It has strong sporting traditions, with its judo team winning 11 national collegiate championships by 2013 and four Olympic and World Champions among its alumni including Anton Geesink, the Dutchman who broke Japan’s monopoly of world and Olympic titles in the 1960s. The rugby squad was runner-up in the national collegiate championships in 2011 and 2019.
