Doshisha University

In the late Edo period, the founder of Doshisha, Joseph Hardy Neesima (1843-1890) left Japan for the US at the age of 21, defying an overseas travel ban in the process. For Neesima, who was intolerant of restraints on freedom in the stifling feudal society in which he grew up, it was an adventurous quest to seek a land where greater equality, freedom and human rights were the norm.