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City Introduction
A program at Yamasa offers opportunities not only to study the language, but also
to personally experience a wide range of cultural activities most students never have the
opportunity to see - let alone do. Located in the middle of Aichi Prefecture, Okazaki is a
balanced city of 330,000. Both traditional and modern, urban and rural, lively and liveable,
these apparently contrasting terms can all be accurately used in describing
Okazaki. Even though it is only 40km from central Nagoya to the west, and only 20 minutes from
Toyohashi to the east, Okazaki has had no trouble managing to retain its individuality -
despite the fact that it is one part of an conurbation of just over 7 million people. This is due
in large part to its unique and important position in
Japanese history. Okazaki is a city renowned for its history, traditions
and at the same time, advanced science and technology.
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The Castle, the symbol of Okazaki
& birthplace of Tokugawa Ieyasu
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Okazaki Castle stands where the Sugo (Oto) and Yahagi rivers meet, just 15 minutes from our
campus. The castle was of strategic importance in Japanese history, and was the birthplace of
Ieyasu Tokugawa, the warlord unifier of Japan who was fictionalized in
the novel "Shogun" and perhaps the most important single figure in the
making of modern Japan. Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616) founded the shogunate in Edo (now Tokyo) in
1603 that endured for more than 260 years after surviving a turbulent era of civil
warfare through a combination of military skill and political treachery.
The castle is a focus for the city, and besides offering a peaceful respite from busy downtown
Okazaki, it instills a certain pride in the maintenance of the city's traditional culture - hosting many of the festivals.
Okazaki is, by the same token, very much a modern city, with several universities and colleges,
high-technology industries as well as scientists from all over the world working at the
prestigious Okazaki National Research Institutes.
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