Oberlin graduates carry love and passion for their alma mater wherever they go, long after they graduate. One excellent example of such a graduate is Reverend Yasuzo Shimizu, founder of Obirin University in Machida, Japan, where President Nancy Dye is receiving an honorary degree and will be delivering a brief formal speech on March 11. And no, it is not an accident that the name sounds so familiar.

Shimizu received a Bachelors degree from Doshisha University in Japan. He had a dream to pursue further education abroad, more specifically in the United States. Unfortunately, at that stage of his life he could not afford it. He was married with two children and had just opened a new school in Beijing for impoverished children with his first wife, Miho. That was, however, where destiny interferes.

“As an undergraduate, [Shimizu] watched such alumni as Matsuta Hara, Chikao Mashita and Naoshige Satake go to Oberlin,” said Toshiko Tsutsumi in his essay “Yasuzo Shimizu and Oberlin College: Focused on His Student Days.”

The Doshisha University faculty had to approve every student who decided to go abroad.

“When I first desired to study abroad, the faculty meeting of Doshisha decided not to recommend me, saying ‘Shimizu is not the kind of man who will be engaged in serious study,’” said Shimizu, as recounted by Tsutsumi in his essay.

The main reason that the faculty would not support Shimizu was that they did not want to have another case of suicide after Mashita, “who had a nervous breakdown and killed himself on Jan. 24, 1914, only several months after going to Oberlin.”

“I deliberately chose the Oberlin Graduate School of Theology where Mashita had gone in order to cleanse myself of that charge,” recalled Shimizu.

Later, while studying at Oberlin, Shumizu visited Mashita’s grave in Westwood Cemetery on a regular basis. However, the occasion for Shimizu ultimately to be allowed to attend Oberlin in the first place had nothing to do with permission from Doshisha’s faculty, but rather due to an odd and lucky twist of fate. Shimizu recommended himself as a guide for Magosaburo Ohara, a wealthy businessman, during his visit in Beijing. He claimed he was a better guide than the one the businessman already had appointed to him.

“At the souvenir shop where Ohara was buying several jades costing about 4,000 yen apiece [100 times as much when converted to the present rate], Shimizu teasingly murmured to one member of the group, ‘If I had one of those, I would be able to study in the United States,’” stated Tsutsumi in his essay. “At overhearing this, Ohara offered to sign a check for 4,000 yen and encouraged [Shimizu] to go abroad.”

With this money, the 33-year-old Shimizu headed for Oberlin, Ohio, leaving the school in the charge of another person and his two children with his mother and sister in Japan. Miho would join him at Oberlin several months later.

When Shimizu first enrolled here in 1924, the school had three divisions: the college of arts and sciences, the Conservatory of Music and the Graduate School of Theology.

“For economic reasons, Miho stayed in San Francisco for the first several months, working in the daytime while studying Western sewing in the night school in order to prepare herself for teaching that art to Chinese students,” said Tsutsumi.

After this period, the couple moved into a small apartment downtown where they spent the rest of their time at Oberlin, sometimes offering room and board to lonely Japanese students, including Ikiku Koizumi, who became Shimizu’s wife three years after Mihu’s death of tuberculosis in China in 1933. During his years in Oberlin, he gained a very rich perspective on American culture, which he shared in an article for the March 1926 issue of the Alumni Magazine.

At Council Hall, where he stayed during the first few months, he was “surprised that American boys were quiet and refined...Dinner and lunch were begun with prayer. Oberlin spirit is well expressed in their table manners.” The Oberlin concept of co-education also impressed him. He appreciated that “though [men and women] become very intimate with each other, their relationships are always upon a high plane.”

Shimuzi and Koizumi were equally influenced by their experience at Oberlin. The connection they shared with the College was so important to them that after WWII was over and they returned to Japan, they established Obirin University in Tokyo.

“Oberlin was their model and they dreamed to make Obirin ‘Oberlin-in-Tokyo,’” Tsutsumi said in his essay. “Though their ‘dream’ was not realized, Obirin finally did gain a special relationship with Oberlin in 1981 which continues to this day.”

The similar name, Obirin, means “beautiful cherry woods” in Japanese.

“The two founders settled on the name ‘Obirin’...both because the site of the new school was nestled into a hillside covered with cherry trees, and because it sounded like the name of their alma mater,” explained Debora Cocco, associate director of the Oberlin Shansi program.

President Dye first heard about Obirin University years ago when she was dean of faculty at Vassar College. She was participating in an exchange program with deans from Japan, and was assigned a dean from Obirin.

“I said, ‘You know, your name sounds very much like a great American college,’” Dye said. “That’s when I first heard about the connection.”

Today, Obirin University is a private institution, serving about 6,000 students grades K-12, as well as a number of undergraduate and graduate students. It offers programs in commerce, Chinese studies, communications and arts.

“Generally, Shansi sponsors one Obirin student for a year here at Oberlin, though unfortunately, this year no one is attending Oberlin,” Cocco said.

“Some of our visiting lecturers in Japanese have been graduates of this program,” Dye said.

One of the programs that Obirin offers is a masters in teaching Japanese as a foreign language.

“Now Obirin is a Shansi site and we do have a relationship with the institution,” Dye said. “Occasionally, Oberlin students spend a semester or a year there.”

The Obirin’s Center for International Studies also facilitates many exchange programs.

There are even cases when Oberlin appeals to an Obirin student so much that he or she decides to stay. Such was the case for the Oberlin senior Arisa Otake, who came here on a Shansi-sponsored year abroad, but loved it so much she transferred.