Tokyo Women's Medical University

Message from Chancellor

The founding spirit and “Sincerity and Compassion” to be enhanced in the future
Be a university which continuously contributes to the society

Tokyo Women’ s Medical University (TWMU) is the first and only institute in Japan committed to the nurturing of women medical professionals. TWMU was founded in 1900 as Tokyo Women’s Medical School by YOSHIOKA Yayoi, the 27th licensed female doctor of medicine in Japan. The university guiding principle established in 1952 is founded on Yoshioka’s core values and academic philosophy: “to nurture female medical professionals who can contribute to the society and refine their personalities through the pursuit of deep understanding of medical sciences ”. The TWMU motto, “Sincerity and Compassion” serves as a beacon to the generations of TWMU scholars and students in their pursuit of advancement in medicine through education, research, and clinical practice.
The year 2022 celebrates the 151st anniversary of the birth of YOSHIOKA Yayoi and the 122th anniversary of TWMU. Today TWMU continues to promote the education of skilled female medical professionals who pursue their commitment with unwavering compassion towards patients. As a women’s university, TWMU invests in the potential of its students and graduates to exercise their leadership and service as they confront the challenges not only in the medical profession but in securing their gender equality and recognition.
TWMU continues to expand its programs and services. In 2020, the “Yayoi Academia” at TWMU Career Development Center for Medical Professionals was renamed the Department of Development for Women Medical Professional Leaders to assume a wide-range mission to encourage career development and promote female leadership in medicine. Moreover, “Yayoi Academia”, programmed a new workshop involving 300 of the university faculty members to address about the university’s scholarship, ethics, finance, business strategies and medical policies all to unify the university community under its motto “Sincerity and Compassion”.
The 5 research institutions of TWMU are engaged in cutting-edge medical research and innovation employing state-of-the-art technology. TWMU strives to make its efforts in basic research translation into use in disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. TWMU promises to continue prioritizing our patients by providing secure and safe medical care of the highest quality.

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Message from President

Knowledge and virtue are the two halves of the whole in medicine

Tokyo Women’ s Medical University, which was founded in 1900 and has a long history, celebrated the 120th anniversary in 2020. Our founding spirit is “to nurture female medical professionals who can contribute to the society and refine their personalities through the pursuit of deep understanding of medical sciences” . Medicine is making signficant advancement through the genome analysis, utilization of AI, and advanced disease animal models.

In any era, medical professionals can accomplish their duties only when they can catch up with such advancement of medicine. So far, at Tokyo Women’ s Medical University, excellent predecessors have given education through the meticulous and high-quality education program. However, people who have only excellent academic achievements and do not have refined personality or profound cultural understanding cannot cope with the current clinical practice characterized by diversity and speed. Therefore, we try to incorporate education placing great emphasis on personality refinement in our educational program. We intend to develop human resources who can overcome hurdles in interacting various with people around them such as hierarchical relationship, and establish open-minded relationship with others regardless of whether they are medical professionals or not, with the ultimate goal (outcome) being the establishment of trustful relationship. Tokyo Women’ s Medical University is the only medical university accepting only women in Japan. Published results of public health science researches have indicated that female physicians are superior to male physicians in terms of certain indices. In Japan, female physician account for only about 20%, which is much lower than the ratios in any other countries. Despite that backdrop, TWMU has contributed to the society by producing a lot of female physicians. We would like to promote learning and educational opportunities through which our students would realize their personal career design to cope with various life events and would eventually become medical professionals not only with advanced knowledge but also a rich sense of humanity and respectful attitude.

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