Doshisha University (同志社大学, Dōshisha daigaku), or Dodai (同大, Dōdai) is a private university in Kyoto, Japan. It has 24,000 students on three campuses, in faculties of theology, letters, law, commerce, economics, policy, and engineering. It also has graduate programs in American studies and policy and management. It was founded by an ex-samurai named Niijima Jō. Niijima left feudal Japan in 1864 when going abroad was illegal by Sakoku policy, at the age of twenty-one, and found his way to Boston, Massachusetts, where he attended Phillips Academy, Amherst College, and Andover Theological Seminary under the name Joseph Hardy Neesima. After he returned to a westernizing Japan in 1875, he founded Doshisha English School in Kyoto. Canadian Methodist missionary G. G. Cochran played a role in the establishment of Doshisha University, and his contribution to the improvement of Japan's educational system is considered an important episode in the early history of Japanese-Canadian relations. The institution took its present form in by incorporating a law school, normal school, and women's college. By 1920, Doshisha was a full-fledged university in the Anglo-American tradition.