Welcome to NANZAN 2020
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- The Pioneers: Men and Women of Faith
Josef Reiners, SVD Apostolic Prefect and Nanzan pioneer
Alois Pache, SVD First president of Nanzan University
FATHER JOSEF REINERS
landed in Japan in 1909, only two years after Divine Word Missionaries reached its shores from Europe. His attempts to establish schools in Akita and Niigata met with many obstacles, but later, as Apostolic Prefect of the Nagoya diocese extending over most of central Japan, he succeeded in establishing Nanzan High School in 1932. Despite the precarious financial and political situation, the school prospered and was even able to stay open during the war years. In these difficult times, he was encouraged by his assistant, Father Alois Pache, who reminded him that “The school is God’s work.... You must believe that.”
Foreign Languages was duly subsumed by the Faculty of Arts and Letters, and Father Pache, whose faith in the school was his gift from God, became the first president (1949–1957).
Period of Growth and Consolidation
Today Nanzan provides a complete spectrum of Catholic education, from Kindergarten and primary school through university graduate school. Even today, each of these institutions described in the pages that follow is going through a period of change and consolidation. When Father Pache returned to Nanzan a few days before his death, he saw his faith in God’s providence vindicated—the Nanzan community had grown beyond his wildest dreams. Faith in the face of failure was certainly the key to the modest success that is Nanzan today.
The Beginning of a New Era for Nanzan
In the early postwar years, the High School underwent reform in accordance with new legislation. In the meantime, the Nanzan College of Foreign Languages was established in 1946, comprising a Department of English and a Department of Chinese, and the following year departments of German and French were added. In a master stroke of faith and relentless energy, the Divine Word Missionaries decided to found a university. In 1949 the College of
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