Faculty of Music

• Someone who is suffused with the motivation to be a musician.
• Someone who is well prepared in the fundamentals of musical performance and would like to undergo training in specialized and high level academic and technical aspects of his/her musical art.
• Someone who would like to broaden their understanding of music, and thinks about the significance of learning music in our modern society.
• Someone with assertiveness, who learns classical music but also creates a new artistic culture suited to a new era, and seeks to spread it throughout society.

• A graduated four year degree completion process is involved, where the instruction consists mainly of one-on-one lessons for students in their area of specialty, with related courses supporting this instruction. We aim to foster a well-balanced student, who is not only technically improved in his/her area of specialization, but leaves the school with a breadth of knowledge as well.
• Our faculty aims to enhance the uniqueness of each individual student by offering courses that serve to heighten broad foundational musical accomplishment, in order to foster a wider perspective in our students so that they can engage with a modern society that requires more and more diversification.
• With Okinawa’s history in mind, we aim to deepen the student’s cooperation with society in order to ensure their role as a platform from which to promote eternal world peace. Students will learn to interact assertively with society and exhibit their talents through artistic activities.

The Ryukyuan Performing Arts Major is the most unique of the fields of study offered by this university, and gives opportunities for students to engage in the performance of the region’s unique traditional music and performance arts. Also, the Performance and Composition Major offers educational opportunities in the Western classical music tradition, which is the basis for all modern music education. Furthermore, the Music Culture studies Major performs research and education that serves to comprehensively sustain the disciplines above in both a theoretical and creative context.

Okinawa was once called "Ryukyu", and our predecessors in the days long ago developed a unique culture and arts, centered in and around the Shuri Castle. Currently, the Reiwa’s Shuri Castle is being rebuilt with the aim of restoring its main hall by 2026. Our university is located at the foot of Shuri Castle, offering an exceptional and unique educational and research environment, enabling us today to imagine some of the former ambience and tangible presence of the Ryukyu Kingdom.

The Faculty of Music is organized into nine courses of study in three majors, with each course demonstrating its individuality: vocal music, piano, strings, wind/brass/percussion, composition, musicology, Okinawan culture, Ryukyuan classical music, and Ryukyuan dance and kumiodori. We are pursuing a distinctive "sound" that can be learned and pursued only in Okinawa.

The founding philosophy of our university has been appreciation and pursuit of “distinctive beauty” and “universal beauty”. The then governor of Okinawa Prefecture strongly supported the foundation of a university in Okinawa for the pursuit of the Okinawan aesthetics and philosophy, which made it possible to establish the Japan’s fifth public art university.

The tourism industry is key to Okinawan economic development. However, as the trajectory changes towards high-quality tourism, not just for resorts, the cultural and artistic experience will increasingly draw more attention. As one of our sustainable development goals, students nurtured and grown in a high-quality educational environment with small class sizes will be precious human resources in Okinawa.

As part of the Shuri cultural experience, we sincerely hope our students will dedicate their energies to arts and express themselves creatively.