Founding Head

Rugby School Japan opened in Kashiwanoha (“Oak Leaf”) Smart City, Chiba Prefecture (Greater Tokyo), in September 2023, championing a new era of British international education in Japan. It is Rugby’s second international sister school. The School is a co-educational day and boarding school based on a campus within walking distance of a baseball stadium, football pitch, lake and running track in Kashiwanoha Park.

Rugby School Japan is situated in an urban campus in Tokyo, occupied by two of the best universities in Japan: Chiba University and Tokyo University.

Tokyo is one of the largest metropolises in Asia, and Rugby School Japan is the first of the British Public Schools to be established in the city.

Rugby School Japan shares Rugby’s ethos of ‘the whole person, the whole point’. The School believes in taking education beyond the classroom and nurturing the whole person – in mind, body and spirit – to give students a holistic sense of self and to enable them to achieve in all areas of life. Rugby School Japan aims to become a benchmark for British education worldwide.

Rugby School

Rugby School is a co-educational boarding and day school situated in the English county of Warwickshire. Founded in 1567, it is one of the original ten English public schools defined by the Public Schools Act 1868. Today, the School has 850 students aged 13 to 18 housed in 15 houses, 13 of which are for boarders and 300 students aged 3 to 13 at its Prep school, Bilton Grange. In 2019, Rugby achieved record results at GCSE and A-level, and has been described by Tatler as ‘a school at the top of its game’. Rugby has produced Prime Ministers of European nations, an Archbishop of Canterbury, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Rugbeians have contributed to stage and screen, to politics, the arts, philosophy, medicine and public life. They have upheld justice as judges and law makers; helped run governments, schools, universities; founded businesses; and won Olympic gold medals. In 1823, it is said that, during a game of football at the School, Rugby student William Webb Ellis caught the ball and ‘with a fine disregard for the rules… took the ball in his arms and ran with it, thus originating the distinctive feature of the rugby game’.

Rugby’s greatest Head Master, Dr Thomas Arnold (1828-42), transformed British education and formed the model that many other schools have since adopted. He recognised a modern concern – that education should address the formation of character, going beyond an understanding of learning as simply the acquisition of knowledge. Towards the end of the 20th century, the boys’ school once favoured by England’s monarchs became thoroughly co-educational. In 1975, three girls were admitted into the sixth form, and in 1992 the first 13-year-old girls arrived. The School is now almost equally populated by boys and girls. Rugby is national and international in outlook and recruitment, with boys and girls from all over the UK and 10% from overseas. As widening access to Rugby remains central to the School’s aims, the Arnold Foundation for Rugby School was set up in 2003 to fund places for students who stand to gain the most from a boarding school education. The opening of Rugby School Japan is the next step in this rich history, as Rugby proudly takes its educational philosophy international to make a difference across the world.