Nearly 90 students from Doshisha Elementary School in Kyoto, Japan visited the Library on a Friday afternoon in June. Each year, Doshisha students come to explore the Library and pay tribute to Joseph Hardy Neesima, the founder of their school. Neesima, an ambitious young man who yearned to experience faraway places, left isolationist Japan in 1864 and boarded an American schooner in Hong Kong. He worked as a cabin boy and eventually arrived in Boston, where he was introduced to the schooner's owner, Alpheus Hardy, who was a member of the Old South Church in Boston. Hardy and his wife were supportive of Neesima's desire to study, and he became the first Japanese student to graduate from several prestigious schools--Phillips Andover Academy, Amherst College, and Andover Seminary. Ordained as a Congregational minister in 1874, he was also the first Japanese Protestant minister.

Neesima returned to his homeland in 1875, bought land in Kyoto, and started the Doshisha, or "one purpose," school. Eventually, it grew to include not only the original theological seminary but a full university curriculum, a preparatory school, and an elementary school, where the Library's student visitors hail from! Of their visits, Executive Director, Margaret Bendroth, said, "It's always wonderful to welcome them back to a building and a library that Niijima Jo would have known, and treasured as we do today."

Doshisha students have given the Library many interesting gifts over the years that can be viewed by the public. These include posters, origami, and books such as a Japanese-language guide to Plimoth Plantation and a manga story of Neesima's life.