Founded in 1935 as Tama Imperial Art School and nicknamed "Tamabi", Tama Art University became a junior college in 1950 and a full university offering four-year degree courses in 1953. It became the first Japanese art school to open a Graduate School in 1964, introducing master's degrees in 1989 and doctorates from 2001. The Institute of Art Archaeology opened as a research centre in 2006.
Under the slogan of "Made by Hands", it is today one of Japan’s leading art schools, winning both national and international recognition.
It is based on two campuses and has two seminar houses, one in the foothills of Mount Fujiyama. The administrative headquarters are at Kaminaje, close to the commercial and media centres of Tokyo while most academic activity, grouped under the faculty and graduate school of Art and Design, is based at the Hachioji campus in the west of the city, which was opened in 1971.
The Hachioji library, built in 2007 to the designs of Toyo Ito - 2013 winner of the Pritzker prize, known as architecture’s Nobel Prize, and a visiting professor at Tamabi - features frequently in the architectural press. Notable alumni include the fashion designer Issey Miyake, who graduated in graphic design in 1964.
There were more than 4,500 students including around 300 postgraduates at the beginning of 2018. Women accounted for the majority of master's students and in all 13 departments of the Faculty of Art and Design. China and Korea between them supplied just over 90 per cent of the 435 overseas students.
