One of Earlham's most important relationships in Japan is with the Tokyo Friends School, a school for junior high and high school girls founded by the Quaker missionary Joseph Cosand and his wife in 1887.

The school's first principal, Kaifu Chuzo, attended Earlham on the advice of Joseph Cosand, earning his BA in 1893 and becoming the first Japanese citizen to graduate from Earlham.

In the century and more since then, there has been a steady stream of Japanese passing through Earlham, as students, teachers, benefactors, and friends, and several of them have been graduates of Friends School. Jackson Bailey worked closely with Friends School staff throughout his 40 years at Earlham, and for a time served on the Friends School's Board of Directors. The close relationship between the two institutions continues into the 21st century.

The most recent development is a faculty exchange program. In the fall of 1999 a member of the Friends School English Department faculty, Hamano Takao, spent three weeks at Earlham, and this was reciprocated in the spring of 2000 when Paul and Margie Lacey, of Earlham's English Department, spent three weeks at Friends School.

The link between the two schools will continue to be a vital one, providing a ready channel for communication between Quakers in Japan and the United States, as well as an open door for the improvement of mutual understanding between Japanese and Americans, through education, cultural exchange, and the ongoing international peace and justice work of the Society of Friends.

Link to Friends School: http://www.friends.ac.jp/