[8] Sophia's alumni are commonly referred to as "Sophians", among whom include the 79th Prime Minister of Japan, Morihiro Hosokawa, several politicians represented in the Japanese National Diet, several foreign statesmen including, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, Mukhriz Mahathir, Li Linsi, and a number of actors and musicians in the Japanese film and music industries.

[11] The origins of Sophia University could be traced to 1549 when Saint Francis Xavier, a prominent member and co-founder of the Society of Jesus, arrived in Japan to spread Christianity.

[12][13] During the so-called Kirishitan period of Japanese history, the Catholic Church had been responsible for establishing and administering educational institutions in Japan called Collegios and Seminarios, serving as bridges between the East and West.

In 1903, three Jesuit priests from Europe came to Japan to continue the missionary work of the Church and to help establish Sophia University.

Joseph Dahlmann, SJ from Germany, who had come to Japan via India, had listened to the requests of Catholics in the country, who expressed their desires to construct a Catholic university to serve as the cultural and spiritual base of the Church's missionary operations in Japan.

In 1905, Dahlmann was granted a private audience with the Pope, who promised to assign the Society of Jesus to create and administer a Catholic university in Japan.

In Dahlmann's Latin memoirs regarding the encounter with Pius, he recounted that he spoke as follows: "Habebitis collegium in Japonica, magnam universitatem (in English: "You (plural) will have in Japan a college that is a great university".).

On that same year, the then-Bishop of Portland, Maine in the United States, William H. O'Connell, was appointed by the Pope to serve as a special ambassador of the Vatican to Emperor Meiji in Japan.

At the 25th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus in held in Rome in September 1906, Pius X issued a formal written statement to the Jesuits to establish a Catholic university in Japan.

Thus, the delegates at the Congregation voted unanimously in favour of the Pope's commands, and the first concrete steps were taken to prepare a university institution in the East.

[15] In 1932, a small group of Sophia University students refused to salute the war dead at Yasukuni Shrine in the presence of a Japanese military attache, saying it violated their religious beliefs.

The military attache was withdrawn from Sophia as a result of this incident, damaging the university's reputation in the eyes of the government of the Japanese Empire.

The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples later issued the Pluries Instanterque in 1936, which encouraged Catholics to attend Shinto shrines as a patriotic gesture; the Vatican re-issued this document after the war in 1951.

[17] Sophia University continued to grow as it increased the number of academic departments, faculty members and students, in addition to advancing its international focus by establishing an exchange program.

[20] Sophia's main campus at Yotsuya is urban, consisting of roughly 25 large, modern buildings in the center of Tokyo.

The faculties of Theology, Humanities, Law, Foreign Studies, Economics, Liberal Arts, and Science and Technology have their home here, as do the main library, cafeteria, gymnasium, chapel, bookstore, and offices.

The Hadano campus in Kanagawa Prefecture is home to the Sophia Junior College, as well as a number of seminar halls and athletics complexes.

Sophia also possesses a wide-variety of English-taught academic programmes such as those provided by the Faculty of Liberal Arts (FLA).

In addition, volunteers from school clubs and departments make and sell curry rice, naan, and other snacks, and famous individuals are invited to the campus to hold lectures.

However, the field is owned and managed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and is open to the public on weekends and holidays, which means Sophian clubs do not have priority use rights.

[48] List of Designated Dormitories Owned by Private Companies: There are several rankings below related to Sophia University.

Its 2021 Times Higher Education Impact Ranking, which assesses universities against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), is 601–800.