More than desiring a diverse student body of Americans, Ezra Cornell envisioned a university comprised of foreign students studying alongside Americans. “Ezra Cornell boasted about the range of places from which the first students came, and he thought that Cornell really deserved university status when the first foreign student graduated in 1869,” according to the Ezra Cornell Bicentennial Exhibition.

Within the University’s first 20 years, over 120 foreigners earned degrees from Cornell and a number came to study for a shorter period of time. In this period, 11 of Cornell’s foreign students hailed from Japan alone. According to the 2007 report “President David Skorton and Cornell University Delegation Visit East Asia,” from 1867 to 1902 Cornell admitted more Japanese students than all but four other American colleges and universities. “Cornell accepted one fewer Japanese student than Stanford University and noticeably more than Harvard, Columbia and Princeton,” the report says.

The first Japanese student to study at Cornell, Kanaye Nagasawa, arrived in Ithaca in 1870. In her book Glorious to View: Cornell University, Carol Kammen describes Nagasawa’s story. According to Kammen, in 1864, Nagasawa illegally left Japan — at the age of 12 — on an English boat to study western science in Scotland.

An article on The Ithaca Asian American Association website notes that Nagasawa and 14 other Japanese men were smuggled out of Japan by the leader of the southern Japanese Satsuma clan, which was a major influence in the modernization of Japan. During the journey, Nagasawa cut his hair, bought western clothes and changed his name. “It was then that Hikosuke Isonaga, son of a wealthy Confucian scholar, stone carver and astronomer from a Samurai family, became for the rest of his life Kanaye Nagasawa,” the website says.

Once in Scotland, Nagasawa befriended followers of utopian religious leader Thomas Lake Harris. Out of his original 14 travel companions, Nagasawa was the only one not to return to Japan. Instead, he traveled with Harris’ disciples to live in the United States on the shores of Lake Erie in Harris’ utopian community. Nagasawa went to Cornell to learn viticulture so he could learn the cultivation of wine.

As shown in Cornell’s deceased alumni files, Nagasawa stayed at Cornell for less than one year and studied natural history. Then, when he was 18, Nagasawa left Cornell and went to Santa Rosa, Calif.

Nagasawa used his Cornell education to cultivate grapes and sustain the settlement. He became known as the “Wine King” of California, and he was the first to introduce Californian wines to England, Europe and Japan. According to Kammen, after Harris’ utopian experiment in California failed, Nagasawa inherited the Napa Valley vineyards. Unfortunately, Nagasawa’s heirs would not retain possession of the land to see it during its most prosperous times.

Although Nagasawa was Cornell’s first Japanese student, Riokichi Yatabe 1876, was the first Japanese and Asian student to graduate from the University, graduating with a bachelor of science. Morris Bishop, legendary Cornell historian, describes Yatabe as an eminent botanist and one of Cornell’s pioneer students in his book, A History of Cornell.

After graduating from Cornell and returning to Japan, Yatabe became the first professor of botany at the Tokyo Imperial University in 1878 and the curator of the Tokyo Botanic Garden. In 1886, Yatabe was selected as the principal of the Upper Normal School of the Tokyo Imperial University. As principal, Yatabe founded the modern teacher education program in Japan. Even after returning to Japan, Yatabe attempted to maintain relations with Cornell. In 1877, Yatabe wrote to Dr. Bert Green Wilder to try and initiate an exchange of specimens between Cornell and the Tokyo Imperial University.

“I wish to make exchange[s] with you," he wrote. "Our collection consists of animals of all kinds, vertebras and invertebrates, plants and minerals. If you will send us specimens of North American animals correctly named, I shall be glad to send you our specimens.”

On Aug. 7, 1899, Yatabe drowned on the beach of Kamakura, Japan. On Sept. 29, 1899, The Cornell News reported Yatabe’s sudden death: “At the time of his death he was principal of the Upper Normal School. In his political views [he was] conservatively pro-Japanese; in scientific thought and attainment, modern and progressive, he is mourned by his American alma mater and his native country.”

Yatabe was one of the 56 Japanese students who had graduated from Cornell by 1908. According to the International Students and Scholars Office Annual Statistics Report, in 2008, 16.57 percent of students at Cornell were international students. While Japan is not one of the 10 countries with the largest representation of students, 54 Japanese students were enrolled at Cornell in 2008. Nine of the fifty-four were undergraduates, 35 were graduates and 10 were professional students. Ezra Cornell’s hopes to found a university filled with a diverse and international student body is evident in the continuous and long-term presence of Japanese students at Cornell.