The University of Tokyo is facing allegations that one of its graduate programs deliberately prevented mainland Chinese students from applying by embedding banned keywords in its website code, according to an investigation by the university’s student newspaper.
Todai Shimbun reported that the Computational Biology and Medical Sciences Program’s admissions page contained the term “June 4th Tiananmen” in Chinese characters for over a year, between August 2023 and September 2024. The term, referring to the 1989 student uprising, is blocked by the Great Firewall of China.
The university has confirmed the incident and has since removed the code in question. Officials say they have revised their source code verification procedures to prevent similar incidents.
The embedded code meant the admissions page likely failed to load for potential applicants in mainland China during the 13-month period, effectively barring them from accessing application information.
This incident follows previous controversies regarding Japan-China relations at the institution. In 2019, the university dismissed associate professor Osawa Shohei after he publicly stated his refusal to hire Chinese people, citing “poor performance.”
The revelation comes amid broader concerns about discrimination against Chinese and Korean nationals in Japan, including recent instances of housing and service discrimination.
The keyword’s presence was verified through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which preserved versions of the page showing the controversial code between August 2023 and September 2024.
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