Nanzan University is operated by Nanzan Gakuen, a religious order run by the Society of the Divine Word. Father Joseph Reiners, a German SVD missionary who arrived in Japan at the end of the Meiji period, founded Nanzan High School in 1932. In 1946, the Nanzan College of Foreign Languages was established—and in 1949 it became the seed for Nanzan University, which started as a single faculty with just four departments. The institution has since grown into a fully-fledged university offering 8 faculties, 6 graduate programs, and the Center for Japanese Studies.