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Watch the recording of the lecture by Dr Sonia Favi where she illustrated the contents of the Japanese Maps Collection of the University of Manchester Library as well as the digitisation process, the creation of the metadata, and how the digitised materials are being used by the library to foster research and public engagement.

Watch the recording of our webinar when Japan Society chairman Bill Emmott was joined to discuss the important issue of green and sustainable finance by two experts in the field: Roger Gifford and Mari Yoshitaka.

Britain and America, quipped the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, are two nations divided by a common language. Or at least I think Shaw said this, but one modern consequence of Google is that when I used it to check the quote, it told me that there is no clear attribution, and that it might have been said by Oscar Wilde or someone else entirely.

Watch the recording of this lecture by Dr Christopher Hood where he explored the long history of disaster movies in Japan. Based on an extensive study of disaster movies both in Japan and Hollywood, this lecture considers the degree to which Japanese disaster movies present both conservative and revisionist approaches.

Watch the recording of our webinar when Bill Emmott was joined by Prof Paul Riley and Georg Holländer from the new Institute of Developmental and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Oxford and Prof Shin’ichi Takeda of the Translational Medical Center in Tokyo to discuss regenerative medicine and its potential impact on global health.

5 May is Kodomo no Hi or Children's Day in Japan, the day when people celebrate the health and happiness of children. On this day, you may find children running around wearing origami kabuto helmets and lots of koi carp flags flying all over the country.

One effect of the pandemic which I’m sure we won’t miss, whenever it turns out to be over, is the way in which holidays have become difficult to distinguish from other days, although turning off emails and social media no doubt helps.

Watch the recording of our webinar when Bill Emmott was joined by two distinguished diplomats: Kuni Miyake, president of the think-tank Foreign Policy Institute and James P Zumwalt, Chairman of the Japan-America Society of Washington DC to discuss the state of US-Japan relations and their implications.

We are delighted to announce the launch of a new teaching soroban loan scheme and accompanying tutorial videos for teachers. The soroban is the Japanese abacus and is used as part of the national maths curriculum for primary school children in Japan.

Longer life expectancies and changing social mores mean that neither in Britain or Japan are we very accustomed to the deaths of senior members of our royal and imperial families and to what national responses and practices should mark them.