Latest News

If nothing else, this pandemic has over the past few months taught us how vulnerable we all are and given us some inkling of the sort of steps that are necessary to reduce that vulnerability. Our friends in Japan perhaps needed less reminding of that, given the prevalence since time immemorial there of natural disasters.

Watch the video of our latest webinar on Thursday 2 July 2020 about the current situation on the Korean peninsula with Chung Min Lee, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and John Nilsson-Wright, senior lecturer at Cambridge University.

As a boy I was always more interested in subjects like history and geography than in science, but for some reason I have always remembered watching Professor Eric Laithwaite of Imperial College giving a lecture about magnetic levitation, a topic which seemed to the youthful me to be akin watching magic.

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 16th World Children's Haiku Contest 2020. The Japan Society would like to thank everyone for their support of this year’s contest and for their patience in waiting for the results.

In a week when pleasure at the prospect of returning to something closer to normal life has been balanced by concern about crowded beaches and a stubborn British resistance to learning from Japan by wearing masks, I have found myself thinking about comedians, political talk shows and men with moustaches.

We invite everyone to make a tanzaku decoration and share their tanabata wish with us. We have created a gallery to display our tanabata wishes this year and would love to see your wishes too.

Watch the video of the eleventh in our Webinar Series in which our chairman, Bill Emmott, discussed the future of international travel with David Atkinson, Timothy Jenkins and Martin Barrow.

The news, from this week’s webinar, that in 1964 the country received only 353,000 visitors was striking enough, especially given that that was the year when the Olympic Games were last held in Tokyo.

Watch the video of the tenth in our Webinar Series in which our chairman, Bill Emmott, was joined in discussion by Michael Mainelli, Executive Chairman Z/Yen, and Hiroshi Nakaso, Chairman FinCity Tokyo, as we to the futures of our two national and financial capitals.

If recent events have taught us anything, it is that in these British Isles we are rather nicer to our famous past writers than we are to the historical figures whose statues have been ending up toppled or vandalised.