Latest News

We are excited to announce the launch of the JAL Foundation 17th World Children’s Haiku Contest on the theme of Towns. The contest is a chance for those aged 15 and under to flex their creative muscles and we invite all young people to send us their original haiku and artwork before Monday 28 February 2022.

Japan Society retained the Collar Cup in a very close fought match with the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry at Hendon Golf Club on Saturday 16 October 2021. The victory came by the narrowest of margins with final scores of 277 and 276 respectively, with conditions taxing after heavy rain.

If you’ll forgive the pun, it has been a noble week for some of the values shared by the UK and Japan. Since I am a long-time Grub Street Hack, as journalists and other writers were termed in 19th-century Britain, it will surprise no one that I was especially delighted to see the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to two brave journalists, battling to hold authoritarian governments to account.

Tsunagu/Connect is a project from New Earth Theatre documenting the lives of dozens of women who were born in Japan but have settled in the UK since 1945. As part of the project New Earth Theatre is creating a short intergenerational film of young people interviewing their Japanese mothers or grandmothers about their lives in Japan and here in the UK and are looking for young people of Japanese heritage (age 8 - 16) to take part.

Watch the recording of our online talk with author and photographer John Lander as he takes us on a journey along the Shikoku Pilgrimage.

Watch the recording of our webinar when Japan Society chairman Bill Emmott was joined in conversation by Robert Whiting, author of the recent book Tokyo Junkie: 60 Years of Bright Lights and Back Alleys... and Baseball.

Choosing the winners for our Yuru-Chara Design Contest was extremely difficult, however, after much careful deliberation, we are delighted to announce the results! We were thrilled to receive entries from children and adults from across the UK, spanning from Cornwall to Orkney, and were blown away by all the impressive and thoughtful designs!

Our friends at New Earth Theatre invite Japan Society members and friends to listen to their first-ever podcast Earth 2 Air dedicated to amplifying and championing stories of East and South East Asians in the UK.

Well, it’s not often one can write something like this: I hope you all had a better summer than Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga! We all knew that Japan’s summer of sporting contests at the Olympics and Paralympics were going to be followed by two electoral contests..

Watch the recording of our online lecture with Anne Strathie as she pieces together Herbert Ponting’s time in Japan and discusses the wide-ranging achievements of Ponting in early 20th century Japan and Antarctica.