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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.

We’re delighted to announce that the popular online Japanese language and culture resource Ready Steady NihonGO! is once again available for teachers to use in their classrooms. After undergoing essential updates, the ten lesson interactive resource is now ready for the 2021 Autumn Term.

Watch the recording of our online talk with artist and sound recordist Mat Eric Hart and DJ, field recordist and broadcaster Nick Luscombe as they take us on an auditory journey across Japan.