Who We Are

The Japan400 team

Advisory Council

Martin Barrow CBE
Professor Dr Leonard Blussé van Oud Alblas
Sir John Boyd KCMG
Professor Roberto Cipolla FREng
Professor David Cope
Paul Dimond CMG
Christopher Everett CBE
Sir Graham Fry KCMG
Haruko Fukuda OBE
The Right Hon. The Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Roger Gifford
Sir Stephen Gomersall KCMG
Mami Mizutori
Professor Ian Nish CBE
The Viscount Trenchard
Sir David Warren KCMG
Professor Paul Webley
Sir John Whitehead GCMG CVO

Steering Committee

Co-Chairs

Nicolas Maclean of Pennycross CMG (Fellow Emeritus of the British Association of Japanese Studies and Honorary President of the Miura Anjinkai)
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After PPE at Oriel College, Oxford, Nicolas had a career in banking and insurance with Schroders, Samuel Montagu, Midland Group, HSBC, and Prudential, before seven years as a Senior Fellow with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and subsequently running his own consultancy company, MWM (Asia). In 1976 he initiated the British prototype on which the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (JET) is modelled and was made Honorary Chairman of the William Adams Association, the Miura Anjinkai. He served as Vice-President of the Japan Society, Coordinator for the Sponsors of the Royal Academy’s “Great Japan Exhibition”, Chairman of the 1991 Japan Festival Education Committee and later Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the Japan Festival Education Trust. He was Vice-President of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs and is a Fellow Emeritus of the British Association of Japanese Studies. He has written and broadcast on Japanese history, art and culture.

Professor Timon Screech (Head of School of Arts, SOAS, University of London)
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Timon Screech received his BA from Oxford and his PhD from Harvard. He is Professor of the History of Art and Head of the School of Arts at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in the University of London, and concurrently, Permanent Visiting Professor at Tama Art University, Tokyo. Screech has published some dozen books on Edo visual culture, including The Lens Within the Heart: The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan and Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan, 1700-1820. His field-defining work, Obtaining Images: Art, Production and Display in Edo Japan, was published in 2012. Screech is currently working on the history of a ship of the English East India Company which left for Japan in 1615, and will be entitled The Cargo of the “New Year’s Gift”. His work has been translated into French, Japanese, Korean, Polish and Romanian.

Members

Mike Barrett OBE (former CEO, Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation; former Director, The British Council, Japan)
Manan Bhansali, (VP – Operations, The East India Company Fine Foods Ltd.)
Marie Conte-Helm OBE (Executive Director, UK-Japan 21st Century Group)
Joe Earle (Senior Consultant for Japanese Art, Bonhams; former Director of Japan Society Gallery, New York.)
Brendan Griggs MBE
Susan Haydock (Chairman of the Medway Japan Group, Honorary Mayor of Yokosuka and former Mayor of Medway (now incorporating Gillingham))
William Horsley (UK Chairman, Association of European Journalists; former BBC Correspondent in Japan)
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William was the BBC’s Tokyo correspondent in the 1980s, when Japan-British relations began to take off in new and exciting ways. His close interest in Japanese society, language and history impelled him to earn a degree in Japanese Studies at Oxford University in 1971. In 1990 he co-wrote Nippon: New Superpower with Roger Buckley, and he has written widely on Japanese issues for media including the BBC News website and Prospect magazine. He is currently the UK Chairman of the Association of European Journalists and international director of the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield. On 23 May he addressed a meeting of Japan Society Southern Counties about enduring paradoxes in Japan’s international relations.

Sue Hudson (Business Development Director, Fujisankei Comms. Int.)
Setsuo Kato (Editor, Kato Media)
Takayasu Ogura (European Bureau Chief, Mainichi Shimbun)
Geoffrey Tudor (Japan Representative, Japan400)
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Geoffrey Tudor, is currently a principal analyst with Japan Aviation Management Research (JAMR), an aviation industry think-tank based in Tokyo.
A native of the UK, Tudor joined Japan Airlines in London in 1969 and was posted to the airline’s Tokyo corporate headquarters in 1974. He retired from JAL as Director, International PR, in 2004 but served as an advisor until April 2007.
A keen amateur historian, he is the chairman of the Tokyo-based Dead Dutchman Society and has written on such topics as the provenance of Sakamoto Ryoma’s boots and the Japanese pioneer of flight, Ninomiya Chuhachi.
He is a life member of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan and a member of the Tokyo Club.

Jenny White (Project Manager, British Council)
Rie Yoshitake (Samurai Sake UK representative)

Ex-Officio Members

Yuichiro Hanyu (Director, Japan Local Government Centre; representative of relevant Japanese Cities)
Jason James (Director, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation)
Stephen McEnally (Chief Executive, Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation)
Kazuya Mori (Counsellor, Deputy Director, Japan Information and Cultural Centre, Embassy of Japan in the UK)
Richard C Morris (Head of Pacific Department, Asia Pacific Directorate, Foreign & Commonwealth Office)
Heidi Potter (Chief Executive, Japan Society)
Kenichi Yanagisawa (Director-General, Japan Foundation, London)
Simon Wright (Senior Coordinator for Cultural Affairs, Embassy of Japan in the UK)

Japan400 Media Group

Chair

William Horsley (UK Chairman, Association of European Journalists; former BBC Correspondent in Japan)

Members

Sean Curtin (Editor, Japan Society Review; Director, Japan Matsuri)
Brendan Griggs MBE
Sue Hudson (Business Development Director, Fujisankei Comms. Int.)
Setsuo Kato (Editor, Kato Media)
Takayasu Ogura (European Bureau Chief, Mainichi Shimbun)
Heidi Potter (Chief Executive, Japan Society)
David Watts (Editor, Asian Affairs)
Jenny White (Project Manager, British Council)

Executive Group

Sean Curtin
Sue Hudson
William Horsley
Nicolas Maclean
Heidi Potter
Timon Screech
David Watts
Jenny White

Japan400 Support Team

Sam Bani
Natasha Bassett
Caitlin Egen
Meg Hamilton
Nao Hashimoto
Saki Kuroda
Karis Lacroix
Radu Leca
Haru Leitch
Ben Lynn
Ayaka McGill
Kara Robinson
Helen Swift (Japan)
James Tudor (Japan)

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