Dive into Kansai’s Economic Core
ACCJ members got a unique inside look at the country’s most important financial institution on March 24 as the ACCJ–Kansai Business Programs Committee hosted an event titled Dive into Kansai’s Economic Core.
Juneteenth: Seeds of Hope (Audio)
The ACCJ Journal sat down with CIC founder Tim Rowe in the bustling Toranomon Hills networking hub to learn more about how he went from sharing a space with friends to leading a community for entrepreneurs that includes more than 1,000 companies at centers in eight cities around the world.
Plants and Trees
A stone monument, two or three feet tall, with a simple inscription stood before me. It read: “plants and trees.” Somokuto, as they are known in Japanese, are monuments concentrated mainly in Okitama, a region in southern Yamagata Prefecture in Tohoku, the northern part of Japan’s main island of Honshu. Adam Fulford shares more.
Spirit of Yozan
The death of a close friend at college prompted Tohoku native Hiroaki Miyajima to pursue a career in advertising in the United States. Having returned to his hometown of Yonezawa, Yamagata Prefecture, in 2011, he is now part of a local business collective whose mission is to secure the town’s future prosperity. The Ukogi collective, established by Miyajima and several other Kojokan graduates, channels the spirit of Yozan in a bid to grapple with the issues facing Yonezawa and many of Japan’s rural areas.
Of One Blood All Nations
There is ample scholarship around Meiji-period Japan and the United States that John Bingham did more to shape America’s initial diplomatic relationship with Japan than any other American. In his biography of Bingham, former ACCJ Executive Director Sam Kidder contributes significantly to that body and makes a persuasive case for the US minister to Japan from 1873 to 1885.