News and Reports Archive

The Japan Foundation/British Association for Japanese Studies Postgraduate Workshop 2023 On Saturday 18th March, we held our annual PhD Workshop, which is joint organised with the British Association for Japanese Studies (BAJS)! Despite plans to hold the event in person, industrial action affecting transport meant that the event was reorganised…

On Saturday 4th March 2023, the annual Japanese Speech Contest for University Students was held in-person for the first time since 2020! We were honoured to welcome twenty-five students from twelve universities across the United Kingdom to the prestigious Great Hall of King’s College London, to give speeches and presentations…

The Japan Foundation is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Established in 1972, we are proud to have supported intercultural and international exchange for half a century. To mark this occasion, the Japan Foundation has created a “JF50” website, which is available in both Japanese and English. Here, you can…

Our Senior Arts Programme Officer joined one of the events with Daniel Hahn as part of the Cheltenham Literature Festival on 16 October where she introduced her selection of recommendations. Find the list attached:

Between 2nd August and 23rd August 2022, the UCL-Japan Youth Challenge held its 8th annual summer school programme for pre-university students. This year, due to continuing difficulties posed by COVID-19, the programme took place online. More than 100 students from the UK and Japan joined to participate in the 3-week…

On Saturday 9th July 2022, we were excited and delighted to hold the finals day of the inaugural Japanese Video Championship for Young Learners UK. This was a brand new event established in 2022 for primary and secondary school and sixth form students studying Japanese in the UK. This was…

Food in Studio Ghibli films, Francophone bandes dessinée, and plastic surgery – these are just some of the fascinating topics covered by students studying Japanese at universities across the United Kingdom at the Finals Day of the 17th Japanese Speech Contest for University Students. This online event was held on…

This year The Japan Foundation and The British Association for Japanese Studies were able to come together again in person for the 11th Postgraduate Japanese Studies Workshop. This time the event was held at the University of East Anglia. Students who had waited two years to gather face to face…

The UCL-Japan Youth Challenge returned for its 7th annual summer school programme. The programme took place online to ensure the safety of all participants. Between 3rd and 24th August, a total of 100 students from Japan joined 35 UK-based students over the course of 4 weeks. This year’s focus was,…

The Japan Foundation, London partnered with Birkbeck, University of London to present a two-part event: “Japanese Documentary Filmmaker Haneda Sumiko: Authorship and Gender Discourses”. Two symposia were convened featuring speakers from around the globe speaking on the highly influential film maker Haneda Sumiko. The speakers covered a wide range of…

You’re in a small, Japanese-style theatre room. The house lights are up, and you’re surrounded by a chattering, excited crowd. People are sipping ice tea from plastic bottles, fanning themselves, and looking towards the empty stage. Suddenly, a loud buzzer sounds and the crowd falls silent. The room remains shining…

On Saturday 10th July, secondary school students studying Japanese across the UK competed in the Finals Day of the Nihongo Cup Japanese Speech Contest for Secondary School Students. This was the eighteenth year the contest has been held, and the second time the contest has been held online due to…