Takashi Kubota
Vice Mayor of Rikuzentakata City, Takashi Kubota was born in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1976. After graduating in Anthropology by the Kyoto University, in 2001 he entered the Japanese Cabinet. In 2000, he was a member of the youth delegation in Denmark, group sent by the General Affairs Agency of the Japanese Cabinet. He has actively taken part in the enactment of various measures to support the training of children and young people in risk of becoming NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training). He is the Director of Project K, the Association of Young People for the creation of a New Kasumigaseki, and also member of Crossover 21, the Network for the Cooperation between Government and People. From 2005 to 2007 he completed his postgraduate studies in the UK, obtaining his MBA from the University of Cambridge and his MA in Politics from the University of York.
Yoshio Sugimoto
Yoshio Sugimoto is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He grew up in Kyoto, Japan, graduated from Kyoto University and obtained his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh, USA. Since moving to Australia in 1973, he has lectured and researched at La Trobe University where he was Dean of Social Sciences from 1988 to 1991. Professor Sugimoto has developed a multicultural model of Japanese society which draws attention to its subcultural diversity and class competition and made a major contribution to a recent paradigm shift in Japanese studies away from the conventional notion that Japan comprises a uniform and homogeneous culture. Professor Sugimoto’s recent publications include An Introduction to Japanese Society (third edition, 2010, Cambridge University Press) and The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture (ed., 2009, Cambridge University Press). In Melbourne in 1999, he established Trans Pacific Press, an English-language publishing house, which has so far published more than one hundred titles mainly written by Japanese social scientists.
Wataru Sawamura
Wataru Sawamura is currently European editor and Head of the London Office since April 2011 of the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.
He was born in Tokyo 1963. Literature graduate by the Tokyo University in 1986. Sinc then he has held diverse posts for Asahi Shimbun as a correspondent in New York, correspondent in London and Head of the Paris Office. He was assigned Foreign Relations Editor in order to supervise the company abroad with 30 offices and 50 correspondents in 2008, as Deputy Managing Editor since 2010.
Joaquín Luna
Born in Barcelona on the 31st of December 1958, he is a Journalism graduate by the University of Navarra (1981), after which he was granted a scholarship at Missouri Columbia University (1985). He has been journalist for La Vanguardia since 1982, correspondent for La Vanguardia in the Far East based in Hong Kong (1987-1993), in Washington (1993-1996) and Paris (1996-2000). Since 2005 he is foreign desk editor-in-chief. He has covered the funerals of Hiro Hito, Deng Xiaoping and Hassan II, the killing of Tiananmen, the pacification in Cambodia, the elections in Japan, the wars of Kuwait and Irak, the presidential elections in the USA. In 1996 and 2000, he was special correspondent in New York after 9/11, he covered the French presidential elections in 2002, the Olympic Games in Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta and Athens, the world cups of USA, France and Korea-Japan.
Aiko Doden
Aiko Doden is NHK’s senior commentator on South East Asia and development issues. Concurrently Ms Doden anchors NHK’s debate programme in English “Asian Voices” on NHK World TV and on NHK BS1. She is a popular face on NHK TV, having anchored NHK’s key news programme as “Good Morning Japan”, “NHK News at 9 PM” and “NHK World Network”. Until 2002, she was a correspondent based in Thailand covering ASEAN countries intensively with a focus on. Ms Doden has reported on issues in the region ranging from politics to public health, from hard security to human security. She was appointed to be the Japanese Government Goodwill Ambassador for the UN World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), held in Tunis 2005. She holds a Master’s degree in international relations from Columbia University, New York, USA, and a Bachelor’s degree in foreign studies from Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan.
Tomoko A. Hosaka
Tomoko A. Hosaka is an independent journalist based in Silicon Valley and an affiliate with the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University. She recently moved to California after a decade in Japan, where she worked as a business and technology reporter for The Associated Press and was part of its award-winning team that covered the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis. She is a member of the national board of the Asian American Journalists Association, and is passionate about social media and the evolution of storytelling on emerging platforms. She studied at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, which led her to political reporting at The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon. She holds a master’s degree in international relations from Waseda University and has also written for The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Dow Jones Newswires.
Sree Sreenivasan
Dean of Student Affairs, Columbia Journalism School, Sree Sreenivasan is a professor and Dean of Student Affairs at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches in the digital media program, including social media and digital entrepreneurship. He specializes in explaining technology to journalists and the general public. He writes the SreeTips blog for CNET and appears regularly on CBS and elsewhere to talk tech. For more than eight years, he served as technology reporter for WABC-TV and WNBC-TV in NYC. During 2009-11, he was part of the founding team of DNAinfo.com, a Manhattan news site with Joe Ricketts,Ameritrade founder. He has written articles for The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Rolling Stone, National Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes and Popular Science. He is co-founder of SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association, a group of more than a thousand journalists across the US & Canada. In 2009, he was named one of 25 media people to follow on Twitter and in 2010 was named one of the 35 most influential people in social media.
David Jiménez
David Jiménez (Barcelona, 1971) is correspondent for the newspaper El Mundo in Asia, where he has covered the main wars, revolutions and events of the last 12 years. His articles and features have been published in some of the main newspapers of the world. Jiménez covered the triple Japanese crisis and was the last journalist that abandoned the area and the only one that stayed there during the six most critical days. He returned last December to inform of the situation of the Fukushima nuclear power station. His first book, Hijos del Monzón, was awarded for the Best Travel Literature Book in Spain and has been translated into several languages. El Botones de Kabul was his debut in the fiction genre.
Sergi Vicente
Journalism graduate in 1999 by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Sergi Vicente began working for TVE Sant Cugat and then went to China as an English teacher in 2002, and to collaborate with TV3 in 2003 due to the SARS crisis. TV3 correspondent in Beijing for 9 years, he covered all the sessions of the National Assembly since 2004, the Olympic and Paralympic Games of 2008, the Shanghai Expo (2010), among others. In 2005 and 2009 he informed of the general elections in Japan, as well as events in other Asian countries. He has covered the earthquakes Sichuan (China, 2008), Sumatra (Indonesia, 2009) and the Tohoku tsunami (Japan, 2011), the ethnic revolt in Urumqi (China, 2009), or the crisis of the bombardment of the South Korean island Yeonpyeong (2010). As well as TV3, he has collaborated with other media, such as Diari ARA, the magazine El Temps, and other autonomic television channels. In 2005 he took part in the AsiaMedia Seminar organised by Casa Asia. On the 11th of March he published 'Fukushima, crònica d'un tsunami nuclear', co-written with Lluís Caelles.
Takemura Shinichi
Professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design, Takemura Shinichi is a committee member of Reconstruction Design Council of the Japanese government for the Tohoku 3.11 earthquake. He has launched social experimental projects using new technology to create the world's first multimedia globe called "Tangible Earth", which he designed in 2005. The Tangible Earth is on display in many places around the world, including Experimentarium in Copenhagen, NEMO in Amsterdam, and has been exhibited at United Nation’s headquarters in New York. Professor Takemura is a member of the Study Group of the Reconstruction Design Council in Response to the Great East Japan Earthquake. The Council is now proposing recommendations regarding the post-disaster recovery, including community roles in municipality-led reconstruction, and rigorous promotion of the use of renewable energy, in the shadow of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster. Professor Takemura's many publications include “Toward a Planetary Culture” (PHP) and “Cosmic Tree” (Keio University Press).
Naoya Bessho
Naoya Bessho is a Law Graduate by the Keio University. He joined Yahoo Japan Corporation in 1999 where he obtained his current position of General Counsel in 2006. He is currently a member of several government committees related to copyright, illegal or harmful information, and other issues in relation to the Internet. With his legal knowledge and insight, he provides valuable support for Yahoo! JAPAN projects concerning the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster, such as disaster information dissemination and disaster area aid projects. In addition, he is currently working to establish agreements with municipal governments across Japan that would put into place safeguards for reducing the burden on administrative functions and would allow rapid dissemination of essential information during a disaster.
James Kondo
Employed in 2011 by Twitter Japan, he is the Operation Manager of the same company. A graduate from the Faculty of Economics of Keio University, he holds an MBA from Harvard University. Between 2009 and 2011, he has served as Counsellor to the Secretary General of the National Policy Unit in the Cabinet Secretariat and has been engaged in the international public relations strategy of the Cabinet. In 2007 created and managed Table for Two, in 2004 The Japanese Health Policy Institute and in 2003 founded the Healthcare and Social Policy Leadership Program at the University of Tokyo. Visiting professor at Hitotsubashi University, he is a member of the Forum of Young Global Leaders at Davos.
Akira Kawasaki
Mr. Akira Kawasaki is an Executive Committee member of the Tokyo-based NGO Peace Boat. As a Vice Chair of International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and a Coordinating Committee member of Abolition 2000, he advocates for and frequently writes in Japanese newspapers and journals on nuclear disarmament. Since 2008, Kawasaki coordinates “Global Voyage for a Nuclear-Free World: Peace Boat Hibakusha Project” that the atomic-bomb survivors travel around the world to raise public awareness on nuclear danger. In 2009-2010, he served as an NGO Advisor to Co-Chairs of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND). After the 11 March 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster, he initiated Peace Boat's activities to help children of Fukushima and organized Global Conference for a Nuclear Power Free World.
