This project aims to enhance the role of women in democratic governance and bolster their representation in public office in Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. It does so by bringing together women from the three nations — civil society leaders, scholars, experts, and business professionals — to identify challenges, share best practices, and elevate women in decision-making roles through virtual and in-person dialogues.
Location: Washington, D.C.
Grant Awarded: $70,000
Film-maker Yuriko Gamo Romer (“Mrs. Judo”) is producing the definitive documentary narrating the 150-year history of American baseball in Japan and how the game has shaped relations between the two countries. The film is scheduled to be completed in time for release in 2025, coinciding with the likely induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame of Ichiro Suzuki, the first Japanese player to claim that honor.
Location: San Francisco, CA
Grant Awarded: $60,000
The documentary titled “Row Don’t Drift” casts a spotlight on the story of a Japanese American farmer who refused to be drafted into combat by the country that had interned him, resulting in him and his fellow resisters being sentenced to hard labor at the euphemistically named “Catalina Federal Honor Camp.” While the stories of Japanese American internment and of Japanese American soldiers fighting in World War II are well-known, this film sheds light on the narrative of the draft resisters who have received little attention from popular historians.
Location: Merced, CA
Grant Awarded: $66,500
Film-maker Linda Hoagland released in 2019 a documentary about the influence of Edo-era artists on the “modern art” movement in the West. The film’s success led to the creation, in conjunction with the Smithsonian, of the K-12 art curriculum: “Investigating Japan’s Edo Avant Garde.” This project would expand that initiative and launch “Inspired by Edo,” a national student art competition to promote the curriculum, and to raise awareness of the history of Japan’s cultural legacy in the U.S.
Location: New York, NY
Grant Awarded: $60,000
“The World” from PRX and GBH is the longest-running global news program for public radio in the U.S. This grant would fund one year of focused reporting from Japan on the topics of disruption and resilience, and of aging. This grant would also allow “The World” to extend its “Global Classroom” program to Japan, where correspondents help train local student journalists.
Location: Boston, MA
Grant Awarded: $80,000
This grant aims to foster a closer alliance between the American and Japanese business communities in devising a set of best practices for promoting/enforcing rules for transparent and accountable markets in Asian emerging markets. This will be done through research, roundtables, and reports to be promoted to business leaders and policymakers in both countries.
Location: Washington, D.C.
Grant Awarded: $99,785
A project aimed at helping Japan strengthen child sexual abuse laws and protections, bringing them more in line with the U.S. and Group of Seven advanced economies. This will also help establish in Japan child advocacy centers and survivor councils. Project lead Robert Shilling — former head of Crimes Against Children for INTERPOL — is working with Japanese government officials, Diet members, and non-governmental organizations to harmonize laws on issues such as age of consent, statute of limitations, and child pornography.
Location: Washington, D.C.
Grant Awarded: $65,900
This is a scoping grant to explore prospects for meaningful impact on a crucial question hanging over the US-Japan alliance: whether it can survive a rise in isolationism in U.S. politics. The goal is to come up with an actionable blueprint identifying and targeting Members of Congress and their constituents by crafting effective messaging.
Location: Washington, D.C.
Grant Awarded: $25,000
A matching grant challenge to the Foundation’s US-Japan Leadership Program network and to the broader U.S.-Japan community for recovery and relief efforts for the area affected by the New Year’s Day 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake.
Location: Washington, D.C.
Grant Awarded: $25,000
Densho has run digital platforms preserving community history and providing historical context about the Japanese American experience for 30 years. The organization has found rapidly growing interest for its work in Japan, and this project would accelerate its ability to translate its work into Japanese, and to create new content aimed at Japanese audiences.
Location: Seattle, WA
Grant Awarded: $40,000
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This project targets early-career Japanese and U.S. women (with STEM PhDs or in STEM PhD programs), offering training in leadership competencies not included in university core STEM programs. An intensive summer workshop in Tokyo will be followed by monthly Zoom meetings. This will also give opportunities for participants to co-teach future workshops, and will provide fresh data to help Epistimi fine-tune future workshops.
Location: Andover, MA
Grant Awarded: $51,000
An all-girls project for American and Japanese high school students to collaborate in-person and online on social innovation projects. Teams with the best proposals will receive mini-grants to implement their projects.
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Grant Awarded: $69,228
“The expansion of a student program providing arts, cultural enrichment, and resources for teachers, focused on Japan, for low-income schools in New York City.
Location: New York, NY
Grant Awarded: $50,000
In the summer of 2024, 10 Japanese university students will travel to New York and Washington D.C. for one week to visit international organizations, think tanks, NPOs and community groups. The program is designed for students who live in a single-parent household or in foster care, or are receiving public assistance, and have demonstrated potential as future global leaders.
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Grant Awarded: $33,081
This project is designed to boost the Japanese presence of Edible Schoolyard, a well-regarded global program started in the U.S. by acclaimed chef Alice Waters. The goal is to expand the network from six public schools to 100, and from 1,100 students to 10,000. The plan is also to create in Japan a formal network of instructors, working closely with like-minded teachers across the country, and to get the curriculum formally integrated into public schools.
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Grant Awarded: $28,050
Inspired by Japan’s efforts to combat obesity and unhealthy eating habits through Shokuiku (food education), this project aims to build healthier communities in the U.S. facing similar challenges, from kindergarten to college students. The organization’s new “Japan Food Education Partnership Program” aims to extend its reach by training local partners to become instructors, thus allowing the network to expand beyond its base of big coastal cities into rural parts of the U.S.
Location: New York, NY
Grant Awarded: $56,579
The second year of NAJAS’s innovative twist on its traditional curator talk series highlights exacting digital replicas of original Japanese art that are then authentically finished and set in traditional frames. The digital replicas are drawn from Canon’s Tsuzuri archive, and the new NAJAS series is designed to expose more Americans to Japanese art and to spread the influence of the Tsuzuri approaches to conservation and return. The project includes a competition to choose among local Japan-America Societies to host the digital art and lectures. The project will also develop methods to spread the impact of those events.
Location: Washington, D.C.
Grant Awarded: $61,380
The project pairs small groups of American students in grades 3 to 12 with teachers in Japan for language study, training both the students and the teachers, who are university students in Japan majoring in education. Teachers are awarded practicum certificates and have the opportunity to later meet their students in person, as part of a U.S visit and homestay. Most students come from underserved school districts in the Detroit area. The project is also aimed at helping students find work at the nearly 500 Japanese-affiliated companies in Michigan seeking employees with bicultural skills.
Location: Ypsilanti, MI
Grant Awarded: $6,000
A 35-year-old student-oriented sister city relationship between a rural Georgia county and its Japanese counterpart of Konu-cho/Miyoshi-City within the Hiroshima Prefecture. The regions in both countries are lower-income and struggling economically. Most of the students who join this exchange become the first in their families to acquire a passport; for some, it’s the first to get on an airplane. The exchange was launched by Jimmy Carter, whose home of Plains is in the county, as a symbol of goodwill and friendship between Japan and the U.S.. He and Rosalynn were for many years, active in the program.
Location: Americus, GA
Grant Awarded: $25,000
Woodland Hills High School is a Title 1 School. The proceeds of this grant will help the Woodland Hills International Studies Club to further its study of Japanese culture at home and abroad. The funding provides scholarships to help cover the costs of a six-city, 10-day tour of Japan.
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Grant Awarded: $20,000
This is for an annual exchange program between Elk Grove High School in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, and Ashikaga, Tochigi. While the exchange program has been going on for 33 years, this is the first time the school has sought a grant to support the program. The grant would allow four lower-income students to participate in the exchange. Nearly half the students in the school are Latino, many immigrants. Nearly half the school qualifies for free lunches.
Location: Elk Grove, IL
Grant Awarded: $10,000
This is run by a nonprofit based in San Antonio, Texas, specializing in high-school exchanges for students in the metropolitan area seeking financial assistance to participate in such programs. Since its founding in 2014, the organization has run trips to China, South Korea, Japan, Germany, and Spain. The grant covers 15 “travel scholarships” for lower-income students, including assistance in applying for first-time passports to visit San Antonio’s Sister City of Kumamoto. The trip will be preceded by an intensive language and cultural training course.
Location: San Antonio, TX
Grant Awarded: $25,000
This grant supports the organization’s core Global Classmates virtual bilateral high school student exchange, which will cover 2,200 high school students in 78 schools, half in each country. It will also help expand a new initiative, the Global Classmates Community, which seeks to keep alumni engaged as a network and to provide them mentoring services.
Location: Washington, D.C.
Grant Awarded: $24,420
