Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, at the end of March 2022 The Nippon Foundation announced the launch of The Nippon Foundation Support for Evacuees from Ukraine project. The project has been providing evacuees with financial assistance for travel and living expenses, as well as support for education and employment to enable them to live independently. With more than two years having passed since the invasion, evacuees in Japan are at a stage of making the difficult decision of whether to transition from being “evacuees” and continuing to live in Japan as “residents.” From March 2024, the program also began offering support for evacuees who were receiving assistance for daily living and now want to return to Ukraine.

In response to the increasingly severe global problem of marine debris, The Nippon Foundation has announced that it plans to hold a world championship (World Cup) for “SPOGOMI,” a sport that originated in Japan and turns trash collection into a competition. This will be the second tournament, following the first one held in 2023.

The Nippon Foundation and residents of Ehime Prefecture collected roughly 30 tons of debris at Uwajima City on July 22 as part of an effort to reduce ocean debris. The activity was part of the Setouchi Oceans X project, being carried out by The Nippon Foundation and four prefectures bordering the Seto Inland Sea to find comprehensive measures to address the issue of ocean debris. A special landing vehicle was used to collect debris that had washed up on the coast of Tojima, an island off the coast of Uwajima City, in areas that are difficult to access, with 120 people working for close to one hour. Participants included Ehime Governor Tokihiro Nakamura, Uwajima Mayor Fumiaki Okahara, members of local fishery cooperatives, local junior high school students, and The Nippon Foundation Chairman Yohei Sasakawa.

The Nippon Foundation launched the Zero Emission Ships project in January 2022 to develop ships with zero CO2 emissions. As part of this project, construction of the Hydrogen Engine R&D Center, to be operated by JPN H₂YDRO CO., LTD., was completed on September 4 in the city of Fukuyama in Hiroshima Prefecture. The Center is able to carry out all functions from hydrogen engine development to hydrogen storage and hydrogen loading.
The Center, which will be the first facility of its kind located within a shipyard,* will consist of testing facilities for hydrogen engines, which are expected to be increasingly adopted as part of the creation of a hydrogen society, and a hydrogen station (scheduled for completion in January 2025) that is designed specifically for ships. In addition to engine development for hydrogen-fueled ships, the Center is seen developing a wide range of applications for the use of hydrogen engines in areas including large trucks and heavy machinery. As a front-line base for Japan’s development of hydrogen engines, the Center is expected to contribute to the realization of a carbon-neutral society by 2050.

Hanshin Koshien Stadium,* located between the cities of Kobe in Hyogo Prefecture, and Osaka, holds a special place in the world of Japanese baseball. Built in 1924, the stadium is home to the Hanshin Tigers professional baseball team and also hosts a wildly popular national high school baseball tournament each spring and summer. It is also one of four stadiums in the world where Babe Ruth played (as part of an exhibition tour of Japan by a U.S. all-star team in 1934) that is still being used as the home field for a professional baseball team. The stadium has such an iconic status that when a team is eliminated from the high school tournaments, the players scoop up a handful of dirt from the infield to take home as a souvenir.

The Nippon Foundation would like to extend its deepest condolences to all who have been affected by the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck Japan’s Noto Peninsula and nearby areas on January 1, 2024, and their families.

The Nippon Foundation has recently published two new English-language brochures about our organization and our work. The Nippon Foundation by the Numbers is a very brief overview of the Foundation, its work, and family of organizations, highlighting some of the most important facts about the Foundation. The Nippon Foundation Profile 2024 is a 16-page document that provides a more in-depth overview of the Foundation’s history, activities, and funding.

With an increasing number of parks removing equipment and banning playing with balls for safety reasons and neighbors complaining about noise, combined with the popularity of video games and smartphones and an increase in indoor leisure facilities, children are spending less time playing outdoors. How is this affecting their health and growth? We asked Naomi Nakagawa, head of the NGO Playtank, which operates outdoor play programs for children in Tokyo’s Nerima Ward.

The Nippon Foundation has been spearheading the MEGURI2040 Fully Autonomous Ship Program since February 2020. On July 18, 2024, the Fleet Operation Center (also known as the Remote Operation Center), which has been under development to provide remote navigation support for multiple ships from land, was completed within the headquarters of FURUNO ELECTRIC CO., LTD. (Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture). At a press conference held on the same day, Mitsuyuki Unno, Executive Director of the Nippon Foundation, said, “The completion of the world’s first Fleet Operation Center for multiple ships is a major step forward. We will bring together all-Japan technologies to put autonomous ships into practical use by 2025.” The Fleet Operation Center will provide remote navigation support for four autonomous ships simultaneously in a series of demonstration tests to be conducted in July 2025.

To promote “Spring UMIGOMI Zero Week 2024,” being carried out from May 30 to June 9 as part of a nationwide cleanup program organized by The Nippon Foundation and Japan’s Ministry of the Environment to address the increasingly serious issue of ocean debris, the World Cosplay Cultural Development Association held a Cosplay de UMIGOMI Zero Challenge 2024 event on June 1 in the city of Fukuoka at the Canal City Hakata commercial complex. The event featured an opening ceremony followed by a trash cleanup in the surrounding area including the Nakasu entertainment district.

The Nippon Foundation has endorsed the objectives of the Valuable 500 (V500), the world’s largest corporate network promoting business inclusion for people with disabilities, and has been supporting the project as a Global Impact Partner since 2021. Business inclusion for people with disabilities refers not only to hiring, but also means changing the ways businesses operate to include disabled people in all of their activities, like developing products and services so that they are easy for anyone to use, regardless of whether or not they have a disability. This leads to an environment in which people, who because of a disability have not previously been able to be employed or participate fully in consumer activities, can demonstrate their unrealized value.

Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, experienced continued heavy rain beginning in late April, causing major damage from flooding across more than 85% of the state. According to local media reports, the flood damage is the worst that Brazil has ever experienced. Water levels have risen by close to three meters in some places, leaving homes, hospitals, and other facilities flooded for almost one month. With more than a month having passed since the initial flooding occurred, the waters have begun to recede and the extent of the damage has become clear. Roughly 500,000 people across the state continue to live in evacuation shelters, and the damage includes areas with Nikkei (Japanese people who emigrated from Japan to other countries to settle there permanently, and their descendants) communities. We have learned that more than 30 Nikkei families who live near the state capital of Porto Alegre have experienced damage.

A ceremony was held on March 15, 2024, to mark the commencement of operations of the plant factory Challenged Life Social Firm Osaki in Osaki City, Miyagi Prefecture. The facility is growing spinach, with daily operations carried out by persons with disabilities.

The Nippon Foundation and the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) held a ceremony in Hanoi on March 21 to mark the launch of a project to support education for children from ethnic minorities in Vietnam. The two organizations announced that they will jointly provide US$5.2 million to enable children from ethnic minorities across Vietnam to receive high-quality, inclusive education. The support will be made through Save the Children International’s Vietnam office, and the program will be carried out jointly with Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training.

The Nippon Foundation, Minerva University of the United States, and the general incorporated association Minerva Japan signed an agreement on April 22 to establish a Minerva University base in Japan.

As part of the Setouchi Oceans X project to find comprehensive measures to address the issue of marine debris, The Nippon Foundation Chairman Yohei Sasakawa and the governors of the project’s four participating prefectures (Okayama, Hiroshima, Kagawa, Ehime) held their first top-level meeting on April 15. They reviewed the project’s accomplishments to date, discussed its future direction, set new targets based on the current situation, extended the term of the project, and agreed that the four prefectures would cooperate in a large-scale cleanup activity.

The Nippon Foundation has received a donation of 31,043,088 yen from the Japan Professional Basketball League (B.League). The donation was collected at games and other events from January 5 to March 22 to support relief and recovery activities in areas affected by the January 1, 2024, earthquake that struck Japan’s Noto Peninsula. B. League Chairman Shinji Shimada presented the donation to The Nippon Foundation Chairman Yohei Sasakawa on March 26.

The Nippon Foundation would like to extend its deepest condolences to all who have been affected by the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck Japan’s Noto Peninsula and nearby areas on January 1, 2024, and their families.

A zero-emission ship demonstration test was successfully conducted from March 26 to April 4, 2024, at the Port of Kokura, Kitakyushu, using the hydrogen fuel-cell-powered crew transfer vessel (CTV) HANARIA, with zero CO2 emissions. This test was part of the Zero Emission Ships Project, which The Nippon Foundation has spearheaded since 2022. HANARIA achieved the world’s first operation of a hydrogen fuel-cell-powered offshore wind turbine CTV with zero CO2 emissions. It is the first hydrogen fuel-cell-powered ship of more than 20 gross tonnage in Japan.

The Nippon Foundation would like to express its sincere gratitude for all donations made to the Ukrainian Evacuees Assistance Fund.

As part of the Back to Blue initiative, jointly being carried out by The Nippon Foundation and Economist Impact (part of the Economist Group) to address marine environmental issues, an international symposium was held in Tokyo on February 6 to call attention to the toxic chemical substances that are an invisible component of marine pollution.

Ahead of the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, The Nippon Foundation held a media briefing at its head office in Tokyo on February 21 to provide an update on its support for Ukrainians who have evacuated to Japan.

The Nippon Foundation is engaged in an employment project to support the reintegration into society of prisoners and juvenile offenders. The project aims to prevent recidivism while maintaining a society that is safe from crime.
As part of this project, the Foundation and the Japanese Ministry of Justice held a joint briefing on February 2 to support employment for people being released from correctional facilities. This was the first time the metaverse was used for a briefing of this kind in Japan, with 13 companies from the restaurant and construction sectors participating from two locations – The Nippon Foundation head office in Tokyo and a location in Osaka. Incarcerated individuals asked questions like, “Will I be able to get a job if I have tattoos or body piercings?” and “What qualifications or accreditations do I need?” One participant said that they liked cleanliness and were attracted to the building cleaning and maintenance industry. The fact that the event was conducted in the metaverse also made it easier for incarcerated individuals to ask questions like salary and whether there was a company dormitory, which are difficult to ask in face-to-face interviews.
Participating companies were also able to ask about individuals’ work experience and skills. After the session concluded, companies expressed their satisfaction and hopes that the program would be expanded going forward, noting that it was efficient to be able to meet with many individuals at once, and because the meetings were not face-to-face, the individuals were able to ask questions without hesitation.

World Health Organization Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination Yohei Sasakawa (Chairman, The Nippon Foundation) climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain (5,895 meters), on February 12 and unfurled a banner reading “Don’t Forget Leprosy.”
This followed Mr. Sasakawa’s and World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s issuing of a joint statement on January 31 from WHO headquarters calling for an end to prejudice and discrimination against people affected by leprosy. From Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mr. Sasakawa also offered a prayer for victims of the earthquake that struck Japan’s Noto Peninsula on January 1.

The Nippon Foundation would like to extend its deepest condolences to all who have been affected by the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck Japan’s Noto Peninsula and nearby areas on January 1, 2024, and their families.

The Nippon Foundation would like to extend its deepest condolences to all who have been affected by the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck Japan’s Noto Peninsula and nearby areas on January 1, 2024, and their families.

Momotaro (usually translated as “Peach Boy” – momo is the Japanese word for peach and Taro is a common boy’s name) is one of Japan’s most well-known folk stories. In the story, an old woman is washing clothes in a river when a large peach floats by, which she takes home to eat with her husband. When they cut open the peach, they find a baby boy inside whom they raise as their son. The boy grows quickly, and after a few years he sets out to conquer the ogres who live on a far-away island and have been terrorizing the people. Along the way, he comes across a pheasant, a monkey, and a dog, each of which asks him to share his dumplings because they are hungry. He agrees, on the condition that they join him on his quest, and the four of them set off for the ogres’ island, where they force the ogres to surrender and return home victorious.

The Nippon Foundation would like to extend its deepest condolences to all who have been affected by the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck Japan’s Noto Peninsula and nearby areas on January 1, 2024, and their families.

The digital world has become an inseparable part of the modern world, including in the field of education. Schools are providing students with laptop computers and tablet devices, and holding classes online, as they move from “paper and pencil” to an educational style that uses digital technologies. Nevertheless, disparities are emerging in that digital education, with differences in where students live and their families’ economic circumstances meaning that some children do not have opportunities to interact with digital technologies. The Nippon Foundation is addressing this by working to create an environment in which as many children as possible can have access to digital tools and learn in a fun and effective way. One of those activities is support for the Minecraft Cup, which was created in 2019.

With planning, oversight, and support from The Nippon Foundation, SPOGOMI World Cup 2023, the first world championship for SPOGOMI, a sport that originated in Japan based on collecting trash (gomi is the Japanese word for trash), was held in Shibuya, Tokyo, on November 22, 2023. Representative teams from 21 countries, selected through preliminary competitions, competed, with the team from Britain declared the winner and the team from Japan placing second.

The Tohoku region of northeastern Japan is a treasure trove of traditional performing arts like kagura Shinto music and dance, tora-mai tiger dances, and shishi-odori deer dances. These arts and festivals suffered major damage when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck the region on March 11, 2011. Along the Pacific coast in particular, there were many cases in which masks and costumes, musical instruments, portable shrines, and floats were lost, and some Shinto shrines were completely washed away, by the large tsunami that followed.

The Nippon Foundation is providing scholarships to Ukrainians who have evacuated to Japan to attend Japanese language schools, to enable them to acquire the Japanese language skills required to find employment that suits their individual aspirations. The Foundation recently held an overnight study and exchange event at its head office in Tokyo, with 81 scholarship recipients from across Japan attending.

The Nippon Foundation and the Japan Coast Guard held the 3rd Coast Guard Global Summit (CGGS) in Tokyo on October 31 and November 1, 2023. The summit is one of the world’s largest platforms for effective coordination and discussion among the world’s coast guard organizations regarding a variety of critical marine issues including the depletion of marine resources and the increasing occurrence of disasters caused by climate change. This was the third time for The Nippon Foundation and the Japan Coast Guard to hold the CGGS, following the initial summit – the world’s first – in 2017 and the second, in 2019.

The Nippon Foundation’s International Seminar on Offshore Development was held at the Foundation’s head office in Tokyo on September 28. The seminar used a hybrid in-person and online format and roughly 170 people participated, with presentations by speakers followed by a lively question and answer session.

A ceremony was held at Naha Airport (Okinawa Prefecture) on September 28 to deliver a small airplane to MESH Support, an NGO that uses aircraft to support medical services. The airplane was purchased with a 166 million yen grant provided by The Nippon Foundation, and will go into use from October 1.

September 16 to 24 was designated UMIGOMI Zero Week 2023 (umigomi is a combination of the Japanese words for ocean (umi) and waste or trash (gomi)) as part of a project being carried out by The Nippon Foundation and Japan’s Ministry of the Environment to address the growing problem of ocean debris, and Cosplay de UMIGOMI Zero Challenge 2023 was held as a kickoff event in Yokohama on September 16.

The Nippon Foundation held an event at the Ito-Yokado store in Kiba, Tokyo, on September 30 and October 1 for young people and families with children to convey the appeal of the ocean and raise awareness of issues related to the ocean environment that are becoming increasingly serious at a global level.

The Nippon Foundation has released “A Report on Asia Pacific Projects: Deaf education, sign language linguistics and teaching projects supported by The Nippon Foundation.”

The Nippon Foundation’s Umi-to-Nippon Project (The Ocean and Japan Project) conducts events throughout the year to raise awareness across Japan of ocean-related issues and encourage people to feel closer to the ocean. Two of the events being held in October 2023 are a fish preparation workshop for parents and children in Yamanashi Prefecture, and a buri (yellowtail or Japanese amberjack) promotional campaign being held in Hokkaido.

Coinciding with the International Day of Sign Languages*1 on September 23, The Nippon Foundation released the SignTown Handbook sign language learning app on September 10. The app is a simple dictionary that makes it easy to search for and learn signs. SignTown Handbook was released as the second stage of The Nippon Foundation’s Project Shuwa,*2 which in September 2021 released the SignTown sign language learning game, jointly developed with the Chinese University of Hong Kong and in collaboration with Google and Kwansei Gakuin University.
The SignTown Handbook also ties in with the theme for International Day of Sign Languages 2023, “A World Where Deaf People Everywhere Can Sign Anywhere!” It can be used as a tool to enable many people to learn sign language and for people to have simple conversations in sign language. The project aims to increase the number of people engaged in sign language interpretation and to support the active participation of deaf people in a wide range of activities in the future.