EVENT

Wednesday, 26th November, 15:00-16:30 JST (14:00 Open)

Thursday, November 27, 2025, 16:00–18:00

As AI becomes increasingly integrated into society, ensuring transparency and trustworthy governance has become a key global issue. This event provides a practical introduction to preparing AI transparency reports, using the Transparency Report Handbook for AI Governance developed by the University of Tokyo’s Ema Laboratory. Participants will learn effective methods for organizing internal information, facilitating consensus, and conducting governance processes. The program also features the Hiroshima AI Process (HAIP) as an international case study of voluntary transparency reporting, and includes a session for participants to exchange insights on embedding AI governance and building global trust.

Wednesday, December 3, 2025, 15:00-16:00 JST

In 2024 the UNESCO World Heritage Committee listed the gold mines on Sado island as world heritage sites with significantly less controversy than in 2015, when the cluster of Meiji Era Industrial Revolution sites, mainly in Kyushu, were listed. At issue in both cases was the way these industrial heritage sites would describe the treatment of wartime foreign laborers, Koreans in particular, who were brought to Japan and forced to work against their will. The Sado case generated less controversy mainly because the Japanese side offered a fuller and more honest account. In this presentation I explore the reasons for this difference with particular attention to the role of local civil society actors.

Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 15:00-16:00 JST (14:30 Open)

In this interview, Tokyo College Ushioda Fellow Alastair Morgan will share with the audience some fascinating insights on three decades as a British diplomat. Retired in 2019, Alastair Morgan spent his diplomatic postings in Asia, namely Tokyo, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Pyongyang. What was his life like as a British diplomat? What were the challenges he faced in his various postings? How does a diplomat balance the needs of a local posting with the needs of Whitehall? This will be a unique opportunity to gain insight through Alastair Morgan’s reflections on his life as a British civil servant and diplomat in Asia from the 1980s onwards.

Thursday, 13 March, 2025, 16:00-18:00

The Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), established in June 2020, is an international initiative for the responsible development and use of AI based on the concept of “human-centered.” The GPAI has several working groups, one of which discusses the “Future of Work.” As part of this group’s project, an international interview survey is being conducted around the world to find out how our work will change as AI is introduced into the workplace. One of the unique methods of this survey is that the students who will be responsible for the future are interviewing companies and organizations.
At this event, following the survey report last year, we will introduce an overview of the survey conducted this year. Inviting students and faculty members who joined in this year’s project to share their observations on the “future of work” through the survey, we also discuss the possibilities and challenges of its methodological aspects. We would like to discuss future developments of the survey with companies, organizations, and students who are interested in this work.

Tuesday, 4 March 2024, 15:00-16:30 JST

This lecture explores the influence of the Japanese language on the global branding of Japan beyond its borders. It examines how the Japanese language is strategically employed to evoke distinct imagery, cultural significance, and authenticity. The session offers insights into the current landscape and future research directions of Japanese language as an important world language. Employing linguistic case studies from Germany and Hungary, the lecture highlights how Japanese writing elements are rephrased or combined with a product’s identity and with design cues evoking Japaneseness. Creatively adapted in new contexts overseas, the Japanese language has become a strong branding tool in Europe.

Thursday, 27 February 2025, 15:00-16:30 JST

The past, it is said, is a foreign country, and historians seek to understand it without imposing present-day values. Yet inevitably, to write history is to engage in a dialogue between the past and the present. In this talk I will introduce my internal dialogue over the 25 years during which I wrote four editions of A Modern History of Japan, and am now considering a fifth edition.

Friday, 21 February 2025 9:00 - 10:15 JST/ Thursday February 20, 19:00 - 20:15 EST

Will President Trump demand higher defense spending by Japan? How will Japan respond? President Trump has pledged to negotiate a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine War in the first 100 days of his administration. Will it happen? How will he do that? What will the truce influence the situations in East Asia? Will Japan’s policy to advance defense technologies and promote defense industry succeed? Will Ishiba’s minority government be able to handle it?

Tuesday, 18 February 2025, 15:00-16:30 JST

The Conservative-led British government's perception of China changed markedly between 2010 and 2024. In 2010, Prime Minister David Cameron described the rise of China as an opportunity. A decade on, the government described China as the biggest long-term threat to the UK's economic security and expressed increasing concerns about Chinese assertiveness overseas. During the same period, the UK and Japan built up an ever-closer security relationship. Did British government perceptions of China determine its policy towards Japan during this period, or were other factors just as influential? What approaches should we expect now from the new Labour government?

Friday, 14 February 2025 9:00 - 10:15 JST/ Thursday February 13, 19:00 - 20:15 EST

President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose 60% tariffs on imports from China, 25% on imports from Canada and Mexico, and 10% on imports from the rest of the world. Three weeks after the inauguration, what are the prospects for those tariffs? If those are really implemented, what will Japan do? Will Japanese manufacturers just suffer huge declines in exports to the United States? Will Japanese manufacturers increase tariff-jumping investment in the U.S.? Will it turn out that they have already shifted enough production to the U.S. to avoid the negative impacts of tariffs entirely? If China and the EU retaliate the U.S. with their tariffs, a tariff war is likely to harm the global trades and cross-border investment. How will Japanese manufacturers respond?

Thursday, 13 February 2025, 10:00-11:30 JST

In her new book Everyday Ambassadors, Annelise Riles argues that we are on the cusp of an exciting new world order, where leadership is not just in the hands of few but of all. She argues that what the world needs now is many more diplomats--connectors, translators, interpretors, across political and cultural differences, between science and religion, between the arts and the technology world. In this talk, Prof. Riles will discuss her book, which synthesizes decades of legal and ethnographic research into seven "moves" that empower anyone to be a great diplomat right from where you are.

Wednesday, 29 January 2025, 15:00-16:30 JST

Around 60,000 years ago, at the time when humans successfully migrated out of Africa, something transformational happened. Homo sapiens must have experienced significant DNA changes that profoundly altered our capacity to compete for natural resources. Critical for this change in our behaviors was a new capacity for abstract thinking. Today with AI, we are on the brink of taking the final step away from Darwin’s principle of Survival of the fittest by rapidly evolving to escape our DNA dependence altogether and thereby our mortality as well.

Tuesday, 21 January 2025, 14:00-15:30 JST

As survivors raise their voices, the realities of sexual violence are gradually coming to light. Despite this increased attention, why does sexual violence continue to occur? This lecture examines the experiences of sexual violence survivors based on data collected from 38,383 responses to a 2022 NHK survey on the prevalence of sexual violence. It highlights the existence of rape myths in Japanese society, which perpetuate a pattern in which victims are blamed and suffer even further. Underlying these issues are societal norms of masculinity that sustain gender inequality. To eliminate sexual violence, it is essential to critically reexamine these societal norms.

Wednesday, 15 January 2025, 16:00-17:00 JST

At the University of Tokyo, a webinar was held on December 11, 2024, to explain the EU AI Act and the first draft of the CoP. In this webinar, we will provide an overview of the second draft released at the end of December and highlight important points that Japanese companies should particularly pay attention to.

Wednesday, 18 December 2024, 14:00-17:30 JST

Every Monday from December 2, 2024 (Available from 17:00 JST)

“The Salon” is a dialogue series featuring distinguished scholars in the humanities at the University of Tokyo that aims to transcend disciplinary boundaries. It is hosted by Professor Naoko Shimazu of Tokyo College and Professor John Lie of UC Berkeley, who is currently staying at Tokyo College.
We invite you to listen to an informal discussion between experts in different fields, as if you are sitting next to them.This is a chance to see a new side of our guests that you have never seen before.