The Tokyo Foundation will be closed for the yearend and New Year holidays from December 29, 2017, to January 3, 2018.

We will resume our operations on January 4.

We wish all of you a very Happy New Year!

Sylff Association Chairman Yohei Sasakawa (seated, center) is flanked by Yue Zhang (left) and Aya Oyamada. Standing, from left, are Aya Fukuda, Yumi Arai, Mari Suzuki (director), Sanae Oda (executive director), and Tomoko Yamada.

The year 2017 was a special and exciting one for us, highlighted by the April launch of the Sylff Association in commemoration of Sylff’s 30th anniversary. The move, aimed at bringing closer together all stakeholders in the Sylff community, has generated many positive developments, including a redesigned, user-friendly website; new support programs to promote career advancement and social action; and relief initiatives spearheaded by fellows to pool the Sylff community’s resources in the wake of major disasters.

Befitting our new role as the Association secretariat, the Tokyo Foundation moved to a brand new, 34th-floor office in October with a breathtaking view of Tokyo (and beyond!). The following is a summary of the year’s major developments.  

Sylff Support Programs

The launch of the Sylff Association has been accompanied by expanded opportunities for support after the fellowship period. Two new support programs were announced in September—Local Association Networking Support(LANS) and Sylff Project Grant(SPG)—and a third, called Sylff Disaster Relief, was launched as an outgrowth of the Colmex earthquake relief campaign in October. As for the two existing programs, seven fellows received Sylff Leadership Initiatives awards in 2017, and 25 received Sylff Research Abroad grants.

We will soon be introducing yet another program. Please be sure to visit the Sylff website to keep up-to-date on our latest initiatives. We look forward to receiving many applications in 2018.

Sylff Worldwide

Commemorative Ceremony

On May 17, Jagiellonian University celebrated the 25th anniversary of its Sylff program. Sylff Association Chairman Yohei Sasakawa attended the ceremony and made a congratulatory speech.

Sylff Administrators Meeting in China

A meeting of Chinese Sylff administrators was held on July 3, hosted by Jilin University. Some 25 people from all 10 Sylff universities in China (Fudan, Jilin, Lanzhou, Nanjing, Peking, Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Yunnan, and Sun Yat-sen) gathered to discuss ways to enhance the value of the Sylff program in China.

New Scheme

We are pleased to announce that the National Academy of Governance (Mongolia) and the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (Austria) have signed agreements to join the new financial scheme. Twelve institutions operate the Sylff program under the new scheme as of December 2017. In 2018, several more institutions will be joining, including the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Switzerland).

Sylff Colmex Earthquake Relief Fund

The Sylff Association secretariat announced a fundraising campaign between September 29 and October 31 to support fellows at Colmex (El Colegio de México) who were working to help the victims of the September 19 Mexico earthquake. Thank you for your interest and donations. A report on how the funds were used will be published on the Sylff website.

Sylff@Tokyo

We welcomed many current and graduated fellows, Sylff steering committee members, and other friends to the Sylff Association secretariat office in 2017.

Dec 14, 2017
Sylff@Tokyo: Colmex President and Professor Visit Our Office

Dec 14, 2017
Sylff@Tokyo: Colmex Fellow Promoting Mexico-Asia Exchange

From left, Tomoko Yamada, Yoko Kaburagi (director), Keita Sugai, Adriana Rojas Martinez, Sanae Oda (executive director), Mari Suzuki (director), and Yue Zhang.

Nov 15, 2017
Sylff@Tokyo: First Sylff Visitor to Our New Office

Aug 22, 2017
Sylff@Tokyo: Sylff Plays an Important Role in Slovakia’s Democratization

Jun 8, 2017
Sylff@Tokyo: The Role of Public Diplomacy in Implementing Foreign Assistance

May 12, 2017
Sylff@Tokyo: Jagiellonian Fellow Examines Paths to Japan-Korea Reconciliation

Apr 26, 2017
Sylff@Tokyo: Reinvention and Regeneration of Waterfront Areas of Bilbao, Spain

On November 27, President Silvia Giorguli and Professor Amaury García Rodríguez of Colmex (El Colegio de Mexico) visited the Tokyo Foundation.

Colmex President Silvia Giorguli, center, and Professor Amaury García Rodríguez, far right, with members of the Sylff Association secretariat.

President Giorguli has advised and nurtured many Sylff fellows over the years as professor and director of the Colmex Center for Demographic, Urban, and Environmental Studies. Professor García Rodríguez, meanwhile, is the director of the Center for Asian and African Studies at Colmex. His research focus is Japanese art history, especially ukiyo-e. 

The visit was a good opportunity to discuss how the donations to the Sylff Colmex Earthquake Relief Fund would be used. https://www.sylff.org/support_programs/sylff-colmex-earthquake-relief-fund/

This was the first visit by the president of a Sylff institution to our new office in Roppongi. Sylff fellows and steering committee members are always welcome to stop by the Foundation’s office when visiting Tokyo. Please let us know in advance if you have plans to come to Tokyo!

The Tokyo Foundation was pleased to receive a visit on November 17 from Adriana Rojas Martinez, a 2000 Sylff fellowship recipient at El Colegio de Mexico (Colmex).

Adriana Rojas Martinez, center, with members of the Sylff Association secretariat.

Adriana completed her master’s studies at Colmex and is currently director of international development for the Asia-Pacific region at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (Tecnológico de Monterrey), the highest-ranking private university in Mexico

Her research focused on Japanese culture, and her master’s thesis was on Japanese manga. She visited Japan for the first time in 2000 with Sylff’s support, and her fascination with Japan has continued since then. She has taught classes on Asian culture and is now working to promote student exchange between Mexico and Asia, particularly Japan and China.

A Sylff Leadership Initiatives event was organized in Hungary in September 2017 to look to the future of the country and underline the importance of the role of civil society. A group of Hungarian Sylff fellows organized the event, held on September 8 and 9, combining a forum for academic discussion and analysis and on-site visits to areas outside Budapest. The title of the event was “Own Fate: Self-Managing the Future,” focusing on the role of bottom-up local initiatives in promoting Hungary’s sustainable economic development. A report of the event will soon be published on the Sylff website.

Members of the Hungarian Sylff Association with Mariann Tarnoczy (standing to the right of the banner) and Evelyn Kutari (standing to the left).

A member of the Sylff Association secretariat read a message from Association Chairman Yohei Sasakawa, who noted that the Sylff mission is to nurture young leaders with the ability and enthusiasm to address local and global issues from a broad perspective.    

Hungary was one of the first countries in Central Europe to join the Sylff community, with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences being endowed in 1989. It was a time when the transition to democracy was gaining momentum in the region, and Hungary played a leading role in this movement.

Thirty years have passed since then. Hungarian society has undergone sweeping social and political changes, and the economy has achieved remarkable growth. The forum examined ways to make fuller use of the resources and skills of civil society in pursuing sustainable development in the future. The forum and on-site visits were well attended and marked by lively debate.

The event also presented an opportunity for Hungarian Sylff fellows from the past three decades—many of whom have become faculty members at Hungarian universities—to reunite, exchange views, and learn from each other. Sylff fellows from other universities were invited to attend as well, including a Sussex fellow who originally hails from Serbia. One of the main organizers, in fact, was Loretta Huszak, who received a Sylff fellowship while attending the University of Leipzig.

We were pleased to see Sylff taking firm root in Hungary, and it will no doubt grow even further in the future, as symbolized by the ceremonious planting of a “Sylff tree” by members of Hungarian Sylff association in a park participants visited on the second day.

Behind each successful Sylff program is a key Sylff steering committee member, and in Hungary’s case, it was Mariann Tarnoczy, who has been working with Sylff at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences since the program’s inception. We were very sorry to hear of her plans to step down in October, but during the event, a heartwarming ceremony was held in appreciation of her longstanding contributions to the program. The Sylff Association secretariat expresses its deep gratitude to her and welcomes Evelyn Kutari as her successor.

Taro Ueno, second from left, Yuri Kato, Yoko Matsuki, and Anna Nakamura with Sylff Association secretariat members.

On October 18, three members of Sylff Association secretariat visited the Graduate School of Media and Governance at the Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) of Keio University—located some 50 kilometers southwest of central Tokyo—to meet with Sylff fellows and Sylff steering committee Chairman Jun Murai. Professor Murai was appointed SSC chair and dean of the Graduate School of Media and Governance in October.

The mission of the Graduate School of Media and Governance, which was established in 1994, “is exactly the same as that of Sylff,” said Professor Murai. “To resolve the increasingly complex problems confronting global society, we need an interdisciplinary approach transcending traditional research areas. This is why we’ve designed our curricula and programs to support students hoping to conduct research spanning several disciplines.”

Four graduate students were awarded Sylff fellowships in 2017: first-year master’s students Yuri Kato (architectural design), Yoko Matsuki (sociolinguistics), and Taro Ueno (cognitive science), along with first-year doctoral student Anna Nakamura (health science). In their presentations of their current research, they emphasized their strong hope of being able to help people and contribute to society not only locally but also globally.

All four fellows had very strong presentation skills, a result, no doubt, of their broad, interdisciplinary perspectives. We hope that they will take full advantage of the Sylff network and the various support programs provided by Sylff Association to further expand their knowledge and develop their leadership skills.