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On June 5-6 the Japan ICU Foundation will be sponsoring a Carnegie Council Global Ethics Conference in the Kiyoshi Togasaki Memorial Dialogue House at ICU. The Global Ethics Conference is part of the Carnegie Council’s Global Ethics Network and will feature keynote addresses from former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Dr. Michael Ignatieff, the Centennial Chair of the Carnegie Council and Professor at Harvard University, amongst others.

For more information on what Dr. Kotani spoke about in his lecture, read ahead for a link to the full translation by recent alumnus from the ICU summer language program Anatolii Aast and/or refer to the book, The Hidden Impact: Everything You Need to Know for the Next Disaster.

On April 30th, the JICUF completed its one-month campaign in North America in support of the ICU Sakura Fund!

Are you looking to make a significant impact on the world by promoting global peace and cooperation? Rotary International selects some of the world’s most dedicated and brightest professionals to receive fully funded fellowships to study at their six Rotary Peace Centers, including ICU. In just over a decade, the Rotary Peace Centers have trained more than 900 fellows for careers in peace building. Many of them go on to serve as leaders in national governments, NGOs, the military, law enforcement, and international organizations like the United Nations and World Bank.

For the third year in a row, the Japan ICU Foundation partnered successfully with our great ICU Alumni DC Chapter in staffing a special ICU booth at the annual Sakura Matsuri – Washington, DC street festival. As the largest single-day event of its type in the U.S., organized by the Japan-America Society of Washington, DC, it provides us a great opportunity to reach many new and interested prospective international students for ICU. Many thanks to all of our hard-working ICU alumni and friends in DC who made this the best year thus far!

Kumiko Makihara is an ICU alumna who writes about her impressions of life in Japan and the United States, two countries she has been traveling back and forth between for most of her life. Her columns have appeared in the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times Magazine and Newsweek, as well as in the books Reimagining Japan: The Quest for a Future That Works and Tsunami: Japan’s Post Fukushima Future. She is currently working on a book about her son’s experiences in a Japanese primary school.

Rethinking Peace Studies participant Bahia Shehab stars in the critically acclaimed short documentary Nefertiti’s Daughters, directed by Mark Nickolas. The film just won first place at the 2015 Athens International Film + Video Festival in the Short Documentary Category.

The JICUF is launching a one-month campaign in North America in support of the ICU Sakura Fund. We will be featuring original haiku composed by and/or photographs of sakura taken by the following five members of the ICU community on a weekly basis during the month of April. Please scroll below to see the first installment in this series. We hope you enjoy!