Update from JICC

We are almost at the end of the year and our most recent exhibition, The Craze for Japan in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, closed on 22 November. Thank you to all those who visited and we hope you found it interesting! In conjunction with exhibition, the Embassy held an evening of presentations on 8 November. You can watch the presentations by writer and historian - Dr Keiko Itoh, and Head of Collections at the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture (MoDA) - Dr Zoe Hendon in the following video on our YouTube channel.

Ambassador Hayashi attended the Oku Memorial Trophy rugby matches held at the Richmond Athletic Ground on 12 November. Each year the Oku Memorial Trophy Rugby Tournament is played in memory of former Director of the Japan Information and Cultural Centre (JICC), Ambassador OKU Katsuhiko*, who tragically lost his life in Iraq in November 2003 whilst working for the UN post-war reconstruction programme in that country. Since 2004 Mr Reg Clarke, Ambassador Oku’s teammate at Oxford University Rugby Club, has been organising the Trophy matches every year. This year, the occasion was arranged to coincide with the England vs Japan national teams' rugby match at Twickenham. Now in its 19th year, the tournament was won for the first time in its history by London Japanese rugby club after a thrilling match against Kew Occasionals.


*On 29 November 2003 Oku was posthumously promoted to Ambassador