Issue:
Regular Member
River Davis
The New York Times
I am a correspondent for The New York Times, covering Japanese business and economy, based in Tokyo. I have been reporting on Japan since 2018. I cover everything from auto giants and plane crashes, to trade disputes and challenges related to Japan's aging society. I seek to explain the role the world's fourth-largest economy plays throughout the world, and much of my work focuses on Japan's economic ties with the United States and China. I joined The Times in 2024 and before that I worked at The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News. I graduated from Georgetown University and I have a master's degree in economic policy and finance from The University of Tokyo. I grew up in a small town in southern Oregon before moving to the East Coast and then Japan.
Associate Member
Erik Bach Christophersen
Parnassos DK APS
Erik Bach Christophersen, founder of Parnassos.dk, was born in Helsingor – Hamlet's town in Denmark as described in Shakespeare's play.
He has lived most of his adult life in London, his career in the British publishing industry.
He has been the editor of the Financial Times Book Club, as well as editor at Gyldendal, the preeminent and largest publishing house in Denmark. He has worked for the internet bookstore Saxo.com, the Danish equivalent to Amazon, as well as director of Saxo S.A.R. in Luxembourg.
Today, his focus is on arranging cultural tours with emphasis on European classical music. He is especially fascinated by the fact that Japanese cultural society has embraced European music composed these several hundred years ago and thereby given it new life.
Professional Associate Member
Yuko Shibata
Meiji Gakuin University
Yuko Shibata is an academic journalist based in Japan. Her articles often appear on the Japanese commercial journal, the President Online, where she reports and analyzes issues of gender and race, journalism, local politics, and cinema. She is also a research fellow at the International Peace Research Institute at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo.
She started her professional career as a staff writer at the Asahi Shimbun, and published four team-authored books in Japanese. Afterwards, she moved overseas, and built up her academic career as well. She is the author of Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Literature, Film, and Transnational Politics (University of Hawai'i Press, 2018), and 2 Japanese books: Produced Hibakusha: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Represented in Discursive Spaces (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2021), and Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Debunking a Myth of the Hibakusha Narrative (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 2015).
Her academic articles also appear in journals both in English and Japanese. She holds a Ph.D. in East Asian literature from Cornell University, and an M.A. in literary and cultural studies from the University of Hong Kong. She has taught at Cornell, College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University (the US), the University of Otago (New Zealand), the University of Melbourne (Australia), and Meiji Gakuin University (Japan).
Reinstatement (Associate Member)
Kazuyoshi Suzuki
Medical Corporation Shouhakukai
Born in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1954. Graduated from Kyoto University Faculty of Law in March 1978.
Joined Mitsui Bank (now Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation) in April of the same year. Left the bank in 1989. Enrolled in Tokyo Medical and Dental University (now Institute of Science Tokyo) in 1990.
Founded the company that would become Neustadt Japan Co., Ltd. in 1996. Graduated from the university in 1997 and opened a dental clinic in 2000. After that, he established a total of 17 branch clinics and launched the medical corporation Shohakukai in 2001. In 2018, he changed the company name to Neustadt Japan Co., Ltd.
Reinstatement (Associate Member)
