Daiwa Foundation funds projects ranging from musical performances and workshops with shamisen virtuoso Hidejiro Honjoh, to scientific research into the emergence of life.

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation (www.dajf.org.uk) has published details of its Small Grants and Awards awarded to support UK-Japan projects in its latest funding round: September 2022.

Professor Siân Bowen, from Arts University Bournemouth, has received a grant to travel to Japan as part of an interdisciplinary team to explore the integral relationships between plants and artisan skills in reference to Kew Garden’s Parkes Collection – one of the world’s most comprehensive historical surveys of the uses for Japanese handmade paper. The research will focus on the remarkable methods employed to transform paper with plant-derived oils, dyes, lacquer and tannins along with the artisan skills devised and the imagery used on the objects themselves, resulting in exhibitions at venues in Japan and the UK.

Digital artist Jason Wilsher-Mills has received a grant to travel to Japan where he will deliver ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ workshops to local disability groups using technology and art from his own experience as a disabled artist. He will also produce two new inflatable artworks, each to be displayed in the UK and Japan, in partnership with Keio Graduate School of Media Design and SHAPE Arts.

A grant will support Woolf Scholar Dr Karina Jakubowicz to collaborate with Japanese translator Professor Aki Katayama on reciprocal trips to Japan and the UK, exploring the contemporary feminist movement in Japan through Virginia Woolf’s work, resulting in an open-source podcast and article.

Professor Andrew Reeves from De Montfort University will deliver group lectures to students at Hokkaido University on the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) programme, addressing education for sustainable development via local and regional collaborations and considering sustainable community design.

Hidejiro Honjoh will travel from Japan to deliver shamisen and composition masterclasses to pupils at St. Ignatius College in the lead up to a performance of UK-based Dai Fujikura’s Shamisen Concerto, part of the Fireworks concert  produced by the London Sinfonietta and taking place at London’s Southbank Centre, in May 2023.

Among larger institutional collaborations, specialists from Oxford Brookes University will collaborate with the University of Tokyo on reciprocal research trips supported by a Daiwa Foundation Award to identify and prioritise options for advanced technology solutions for monitoring and conserving endangered wildlife species. Technologies may include Artificial Intelligence cameras, low-cost satellite survey services, remote drone applications, and new type microelectronics. Educational workshops will also be held with students to develop simple prototypes that might be developed into functional ideas that could be tested in the real world. One potential that might be the focus of trials in the future could be to reduce human-elephant conflict in remote areas of Namibia.

A Daiwa Foundation Award will support reciprocal research trips in 2023 by Professor Javier Martin-Torres from the Department of Planetary Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, and partners Professors Eizo Nakamura and Christian Potiszil, University of Okayama to explore a novel scenario for the prebiotic atmosphere and its impact on the emergence of life, in collaboration with the LifeSprings Mission to challenge the sample return of traces of life on Mars (to be launched in 2030s).

The full list of projects which received funding in the September 2022 round can be viewed here.

Background information:
The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is a UK charity, established in 1988 with a generous benefaction from Daiwa Securities Co Ltd. The Foundation’s purpose is to support closer links between Great Britain and Japan. It does this by awarding grants and scholarships in all fields of activity; by supporting educational exchanges and other bilateral initiatives between British and Japanese academics and students; and by organising a year-round events’ programme at Daiwa Foundation Japan House in London to increase understanding of Japan in the UK. The Foundation is represented in Japan by its Tokyo office. Further information about the Foundation and its activities is available at www.dajf.org.uk

Press Enquiries
Susan Meehan
Grants and Scholarships Officer
Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
13/14 Cornwall Terrace
London NW1 4QP TEL: 020 7486 4348   Email: grants@dajf.org.uk