Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

19/08/2026

The Kleio Quartet – BBC New Generation Artists and winners of the 2023 Carl Nielsen International Chamber Music Competition – made an ecstatically received

14/08/2026

'End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland', based on Haruki Murakami's novel, is on at Barbican theatre, London, from 8 to 11 October.

A play based on the writer’s dreamlike novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is touring the world, riding a wave of interest in Japanese culture. Its creators talk about how they adapted the famously cryptic tale

10/08/2026

Nonomiya/Song of Rona Island - taking place at Edinburgh International Book Festival!

Mon 24 Aug 2026 | 19:00 - 21:00
at Greyfriars Kirk

and repeated on Tue 25 Aug at 19:00

Noh Reimagined theatre company will introduce Noh Theatre in Part One with 'Nonomiya' - a piece based on the oldest novel of all time (The Tale of Genji).

'Song of Rona Island' is a new collaboration, based on Kathleen Jamie's essay 'On Rona', which blends Scottish and Japanese folklore, myth and music, in Part Two.

https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/nonomiya-song-of-rona-island

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation supported travel to Tokyo in January 2024 by two musicians to collaborate with Noh performer Kanji Shimizu on workshops and a work-in-progress concert for this new Noh piece based on the essay 'On Rona0 by Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie.

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30/07/2026

Support for UK-Japan Links

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 UK-Japan links. It does this by making grants available to individuals, institutions and organisations to promote links between the UK and Japan across all fields of activity, awarding scholarships to young British graduates to study Japan and its language, organising a year-round programme of events.

Applications are invited under the following funding programmes in 2026:

DAIWA FOUNDATION SMALL GRANTS
Grants of £2,000-£9,000 are available to individuals, societies, associations or other bodies in the UK or Japan to promote and support interaction between the two countries. Daiwa Foundation Small Grants can cover all fields of activity, including educational and grassroots exchanges, research travel, the organisation of conferences, exhibitions, and other projects and events that fulfil this broad objective. New initiatives are especially encouraged.

DAIWA FOUNDATION AWARDS
Awards of £9,000-£18,000 are available for collaborative projects that enable British and Japanese partners to work together in the context of an institutional relationship. Daiwa Foundation Awards can cover projects in academic, professional, arts, cultural and educational fields.

The deadlines for Daiwa Foundation Small Grants and Daiwa Foundation Awards is 31 March and 30 September each year. Results will be announced in early June and early December respectively.

Further details and information on applying are available from
https://dajf.org.uk/daiwa-foundation-small-grants-and-awards


DAIWA SCHOLARSHIPS
Daiwa Scholarships offer talented British citizens with strong leadership potential the opportunity to acquire Japanese language skills and to access expertise and knowledge relevant to their career goals over 19 months in Japan (a year of language study, a one-month homestay and a six-month work placement). The selected Daiwa Scholars will undertake a month of Japanese language study in the UK before moving to Japan in September for the remainder of the Scholarship. The application deadline is 3 December 2026 with departure for Japan the following September.
https://dajf.org.uk/scholarships/daiwa-scholarship

DAIWA SCHOLARSHIPS IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Daiwa Scholarships in Japanese Studies were established in April 2015 to fund postgraduate students of Japanese Studies on courses in either Japan or the UK. Applicants must be British citizens who are holders of a degree in Japanese Studies, defined as a course focussing primarily on the study of Japan and containing a substantial Japanese language component, and who are enrolled or enrolling in a Japanese Studies-related course in either Japan or the UK. The application deadline is 28 January 2026.
https://dajf.org.uk/news/daiwa-scholarships-and-daiwa-scholarships-in-japanese-studies

Daiwa Scholarships 2026: Language Study, Homestay & Work Placement in Japan – apply by 4 December 2025 The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is a UK charity supporting UK-Japan links through awarding Daiwa Scholarships and Daiwa Scholarships in Japanese Studies; offering grants to support UK-Japan c...

29/07/2026

Join musicians, including TANAKA Denjiro VII, from Japan’s kabuki theatre in Edinburgh for a lecture, performance, and panel discussion celebrating the beauty of sound from kabuki! Free to attend but booking is essential.

🗓️: Friday 7 August
⏰: 14:00-16:30
📍: Usha Kasera Lecture Theatre, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL
🔗: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/celebrating-kabuki-music-tickets-1993618567803?aff=oddtdtcreator

In celebration of kabuki music worldwide, the panel will engage with topics ranging from how we engage with musical traditions in the twenty-first century to the role of the arts in international relations and peacebuilding.

Presented in partnership with The University of Edinburgh and the Consulate General of Japan in Edinburgh

29/07/2026

Still planning your August? Then why not join The Photographers' Gallery for 'Inside Out: Echoes', a free outdoor event bringing together music and photography to celebrate the women shaping contemporary culture in London through experimentation, music and sound.

📆 Sat 8 Aug 2026
🕙 13:00 - 17:00
📍 Outside The Photographers' Gallery

More info here 👉

An outdoor afternoon explor

21/07/2026

Many thanks to Taihei Soejima for sharing his artworks and experiences, and Jonathan Watkins for joining as moderator in our event last night.

Taihei is a photography-based artist working on the theme "What stories do humans need in order to be human?", and he started off his talk by saying that his experience in London has helped him find this theme.

Taihei first entered the sculpture department at an art university, but he was strongly drawn to photography as a medium when he bought a digital camera to keep records of his sculptures.

He then started creating works using photography, and had a chance to stay in London when he was enrolled in a specialist art research department in graduate school. This was just after Brexit, and through what he had seen, he became interested in people's ideologies.

To pursue this, he travelled across the Eurasian continent only by bus and train from France to Japan, to see the communist architecture still left across Eurasia, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia. There, he witnessed how deeply people believed in the Russian Orthodox Church, and his experience during this trip made him more interested in narratives. He then had a chance to work as a photography tutor in Armenia, but started to worry about telling the stories he had seen as an outsider.

So he decided to visit London again. Through his life in London, he saw diversity, where various religions and ethnicities lived side by side. This connected the various experiences Taihei had had so far, and became a core for his work. London worked as a catalyst for his experiences and thoughts.

Jonathan and the audience seemed interested in Taihei's perspective, which enables him to compare the UK and Japan with various other countries, and we had a lively Q&A session as well.

16/07/2026

A big thank you to Kaja Murawska for joining us yesterday evening to talk about the popularity of translated Japanese fiction in the West, and particularly in the UK.

She introduced the topic by outlining key periods in the popularisation of translated Japanese literature, including the 1960s with writers like Mishima, Tanizaki and Abe; the 1990s with Murakami and Yoshimoto; and since 2015 the boom as we know it today. She emphasised that many of the new popular writers are women, and that the most recent boom has gone through several iterations, from cats to ‘cozy fiction’ to crime and even horror.

According to data she provided, 23/50 books in the UK’s 2025 top 50 translated fiction sales table were by Japanese authors, with only one – Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human – being the only non-contemporary one. More data showed that most of translated fiction is bought by younger generations, contrasting with older generations that tend to buy more untranslated (English language) books.

She then traced the evolution of the way Western publishers and agents have discovered Japanese fiction from the 1960s to the present day, and explained how the influence of anime and manga has helped Japanese fiction comprise ‘all-age’ content that doesn’t run into the trouble common in the West (whereby a person has to transition from ‘children’s’ books to ‘adult’ books), thereby broadening its appeal.

Murawska then addressed a few potential problem areas. One was that practical and cultural reasons behind different writing styles in the West compared to Japan can make transitioning between the respective markets difficult. Second, it’s likely that we’ve passed the peak of the boom, which itself came entirely from the demand side yet isn’t finding a firmer foundation in, for example, government support for literature. Third, whilst in the West an author will publish exclusively with one publisher, in Japan there are usually multiple, often making rights acquisitions for translations difficult.

She also touched on theories as to why the boom has occurred in the first place. One theory is that the sort of alienation touched on in Japanese fiction resonates with a Western audience becoming increasingly familiar with the sorts of issues Japan has been grappling with for the past few decades and finds expression of that feeling in Japanese literature. The urgency of the writing in female Japanese fiction, given the country’s problem with gender inequality, might also be a reason for its popularity, as is its marketability in the form of ‘weird girl fiction’. Finally, ‘Retromania’ in Japanese literature, which looks back to key cultural elements of Showa Japan such as jazz cafes and independent bookshops, arguably speaks to the post-2008 generation that might have the tendency to look to the past as a better, more hopeful time.

Murawska concluded her excellent presentation by speculating on what might come next for translated Japanese fiction. In her view, we may see more horror/gothic fiction drawing on Japanese folklore, as well as the (re)discovery of work between the 60s and 90s booms.

The talk was followed by a lively audience Q&A, where she received questions about the lack of translated Japanese non-fiction, the rationale behind the reissuing of classics and, of course, her recommendations for translated Japanese fiction!

10/07/2026

Japan Matsuri, the UK’s much-loved and biggest annual festival of Japanese culture and food, will return to Trafalgar Square on Sunday 4 October.

Showcasing Japanese culture in the UK, Japan Matsuri has steadily attracted a loyal audience , each year since 2009 and has established itself as a symbol of the long-standing bonds or kizuna (絆) between Japan and the UK.

Read more here: https://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_en/2026matsuri.html

08/07/2026

Daiwa Scholarships alumnus and artist Carl Randall Artist
has a new Japan-themed painting on show at the Hampstead Art Society Summer Exhibition until 11 July at Gallery 8 in Mayfair!

Exhibition dates and opening hours:

Monday 6 July to Thursday 9 July: 10am – 6pm
Friday 10 and Saturday 11 July: 10am – 7pm

More information:
https://dajf.org.uk/news/carl-randalls-the-kokeshi-maker-on-display-until-11-july-at-gallery-8