Congratulations to ESUJ on receiving its new status of Ippan Shadan Hojin (Incorporated Association)

Tsunetada Matsudaira, Chairman

Founded in 1998 as a private organization the ESUJ has developed various activities. While we continued to increase our activity, the desire to build a firmer body for ESUJ organizationally has never been far from our thoughts. With the change in the law governing corporations and juridical foundations as of December 2008, we created a project team to undertake concrete study of what we could achieve. As a result, we have recently completed registration of the formation of ESUJ as an Ippan Shadan Hojin (Incorporated Association). Henceforth we hope to continue to expand our activities with our newly confirmed trustworthy legal status as a responsible organization.

There are some changes that must be made mainly due to the need to take into consideration the purport of the law; but basically the original design of organization will continue as it has been, and its activities will continue to be based on the way of thinking up to now. Although interest in English is continually growing in Japan, there are still many Japanese who consider English to be a "foreign language. But in Asian and European countries English is increasingly considered the "second language" of the country and must be recognized to be the lingua franca for global communication, I believe. The significance of this for Japanese society, in my opinion, is that ESUJ as an organization can contribute to forming a wonderful network of friends and acquaintances both within and outside Japan, and through its various programs help anyone to familiarize themselves with using English while broadening their awareness of the rest of the world, deepening their observation, and creating friendship.

I am hoping the newly born ESUJ Incorporated Association will prosper and grow as an organization enabling people to gather in a pleasurable and lively way, but unfortunately the news isn't all good. Due to the recent economic recession, we are facing the grave situation of loss of sponsorship and corporate patronage. Our board members are racking their brains and working hard to acquire new sponsor companies and to solicit support broadly for our debate activity, which we are endeavoring to spread among young people and working people in particular, through the launch of a Debate Supporters Fund for which we are soliciting donations. But, ultimately, it is up to our members, one by one, to lend their support to ESUJ. Please invite your friends to become members. We look forward to your continued vigorous support.

The 11th ESUJ Annual General Meeting took place on June 23 (Tue) at the International House of Japan with 56 members in attendance and 130 proxies received. With ESUJ Chairman Matsudaira presiding over the meeting, the business report and financial statement were approved. As the Ippan Shadan Hojin (Incorporated Association) English Speaking Union of Japan was founded, several issues regarding the procedure of moving from an organization to a juridical body were explained and approved. There was also an explanation of the officers of the new juridical body. As this was the last general meeting of the original body, the meeting was adjourned following Chairman Matsudaira's address.

Following the second part of the meeting, Canadian Ambassador Jonathan Fried's lecture, the third part of the meeting featured a celebration of the new association and social hour during which the many members present enjoyed a pleasant moment of fellowship.

Following this year's Annual General Meeting, ESUJ welcomed HE Mr. Jonathan Fried, Ambassador of Canada to Japan, to deliver the Special Lecture on the current global economic crisis and how Canada and Japan are dealing with it. Ambassador Fried started off with an easy-to-understand explanation of the current perilous state of the world economy. Excess savings and debt had begun to swell against the backdrop of a global recession some time ago. Investors forgot about risk in their rush to acquire high yield commodities. Non-performing subprime loans in the U.S. were the trigger for a credit crunch that spread globally. Thoroughly versed in economics and making ample use of slides of pertinent charts and graphs, Ambassador Fried was able to create an impressive depiction of how this happened.

Expressing confidence in Canadian policy, which has managed to avoid creating a financial capitalism-dominated bubble, and given that the present recession is thought not to have bottomed out yet, the Ambassador suggested that each country should as soon as possible mobilize public finance to create an economic stimulus and also get regulation of the financial system functioning again, while paying special attention to the prudence in management.

On May 18 (Mon), the 12th ESUJ Directors' Meeting took place at the Kasumi Kaikan with 15 directors and one auditor present. The proposal to be presented at the AGM was deliberated and the preliminary conditions for reorganization into a juridical body were explained.