The Asiatic Society 
of Japan

Dr. Yoshiko Imaizumi, Senior Research Fellow (Research Advancement Division Chief), specializing in Meiji Jingu History, Meiji Jingu Intercultural Research Institute

The Empress Shoken Fund was established in 1912 with a donation of 100,000 Japanese gold yen made by Empress Shoken, Empress of Meiji, to the International Red Cross in order to support peacetime activities by the Red Cross. At the time, 100,000 Japanese gold yen was equivalent to approximately 350 million yen in today’s terms. The establishment of an international fund to support peacetime activities such as infectious disease control and disaster relief was groundbreaking at a time when the Red Cross focused on wartime relief activities. Hence, the Fund is highly regarded for its pioneering nature as ‘the world’s oldest international humanitarian fund’.  

The Fund, run by the Joint Committee set up by the International Red Cross in Switzerland, operates as an endowment fund distributing annual grants to National Societies around the world on April 11, the anniversary of the Empress’s death. A total of approximately 2.7 billion yen has been distributed to 172 countries and regions around the world over the 103 years since its establishment in 1921 to 2023.  

Dr. Yoshiko Imaizumi researched the history of the Empress Shoken Fund and published the monograph entitled ‘Meiji nihon no naichingēru – Sekai o sukui tsuzukeru sekijūji “Shōken kōtaigō kikin” no 100 nen (Nightingales in Meiji Japan: 100 years of the Empress Shoken Fund that continues to save the world)’ in 2014. As part of the campaign to increase the value of the Fund, she has been giving lectures and organizing symposiums on the theme of ‘understanding the world today through the support of the Fund’.  

 

This lecture will trace the history of the humanitarian fund of the Red Cross, named after the Empress of Japan, over 100 years since its establishment, and discuss its historical and contemporary significance.  

Dr. Yoshiko Imaizumi is a Senior Research Fellow (Research Advancement Division Chief), specializing in the history of Meiji Jingu.  

 

Dr. Imaizumi was born in Iwate Prefecture in 1970. After graduating from the University of Tokyo, specializing in Comparative Literature and Culture, she worked as a magazine editor, then took a program of Shinto studies at Kokugak received her Ph.D. from SOAS, University of London, in 2007 and in 2013 "Sacred Space in the Modern City: The Fractured Parts of Meiji Shrine, 1912-1958" was published by Brill. Dr. Imaizumi served as a visiting researcher at L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in 2009 and as a visiting associate professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) for 4 years from 2015. Currently she serves as an associate research fellow both at Nichibunken and at the Center for Promotion of Excellence and Education, Kokugakuin University.  

• Meiji Jingu: Sengo fukkō no kiseki (Kajima shuppankai, 2008)  

• Meiji Jingu: "Dentō" o tsukutta dai project (Shinchōsha, 2013)  

• Meiji Nihon no Nightingale tachi: Sekai o sukuitsuzukeru sekijūji "Shoken kōtaigō kikin" no 100 nen (Fusōsha, 2014)  

• Meiji Jingu to Seinendan no zōeihōshi hyakunenmae no seinen ga tsutaeru “Mirai” eno “Rekishi” (Nihonseinenkan, 2015)  

• Meiji Jingu, uchi to soto kara mita hyakunen: chinju no mori o otozureta gaikokujintachi (Heibonsha, 2021)  

 

Jointly-edited works:  

• Tokyō no re-design (Toward Environmentally Contributing City, Re-design of Tokyo: Maximizing the Global Environmental Value) (Seibunsha, 2010)  

• Harajyukuomotesandō 2013 Mizu to Mori ga kyōsei suru machizukuri (Sangakusha)  

• Meiji Jingu izen/igo: Kindai jinja o meguru kankyō keisei no kōzō tenkan (Kajima shuppankai, 2014)  

• Kaizokushikan kara mita sekaishi no saikōchiku ~Kōeki to jōhōryūtsū no genzai o toitadasu~ (Pirate’s View of the World History: A Revered Perception of the Other Things) (Shibunkaku, 2017)  

• Tennō no dining hall (Shibunkaku, 2017)  

• Meiji, Kono fushigina jidai 3 (Shintensha, 2019  

• Utsushi to utsuroi ~Bunkadenpa no utsuwa to shokuhen no jissō~ (Utsushi and Utsuroi –Metempsychosis and Passage: Recipients of Transcultural Migration and Haptic Transfigurations) (Kachōsha, 2019)  

• Kindai Nihon Syūkyōshi Dai 3 kan Kyoyo to seimei Taishōki（Shunjusha, 2020）  

• Miru, Yomu, Aruku Tokyo no rekishi 7 (Yoshikawakobunkan, 2019)

‘The Poetics of Hair and Thread in Japanese Buddhist Embroideries, 1200-1500’

This meeting will be in person.

‘Japan's first Japanese-German dictionary: created in the northern suburbs of Tokyo in the Meiji era’