- Speaker: Hiroo CHIKARAISHI (President & CEO, Thomas & Chikaraishi Co., Ltd. Representative Director, Soul of Japan Foundation)
- Date: Friday, November 14, 2025, 6:30-8:45 pm (including reception)
- Venue: Iwasaki Koyata Memorial Hall
- Language: Japanese (without interpretation)
- Eligibility: I-House members and spouses/partners only (registration required)
*On the day of the event, please present your membership card at the reception desk in front of the venue. - Admission: 5,000 yen/person
In 2024, Japan welcomed over 36 million international visitors, setting a new record high. Tourists from around the world are visiting Japan daily, and fascination with Japanese cuisine is sweeping the globe.
With interest in Japanese food culture and tourism surging abroad, there is an urgent need to cultivate individuals who not only possess knowledge and experience of the regions and their food culture but who can also effectively communicate their insights to the world.
Meanwhile, Japan in recent years has faced mounting domestic challenges, such as a succession of major earthquakes, torrential rains, and other natural disasters, as well as pressing social issues like a declining birthrate, an aging populations, and demographic decline.
These trends threaten the preservation of local food cultures—including unique ingredients and traditional production methods—around the country.
How can we protect and nurture Japan’s culinary culture and ensure that it thrives into the future?
In this Special Lecture for Members, we are honored to welcome Hiroo Chikaraishi, a leading authority on hospitality in Japan and a passionate advocate for the preservation and global promotion of Japanese food culture.
We are also planning to welcome a distinguished guest at the lecture. We warmly invite all members to join us—and feel free to bring a friend!
After graduating from Waseda University, he studied abroad at the School of Hotel and Restaurant Administration at Paul Smith College in the U.S. After graduating, he received management training at Mark Thomas Enterprises on the West Coast of the U.S. After returning to Japan in 1972, he founded Thomas & Chikaraishi Co., Ltd., named after his mentor, Mark Thomas, and has been working to develop hospitality personnel, focusing on the service industry (particularly the hotel and restaurant industries), for over 50 years.
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In November 2010, he participated in the food-related conference WOF (Worlds of Flavor) held at the California campus (Napa Valley) of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), an American culinary university, as Secretary General of the Team of Japan, a group of 39 leading Japanese chefs from a wide range of fields who showcased Japanese cuisine to the world. Their presentations were highly praised during the three-day program, which brought together top chefs from around the world, not just from across the United States, and it was said that they helped to further raise the global reputation of Japanese food and its chefs. It also served as an opportunity for the chefs participating in WOF to build deeper connections with each other across food genres.A few months later, in March 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck. In response to this unprecedented disaster, the Team of Japan members who participated in WOF expressed their desire to help the affected areas in some way. To realize these wishes, the Soul of Japan Foundation was established in April 2011. Since then, the foundation has continuously provided support for the affected areas through food for approximately three years. In 2014, the Foundation announced its goal of becoming a “platform for Japanese food,” and has continued to promote Japanese food on a global scale to this day, working with Japan’s leading chefs and food-related companies that support its activities, including food education activities for junior and senior high school students and Japan experience tours for students studying Japanese cuisine at the CIA.In addition, as part of the plan to establish a “Graduate University of Food,” the Foundation launched the “Food Business Management Program” in 2019, an educational program to develop the next generation of management talent in the food industry and is currently in its fourth term.