Board Member
Segawa, Shiro
Chairman
Segawa, Shiro is a professor at Waseda University Journalism School and a representative director of the Institute for the Next Generation of Journalism and Media at Waseda University.
His book Truth of Scientific Journalism got a Japanese Association of Science & Technology Journalist prize in 2017. He previously worked at national newspaper Mainichi Shimbun as a correspondent in Washington, D.C., a head of the division of science and environment news, later a deputy managing editor, and an editorial board member. He graduated from Faculty of Liberal Arts at the University of Tokyo, majoring in history of science and philosophy of science. His researcher’s profile is here.
Fujimura, Atsuo
Vice-Chairman
Fujimura, Atsuo has been a director of the Japan Internet Media Association (JIMA) since 2019. He was an executive officer of a media development division of SmartNews, Inc. He is currently a fellow there.
He previously worked at ASCII Corporation as an editor of books and magazines, worked at IBM, founded Atmark IT Inc., and worked as the CEO at ITmedia Inc.
Tateiwa, Yoichiro
Vice-Chairman
Tateiwa, Yoichiro is a journalist and the executive editor of Seeds of News Japan, a non-profit organization of investigative journalism. He previously worked at NHK, Japan Public Broadcasting, and did investigative reporting as a correspondent in Tehran, Okinawa and Osaka. After being involved in the Panama Papers project as the leader, he left NHK.
He has a Bachelor of Societies and International Studies at Hitotsubashi University and a Master of Societies and Political Science at The Open University of Japan. He published several books about Journalism, U.S. politics and Fact-checking, e.g.The Real Face of Trump Kingdom, What is Fact-Checking (co-written by Yanai, Hitofumi).
Yanai, Hitofumi
Executive Director
Yanai, Hitofumi is an attorney at law and an editor of Seed of News Japan’s fact-checking department.
In 2012, he founded a non-profit organization Watchdog for Accuracy in News-reporting, Japan (WANJ) and launch the website GoHoo (which had been the only Japanese fact-checking website registered on the Duke Reporters’ Lab Fact-checking Database until it was closed in August 2019). He did fact-checking hundreds of news coverages published by mainstream media. He belongs to Verybest Law offices and the Institute for the Next Generation of Journalism and Media at Waseda University. He is also an auditor of Japan Internet Media Association (JIMA). He previously worked at national newspaper Sankei Shimbun as a reporter after graduating from the Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University. He published What is Fact-Checking (co-written by Tateiwa, Yoichiro) in 2018.
Inui, Kentaro
Director
Inui, Kentaro is a professor at the Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University and a leader of the Natural Language Understanding Team RIKEN Center for advanced intelligence project. His research fields are artificial intelligence and inference and natural language processing. He engages in automatic editing of linguistic information and knowledge, and research about basic technology of language processing. He is a general project manager of the information processing society of Japan Natural Language Processing and a deputy editor in chief of the Journal of Natural Language Processing. His researcher’s profile is here.
Okumura, Nobuyuki
Director
Okumura, Nobuyuki has been a professor of Faculty of Sociology at Musashi University (Journalism) since 2014. He was also a Fulbright visiting scholar at the George Washington University from 2018 to 2019. He previously a professor at Ritsumeikan University and a visiting scholar at SAIS, the Johns Hopkins University. He also worked at TV Asahi as a news producer for a program “News Station”. He has a Master Degree (International Relations) from Sophia University. He translated the book into : Blur – How to know what’s true in the age of information overload, written by prominent journalists, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. His Linkedin page is here.
Kanai, Keiko
Director
Kanai, Keiko is a professor of faculty of Applied Sociology at Kindai University. She has been teaching Journalism at Kindai University since 2008. She had worked at Reuters News Agency in Tokyo, Osaka, and London office as a reporter, an editor, and a translator for 18 years. She graduated from Regis College and Tokyo Woman’s Christian University. She published Learning about Journalism through Columns: Media Literacy in the Global Era. Her researcher’s profile is here.
Murakami, Kenjiro
Director
Murakami, Kenjiro is Spectee Inc. CEO. He previously worked at AII Inc., Charles River Laboratories, Inc, and Cisco Systems, Inc. He has an MBA from Waseda University and studied at the department of physics, faculty of science at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Yamasaki, Takeshi
Director
Yamasaki, Takeshi is a chairman at Science of Food Safety and Security (SFSS) which he founded in 2011. He is also a veterinarian and a Doctor of Veterinary Science at University of Tokyo. He previously worked at a pharmaceutical company. His specialized areas are food safety and security, risk communication, and foods with functional claims. His fact-checking report is here.
Adviser
Makino, Yo
Advisor
Makino, Yo is a co-founder and a first term director of FIJ. He is also a part-time lecturer at Waseda University Journalism School. He previously worked at Nikkei (formerly Nihon Keizai Shimbun) as a senior staff writer for nearly 25 years. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Keio University and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. He has published many books e.g. Media-Government Complex, The Huffington Post’s Shock in Japanese. He also translated several books to Japanese: Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America’s Eyeballs (Written by Gina Keating), Great By Choice (written by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen), and more. His website is here.
John Middleton
Advisor
John Middleton is a professor of Anglo-American law, Graduate School of Law, Hitotsubashi University. He co-founded and served as a first-term director of FIJ. He is registered as an Australian Lawyer (Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria) and Attorney-at-Law in New York. He holds a Doctorate of Law from Hitotsubashi University. His area of specialization is Comparative Law. He wrote Legal and Extra-legal Remedies for Harm Caused by Media Reporting, Focusing on the British and Australian Approaches to the Problem of False Reporting in Japanese.
Furuta, Daisuke
Advisor
Furuta, Daisuke is a journalist and a founder of Media-Collabo. He is also a senior fellow of BuzzFeed Japan, an organizer of Online News Association Japan, and a part-time lecturer at Waseda University Graduate School of Political Science. He was previously the founding editor of BuzzFeed Japan and worked at national newspaper Asahi Shimbun as a digital media editor, Singapore branch manager, Asia head office member, and a local news section member. He graduated from the School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University.