Ichiro KABASAWA

Ichiro Kabasawa is Executive Director of The Nippon Foundation, based in Tokyo. Kabasawa oversees international projects that The Nippon Foundation conducts in various countries. He, as the executive producer, initiated a series of performing arts events presented across geographies, in celebration of diversity and inclusion.

Prior to joining The Nippon Foundation in 2017, Kabasawa worked for over 20 years as a journalist at Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK. He started his NHK career in Okinawa, where he covered national security issues, and later was assigned to Bangkok for three years, during which he covered Southeast Asia issues including Thailand’s 2006 coup and Myanmar’s junta government. He was a correspondent with NHK’s Washington Bureau from 2010 to 2014. As the Pentagon correspondent, he traveled to many countries with US Secretaries of Defense and Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces. Following his Washington assignment, he returned to Tokyo in 2014 as a senior editor in NHK international news section.