LOS ANGELES—Billionaire Japanese businessman Tadashi Yanai has committed to donate $31 million to the UCLA College Division of Humanities, the largest gift in the division’s history, the university announced Thursday.
The donation will support the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, which was created at UCLA—in partnership with Tokyo’s Waseda University—in 2014 thanks to a $2.5 million donation from the businessman. Yanai in 2020 donated $25 million to the initiative.
Yanai, considered one of the richest—if not the richest—people in Japan, is the founder and CEO of Fast Retailing, the parent company of the Uniqlo clothing brand.
The bulk of his latest donation will support “Japan Past & Present,” which is based in the UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and is designed to “transform the field of Japanese humanities by promoting easy and equitable access to research and teaching resources and fostering greater collaboration among scholars throughout the world.”
“I am proud to support the study of Japanese humanities at UCLA and around the world because I believe in sharing and valuing the practices and artforms that shape our world,” Yanai said in a statement. “The humanities and arts make us who we are—they enable us as humans to relate to and care for one another. I look forward to seeing how Japan Past & Present will expand and enrich this critical work.”
According to Michael Emmerich, director of the Yanai Initative and Japan Past & Present, Japanese humanities scholars often find it difficult to collaborate with peers due to simple logistical issues, because many universities outside Japan don’t have stand-alone departments dedicated to the field. The Past & Present website is an effort to create bridges and foster collaboration worldwide.
“We want to make sure there is greater equity across the global community of scholars, in terms of both access to resources and the visibility of the work we are all doing,” Emmerich said in a statement. “And we want this digital hub to be a place researchers keep coming back to, because it will offer all sorts of resources they want and need.
“Creating that sort of space for scholars everywhere is key to reimagining the Japanese humanities as a truly global field.”
The Japan Past & Present website went live in March.
Interim UCLA Chancellor Darnell Hunt said in a statement that Yanai’s gift “will substantially advance the study of Japanese humanities, solidify UCLA’s position as a leading center for such scholarship and contribute greatly to our global reach and impact.”
“Thanks to Mr. Yanai’s generosity, UCLA will continue to grow as a nexus for scholars across the world to come together to explore and exchange ideas, transcending political, linguistic and cultural boundaries,” Hunt said.
