Japan’s richest person donates US$31 million to UCLA programme

TADASHI Yanai, the chief executive officer of Fast Retailing and Japan’s richest person, donated US$31 million to the University of California at Los Angeles’ College (UCLA) Division of Humanities, a record amount for the programme.

His latest donation surpasses the previous record that Yanai set himself when he gave US$25 million to the school in 2020. The latest gift will go to the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, which was created a decade ago, according to a statement on Thursday (Oct 3).

The bulk of the donation from Yanai will help fund a web-based hub called Japan Past & Present, which Yanai Initiative Director Michael Emmerich said will be a one-stop shop for academics worldwide.

Yanai, 75, is Japan’s richest person with a net worth of US$48.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg billionaires Index. He leads Fast Retailing, a clothing empire that owns brands including Uniqlo and Theory. He also spent years on the board of Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group before stepping down nearly five years ago.

Emmerich, who specialises in Japanese literature and translation, said he first met Yanai through a copy-writing job he took at Uniqlo. The pair spoke about the future of Japanese humanities, and eventually Yanai helped found the initiative – which is done in partnership with Tokyo’s Waseda University – with a US$2.5 million gift.

The group recently sought contributors for an interactive online classical Japanese dictionary, and had people in the technology industry, as well as academics, apply.

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“You can go now for the first time, to one page and see what sorts of books are coming out in the Japanese humanities everywhere,” Emmerich said. “I go and check that page every single day because it’s just exciting to see what’s happening.” BLOOMBERG