The Rotary Club of Kanagawa Shonan, the first alumni club in Japan, was chartered on December 15, 2004  to “Celebrate Rotary” on its centennial year with Kazuhiko Ozawa, then a PDG and present RI Director (2007-2009) as its special representative.

Of the 23 charter members, 11 were ambassadorial scholarship alumni, 9 were former GSE team members, and 3 were past Youth Exchange students.

Our average age was 38, and 12 were women members. In a country where the majority of Rotarians are men and their average age is around 60, the club was and still is really unique.

To make it easier for young professionals to join Rotary, our annual dues are kept low (70,000 yen, about one-third of ordinary Japaense clubs), and the meeting time alternates between Friday (evening) and Saturday (noon).

Our missions, represented in our club banner above, which was desgined by Ko Hayashi, former ambassadorial scholar from Japan to Italy, are:

Since then, the membership has grown to 26 and “aged” a little, like a good wine, while sharing unforgettable Rotary moments and the members’ expertise to serve humanity through various projects, both local and international. (Read our Reconnection article.)

On April 6 in 2007, RIP Boyd and his wife Lorna visited our club meeting, which was attended by many distinguished visiting Rotarians. In his speech, he emphasized the importance of leading the way in Rotary and praised the vision and action of our special representative, RI Director Elect Kazuhiko Ozawa, who created the first alumni club in Japan.

As part of the Intra-city meeting we hosed, we organized a symposium on international humanitarian aid. The three panelists who shared unique experiences with the audience were all ambassadorial scholarship alumni, two having worked for UNCHR and UNRWA, and one being a director of AMDA. The event highlighted the indirect yet indispensable contribution of the scholarhip program for the "solidarity of mankind".  

On February 6 in 2005, many distinguished Rotary leaders, including RI Director Sakuji, Takana, celebrated Rotary by joining the presentation of our charter singed by RIP Glenn Estess and DG Takeshi Matsumiya. Charter Presidet Naoyuki Takagi expressed the charter members’ determination for Service above Self in his speech.

With small children living in an orphanage in Fujisawa City, we cleaned city streets, had a nice outdoor lunch, played games and sang songs . After the clean up, President Mama, who supervises recyling in the city govenment, showed how to recyle the garbage collected and emphasized the importance of recyling. A perfect vocational service! We all enjoyed working with the children.

The club's first matching grant project with Mandaluyong- Pasig-San Juan (Manpasan) RC, the first alumni club in the world, District 3800 and District 3220 in Sri Lanka, which also has an alumni club, created three deep wells and fixed one well pump in four schools in Caloocan City in Manila, providing water for more than 10,000 pupils and students every day.

For two years in a row, we hosted the orientation for Youth Exchange inbound students with Rotex members.  The students were from all over the world, the US, Canada, Australia, France, Brazil, Russia, Taiwan and Korea.  The orientation focuses on introducing the Japanese culture and Rotary, and has been well received by the students in the past years.  This is a great service opportunity for us who were once in a position similar to these students.

Five members from our club attended the Los Angeles International Convention and shared our unique expereinces as the first alumni club in Japan with Rotarians from all over the world during pre-convention Alumni Celebration and Convention breakout sessions. They also met with and enjoyed the company of Governor Elect Bob Blacker from D 5040, who is determined to form a new alumni club in Canada.

Masaharu Otsubo, our first ambassadorial scholar (2007-2009) studying at the Fletcher Law School, Tufts University in Boston came back to Japan and shared his experience at our club meeting on May 24 before he heads for Bangladesh to do his 3-month internship. The picture shows Masaharu in a Ninja costume at an Asian night in his dormitory.

The first Yoneyama Scholarship student we hosted, Mr. Xya Ten from China, graduated from Nihon University with a Master's degree. In the picture, he is holding the certificate of scholarship completion with DG Keizo Kosano, and his counselor Yuji Isozaki. He now works for an IT company in Tokyo. The Yoneyama Scholarship is run by Japanese Rotary, and annually supports about 800 foreign students studying in Japan.

On his official visit to our club, DG Kosano brought with him DG Jennifer Jones (D6400), her husband Nick, and a DVD of Paul Harris. We all watched the video together and shared the founder's message: "Rotary is a way of life". Jennifer also helped the induction of our new member, Masaya Sunabori, by presenting him with his first Rotary pin. She kindly mentioned our club in her video message on her District home page.

Our club composer and president elect, Hiroaki Tokunaga, who had visited Brazil as a GSE team member led by current DG Keizo Kosano, went again to Brazil, this time as a team leader. During the exchange that started on April 30, 2007, the team enjoyed the warm welcome from Rotarians in D4420, learned how each member's vocation is practiced, reunited with the Brazilian team, and attended their District Conference, expressing their gratitude even in Portuguese!. 

We raffled off many things donated by our club members at the Fujisawa City International Festival and raised about 300 USD to be used for our future "literacy" project. We also served teas from various parts of the world, while raising awareness on the literacy issue in developing countries and Rotary's commitment to solve this problem.

Inviting well-known English voice actor and actress, we gave an English pronunciation seminar in February, 2007.  The 60 participants had an enjoyable time singing English songs, comparing British and American English and distinguishing between ‘r’ and ‘l’, which is a hard task for most Japanese!  Half of the fund raised was given to the Tyler foundation (An NPO supporting the family of sick children) and the other half will be used for our ‘literacy’ project in the future.

To raise funds for a future water project, we hosted a charity concert “Yukyo," which means harmony welling up like waters.  The concert, featuring two of our members and Ari Kani, another alumna, was held in DG Nakada's Kakuonji temple, attacted more than 90 audience and raised 2,000 USD, which was later used for our first matching grant project to make deep wells in the Philippines.

We sold 100 Batik handkerchiefs that were made by Tsunami victim children in Thailand at a Yokosuka flea market.  We raised approximately 1,000 USD, and donated it to an NPO from Tokushima, Japan called “Harmony Work Camp”.  This NPO does philanthropy work in Thailand including education for music and had built a library for the children in the Thai village.  We hope that this will bring dreams to the children.

We organized two Centennial Concerts performed by Rotary Alumni who studied music, working with the District and the Alumni Association.  This was a project that some of our charter members had been working on prior to the establishment of our club, and therefore, all the members provided full support.  The concerts raised 60,000 USD, which was donated to the Rotary Foundation to support future RI foundation scholars.

Here is our club song, an oath all our members have taken.
Feel free to share it with us, by listening to it or singing it at your club meetings!
If you find our club song charming and inspiring, drop a happy buck, give to the Rotary Foundation, do whatever you can do to promote your Rotary causes.

Centennial Oath

Words: Naoyuki Takagi
Music: Hiroaki Tokunaga

Yes, I am only one and yet I am one
I cannot do everything but there's something I can
Whatever I can do I've got to do
By the grace of Mighty God I'll carry it out
Once I start to LEAD THE WAY with what I can do
Someone will LEND A HAND cause ROTARY SHARES
Together we can make come true, anything we wish
If it's true, if it's fair, good for every one
Hand in hand, let's walk on
There's no hurry but we should never stop
Let's act and SHOW WE CARE
Keeping SERVICE ABOVE SELF always on our minds
Someday peace will prevail upon this earth
Realizing at last Rotary's eternal dream.

Download Score
Download Music (Recorded by Toko Harayama, Ambassadorial Scholarship Alumna)

The original words were written in Japanese by Charter President Takagi, inspired by the following poem by Everett Hale, an American author.

I am only one, but I am one
I cannot do everything, but I can do something
What I can do I must do
By the grace of God I will do

When Takagi's Rotary mentor and counselor Bill Skinner was District Governor, Takagi was invited to their District Conference, where he heard the above poem quoted repeatedly by the President Representative. When our club was started, Takagi decided to work on its Japanese rendition so the charter members could share the essence of the Rotary spirit of "I will" without religious implications.

He asked charter member Hiroaki Tokunaga, who composes professionally, to write the music, and thus, our club song was born. It was charter secretary Hiroko Yunoki's idea to write its English version to welcome RIP Boyd with. Takagi initially thought it would be impossible because now he had to fit the words into music, but somehow it was managed with Tokunaga's cooperation to change the music here and there, so the English words would go well with the melody.

Dear Rotary friends,

We are located in Fujisawa City, Kanagawa Prefecture, JAPAN.

Our meeting place is about 1 hour train ride away from Tokyo, and there are plenty of sightseeing spots in the neiborhood, including famous temples, shrines and the Great Buddha in Kamakura city.

You can also visit our meeting virtually on the Internet. If you have SKYPE installed on your computer, our meeting is only several clicks away, if you can handle the time difference.

Most members speak English, and we have members who understand French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Just send us an e-mail at rltakagi@yahoo.co.jp, and we will get back to you as soon as we can. We are all looking forward to meeting visitors from all over the world.

Hiroko Yunoki,
President (2010-11)