Tadashi Yamamoto

Tadashi Yamamoto (March 11, 1936 – April 15, 2012) was one of Japan's leading internationalists and a pioneering proponent of efforts to strengthen nongovernmental ties between Japan and the United States as well as between Japan and other countries. Yamamoto championed the view that civilian diplomacy and person-to-person exchanges conducted by nongovernmental organizations had a critical role to play in international relations. He was the and longtime president of the Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE) a foreign policy think tank established in 1970 which promotes bilateral relations and exchanges between nongovernmental organizations. Yamamoto also helped to found the Shimoda Conference in 1967, a private sector forum for the discussiong of bilateral issues between American and Japanese policymakers and policy experts. The Wall Street Journal has called him "an ardent champion of the U.S.-Japan alliance."

Yamamoto served as the President of the Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE) from 1970 until his death in 2012. As head of the JCIE, Yamamoto simultaneously served as director for a number of forums, including the German-Japan Forum, the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, the Korea-Japan Forum, the Trilateral Commission Pacific Asia Group, and the Friends of the Global Fund, Japan, which works to promote the goals of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria throughout Asia.

In addition to the Shimoda Conference and the JCIE, Yamamoto also founded the Korea-Japan Forum, the U.S.-Japan Parliamentary Exchange Program, and the Trilateral Commission.

Yamamoto was born in 1936 into a Japanese Catholic family in Tokyo. His family moved to Hong Kong when he was three months old. The family then moved to Bombay, British India, where they lived for seven months. Yamamoto and his family returned to Japan in 1940. He initially studied at Rokko Senior High School before transferring to Komaba High School, from which he graduated in 1953.

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