For the Japanese-German Center Berlin, 2021 represented a transformational year in which significant groundwork was laid for its strategic realignment. We – JDZB team – look back with gratitude and look forward to 2022 with excitement but confidence.

The JDZB owns a treasure: an original work by the great painter HIGASHIYAMA Kaii, which he donated to the JDZB on the occasion of its foundation. In this article, the President of the Japanese-German Center Berlin, Ambassador (ret.) NAKANE Takeshi, introduces the great master.

UEDA Erina remembers her high school's "new principal," whom she meets again 25 years later as a "kind and strict German teacher."

Who can still remember the great Hokusai exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in 2011? Our then Deputy Secretary General Mr. SHIMIZU Yōichi and his assistant Ms. KIRIZUKI Emi had done a great job in organizing the exhibition. This article, in which Mr. SHIMIZU introduces a "unique connoisseur and advocate of Japanese art", was also written in cooperation with them.

Recently an #OpenWeekLab took place at the JDZB. With the help of experimental formats, the future of the JDZB was rethought. Secretary General Dr. Julia Münch writes about this extraordinary week.

There are more than 8,000 kilometers between Tōkyō and Berlin – yet there are many similarities between Japan and Germany. On the occasion of the anniversary, the State Secretary of the Federal Foreign Office Miguel Berger, who is also a member of the JDZB's Board of Executives, reflects on the relations between the two countries.

In this article, Ms. KIYOTA Tokiko, Deputy Secretary General of the Japanese-German Center Berlin, tells how she first worked with "her role model, Mr. SIEVERNICH," who has made a great contribution to introducing Japanese culture in Berlin.

Today I would like to introduce MITANI Nobuhiro to you - a person who simply cannot go unmentioned when it comes to exchanges between young people from Japan and Germany in the capital of Berlin!

Mrs. NAGAI Junko, 87 years young, has lived in Germany for many years and has broadcast German reports to Japan mainly on radio. It is not easy to summarize her long and dramatic life in a compact article. As Ms. NAGAI likes to say, it could be a "nagai article" - nagai is a homonym of "long" in Japanese. Be that as it may, I will try anyway.

Finally to Japan! A big dream for many young adults in Germany. In addition to the Japanese-German Center Berlin (JDZB), the German-Japanese Youth Society (DJJG) also runs exchange programs. These are supported 100 percent voluntarily, take place annually in Germany and Japan and are aimed at 18- to 30-year-olds.