A Research Trip to Japan

Keming Yang
15 October 2025

I was very lucky and honoured to win a BRIDGE Fellowship from Japan’s Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) this year. It was the second time I visited Japan with a fellowship from JSPS – the last time was in March 2019, a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic, when I visited a few institutions in Japan as an Invitational Fellow awarded by JSPS. This time, I visited more institutions and researchers.

Perhaps it was not luck alone. I have been doing research on loneliness and social isolation since I started working at Durham University in 2007. Now, the UK and Japan are the only two countries in the world that have appointed a Minister for Loneliness in their respective government. The World Health Organization (WHO) has established a commission on loneliness and social connection, which published its flagship report in June this year. JSPS is certainly aware of the increasing importance of loneliness as a global issue of public health, and I am very grateful for their financial support, which made my trip not only possible but enjoyable.

My institutional host is Japan’s National Centre for Geriatrics and Gerontology (NCGG), located in Obu, a small city to the southeast of Nagoya. NCGG consists of a hospital and a number of research centres. Professor Hiroyuki Shimada, Director of the Centre for Gerontology and Social Science, is my host. His research interests go far beyond loneliness, but during our extensive discussions, he could always connect loneliness to all of his research areas. I am also extremely grateful to Professor Hidenori Arai, the President of NCGG, who came to chair my lecture at NCGG during his busy daily schedule.

While in Nagoya, I visited Professor Tasuku Igarashi’s research group at the Graduate School of Education and Human Development, Nagoya University. He is a specialist in social networks among young people in Japan, so I delivered a lecture on loneliness and social isolation among young people in the UK. I was particularly impressed by the questions and comments raised by his students, which were far more challenging than what one would expect from Japanese students.

My next stop was Kyoto University, where I met a few researchers in two departments, Health Informatics and Social Epidemiology. Kyoto University has a large medical school, which includes its own hospital, and another Graduate School of Public Health. A group of researchers is also heavily involved in the administration of the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study (JAGES), a large longitudinal study of ageing and health. Incidentally, JAGES was holding its annual conference while I was in Kyoto, so I listened to the presentations. Besides talking to a few researchers individually, I delivered two lectures there, one on the challenges to measuring loneliness and social isolation, and the other on my approach to empirically analysing intersectional e􀆯ects on any health problem, with loneliness as an example.

My final stop was Tokyo. Before my trip, with the help of Mr Peter Brainbridge at Durham University’s International Office, I established new connections with some academics at Keio University, Sophia University, and Tokyo Institute of Technology. It was truly a great pleasure talking to newly acquainted researchers, learning about their research interests, and exploring potential opportunities for collaboration. I also had a long conversation with Yuko Kawanishi, who was trained as a sociologist at UCLA and is the author of Mental Health Challenges Facing Contemporary Japanese Society: The ‘Lonely People’ (2009). Later, she decided to become a professional psychotherapist and counsellor at a university. My final research activity was meeting a team of officials at the Cabinet Office of the Japanese government, where we learnt from each other about each country’s policies and programmes in tackling loneliness and social isolation.

While planning my trip, I thought September would be the best time to visit Japan. It turns out that one should never predict how Mother Nature will behave – the temperature was consistently between 30 to 35 degrees Celsius throughout the month I was there. Fortunately, everywhere (buses, subways, shops, etc.) was air-conditioned, not to mention that you will be spoiled by the abundance and variety of food! A final tip, if you are thinking of visiting Japan: you may wonder where you can throw away any garbage, because you won’t see any bins in public places. The solution is: there are many Konbinis (convenience shops) in Japan, and you can do away with your waste there.