Japan

The Basque community of Japan is small and recent, and it has one particular feature: a good part of those who keep it going are not Basque. The first association was founded in 2006 by a Japanese man who had spent time in Euskal Herria thirty years earlier, and it came to have more than seventy members, many of them Japanese. The euskal etxea of Tokyo, recognised in 2009, also brings together Basques and Japanese.

The first step was taken by that Japanese man. Around 1976 Yuichi Shimanuki came to Euskal Herria trying to make his way in football, and he kept the memory of the hospitality he found there. In 2006 he founded the Basque-Japanese Society, Nihon Basuku Yukoikai, which came to have more than seventy members, a good part of them Japanese. Its main work was to offer information about Euskal Herria in Japanese on its website, but Shimanuki’s aim was to create a euskal etxea in Tokyo.⁴

The euskal etxea came in 2009. On 9 December that year the Governing Council recognised six new euskal etxeak, two of them in countries that had none: Germany (Berlin) and Japan (Tokyo) (see the euskal etxea of Tokyo).² Its members are Basque professionals living in the country, people who teach Basque at Japanese universities and Japanese people interested in Basque culture.²³