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History of
Rotary in
Japan #2
A short history copied from
the web site of "Rotary Japan"
BACK TO JAPAN PAGE The first Rotary
club in Japan is the Rotary Club of Tokyo which was established
in the fall season (October 20) of 1920. It was admitted by
Rotary International on April 1, 1921 as the 855th Rotary Club
in the world.
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Chesley R.Perry
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Umekichi Yoneyama
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Three important persons spent a lot of effort to help organized a new Rotary Club in Japan. The first was Mr.
Chesley R. Perry, the first General Secretary of Rotary International who tried to spread Rotary all over the world.
Other two were Japanese, Mr. Umekichi Yoneyama and Mr. Kisoji Fukushima. Thereafter the number of
Japanese Rotary Clubs grew through the years.
In 1940, Japan had 48 clubs and 2,000 Rotarians.
Unfortunately, Japanese Rotary Clubs had to withdraw from Rotary
International in 1940, because of the prohibition by the government due to events leading to World War Ⅱ.
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Kisoji Fukushima
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However, Rotarians continued their weekly meetings
by simply changing the name of there gathering from Rotary
meeting” to “Wednesday meeting”.
It took almost a decade before
Japanese Rotary Clubs became involved with Rotary International
again, (March, 1949).
To date, Japan has 2,309 Rotary clubs and 95,9051Rotarians (Ａｕｇ.
2008) who contribute a lot to Rotary International.
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