KUNO Akiko, a longtime CWAJ member, was awarded the Sixth Kaneko Kentaro Award from the America Japan Society (AJS) for her longtime dedication to the Society. Since 1969 until today, she has been involved with the Society for 57 years during which she held key leadership roles as executive director for 14 years and vice president for 13 years. Kuno instituted various cultural and educational programs for the Society to promote mutual understanding between Japan and the United States.
AJS was inaugurated in 1917 in Tokyo by prominent leaders of both countries during the difficult and turbulent international period in Asia. They committed themselves to initiate better relationships and disseminate more accurate knowledge of the United States in Japan. KANEKO Kentaro was elected as the first president of the Society.
The Kaneko Kentaro Award was introduced in 2017 to celebrate the centennial anniversary of AJS. KANEKO Kentaro (1853–1942) was a leading statesman of the Meiji period (1868–1912). A Harvard graduate and friend of Theodore Roosevelt, the former president of the United States, he played an influential role in persuading Roosevelt to serve as a mediator in ending the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.
Kuno is a Keio University graduate. In 1961 during her junior year, she participated in the Keio-Stanford exchange student program and later obtained a certificate at the English Language Institute of the University of Michigan. She became the representative of the Ohio State Tokyo Trade Office until she met her husband KUNO Katsura. She, as an accomplished and avid sportsperson, worked for the Tokyo Olympic Games Organizing Committee in 1964. She was also involved in organizing international conferences and the like. Her marriage to Katsura took her to France where he worked at Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for two years.
Other than devoting her time as a wife and mother, Kuno joined CWAJ in 1978 where she actively participated in the Lecture Series, Print Shows and the Visually-Impaired Scholarship (VVS). Eventually she was elected president in 1985. During her tenure, Nanette Meech, the 1969 president and her tennis partner, asked her about the first Japanese woman who graduated an American college. Kuno replied that it was her great grandmother, OYAMA Sutematsu, a 1882 Vassar College graduate. This conversation sparked Kuno to study the ten years Sutematsu spent in the United States, which was totally unknown in Japan. With passionate devotion and commitment, Kuno probed the life in the United States from letters written by Sutematsu and wrote a book Rokumeikan no Kifujin, Oyama Sutematsu 『鹿鳴館の貴婦人 大山捨松―日本初の女子留学生』, which was translated into English as Unexpected Destinations: The Poignant Story of Japan’s First Vassar Graduate. Coincidently, OYAMA Sutematsu is the protagonist in Kaze, Kaoru (The Scent of the Wind), the morning television drama on NHK during the spring of 2026, as she was instrumental in encouraging Japanese women to work as professional nurses.
Kuno speaks of the invisible red thread of fate with KANEKO Kentaro, who was on the same steam ship with OYAMA Sutematsu sailing to America in 1871 as a member of the Iwakura Mission. It is no wonder that Kuno was selected as a winner of this prize.
（Interviewed by Ko Iwata and Emi Doi.）