Message from the President

“Greeting”

I am Kaoru Kitajima, the president of the Ecological Society of Japan (ESJ) for two years starting March 2024. The past presidents of ESJ have published their messages on our Japanese website. This is the first of such messages in English. One of my missions as the president is to enhance international networking. So, I will write short essays that largely mirror the Japanese ones that I will be writing every so often.

ESJ has been around for more than 60 years. It is an active society with the executive office (president, vice president, secretaries, treasurer, internal auditors, business office manager), board, council, and various committees including those in charge of our society journals, annual meetings, and thematic issues. I am very grateful to all members who contribute to these committees, without whose volunteerism, ESJ would not function. You can find their names on our “who-we-are” webpage. Unfortunately, a list of past presidents is not on the English who-we-are page. But if you look at the Japanese page, you find that there have been 23 ESJ presidents, of whom there are only two women, Dr. Izumi Washitani (2004-2006) and myself (2024-2026). After spending 29 years in the US as a graduate student and then professor, I feel that Japan is behind the US and Europe by 20 years in gender equity issues. Just last year, ESJ prepared and approved the “Diversity & Inclusion” statement, thanks to the leadership of then-president, Tadashi Miyashita, and our career-support committee. ESJ continues to make effort in this important topic. Indeed, last year, ESJ was the organizer of the 21st annual symposium of the Japan Inter-society Liaison Committee for Promoting Equal Participation of Men and Women in Science and Engineering. This organization promotes the concept of “unconscious bias”, which I think is important in all of our academic and societal interactions.

As I want the English version of the president’s messages to be intended for members who are not fluent in Japanese and ecologists outside of Japan who may be potentially interested in getting to know ecological research in Japan, my messages are not direct translations of Japanese ones. We realize that we need to upgrade our society and annual meeting web pages to be more friendly to English users. In my next essay, I will write more about our efforts toward international networking of ecologists.

I have less than 16 months left in my term, but I want to do my best to make ESJ to be a better society, addressing diversity and equity issues and international networking among others, in the spirit of SDGs 17, “partnership for goals”.

December 9th, 2024
Kaoru Kitajima
President of the Ecological Society of Japan