The JBS Award Ceremony that was scheduled to take place at the Annual Dinner in January of this year for the 2021 recipient had to be cancelled due to the pandemic. On 3rd November Ambassador Longbottom kindly hosted the ceremony at the British Embassy and Mr Robin Maynard received a piece of inscribed silverware.

Mr Robin J. MAYNARD MBE
Robin’s inability to abide human suffering and his love of history have led him to make significant contributions to Japanese society, and to instigating important discoveries related to Anglo-Japanese history. He has, for example, quietly donated large sums of money to relief efforts in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. While Caroline Pover rightly received a JBS Award for her relief efforts on the Oshika peninsula in northeast Japan, Robin was supporting her in the background. Robin’s interest in history led him to establish The William Adams Club (WAC) in 2015. With a flourishing membership that includes many prominent Japanese and Britons in Japan (two former British ambassadors, Sir Tim Hitchens KCVO CMG and Paul Madden CMG, are now Patrons of the Club), WAC has played a role not only in promoting friendship between the two countries with which Adams was associated, but has also, thanks largely to Robin’s moral and financial support, discovered in Hirado (Nagasaki Prefecture) the remains of William Adams, which had been missing for 400 years. A Press Release dated 16th May 2020 shows that Robin both instigated and funded the historically important find of the remains of the man who negotiated the first diplomatic and trade agreement between Japan and Britain, which was signed in 1613.