Invited Speakers

Born in Yamanashi City, Yamanashi Prefecture in March 1947. After eight years of service as a corporate employee, he established a repair shop for construction machinery in his hometown, Yamanashi City, at the age of 23.

Having seen so many distressing landmine victims during his business trip to Phnom Penh (Central Market) in 1994 and prompted by the uncontrollable anger, he established a project team to develop a demining equipment and the first of which completed in 1998. Then, repeatedly tested blast proofness and conducted comprehensive tests on safety and workability of the demining machine from various aspects of mine fields including conditions, temperature or soil. From 2000 up to present, 70 machines are under operation in 7 countries as Cambodia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Thailand, Vietnam, Angola and Colombia. He now conducts extensive peace education and lecture activities at schools and so on with the aim of making the wretched circumstances of people in mined countries to other people and the rebirth of nature after demining widely known, towards aiming at a "Peaceful World without Landmines". He appeared in various TV programs, newspapers and magazines.

Awards (excerpt):

• Grand Prize, 3rd Japan Philanthropy Award
• Yoshikawa Eiji Cultural Prize
• Social Responsibility Award
• UN Development Programme DEVNET Award
• The Asahi Corporate Citizen Award
• Grand Prize, Japan's Exciting Monozukuri (meaning manufacturing) Award by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry