Yasuomi Sawa is executive director and co-founder of J-Forum, Japan’s first platform dedicated to peer training and solidarity among journalists. Since founding the organization from scratch, he has led it to become a vibrant space where journalists from across the country gather, share skills, and build mutual support. The Forum also launched Japan’s first Investigative Journalism Award and runs a website empowering parenting journalists. Before joining Waseda University as a professor of journalism, Sawa spent 30 years at Kyodo News, Japan’s largest news agency. His investigative reporting includes work on the Panama Papers and other ICIJ projects, as well as exposing that the government had no record of whether around 10,000 foreign children were attending school, uncovering the courts’ silent disposal of major post-war constitutional case records, and revealing sexual exploitation of teenage girls in Tokyo. He has authored three books on journalism.

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