YOKOHAMA—A travel agency here continues to arrange trips to places often known for misery, conflict or struggle.
Led by President Shoichi Ota, Fuji International Travel Service Ltd. organizes study tours themed on peace, environmental conservation and human rights.
In Vietnam, for example, tour participants meet victims of the Agent Orange defoliant dioxin used by U.S. forces in the Vietnam War.
In northern Europe, they visit welfare facilities.
And in Japan, they hear from survivors of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in the places where they experienced the disaster.
The company was founded by Yasuo Yanagisawa, a former employee of Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) who was in charge of the 1945 radio broadcast announcing Japan’s surrender.
Ota, 56, joined the company at age 24 when he was feeling out of place in the money-driven asset-inflated economy of the 1980s and early 1990s.
He empathized with the purpose of the company to “promote a peaceful world and democratic society.”
Ota immersed himself in the work, organizing tours and accompanying participants to their destinations.
One tour took them to Shimanto, Kochi Prefecture, where participants learned about a rights movement there.
Fuji International has also faced hardships.
Ota took over as president when the company was in financial difficulties 12 years ago.
He managed to get the business back on track, but then the travel industry was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ota finds solace in the faces of customers and people who support the company’s study tours around the world.
Fuji International has four employees, including a young worker who visited Okinawa Prefecture on a senior high school trip arranged by the company.
“No matter how widespread information communication tools become, there are things you can never know unless you actually go to the places,” the president said.
When Ota visited Kinmen island in the Taiwan Strait, which recently gained attention due to tensions with China, he felt his experience there was quite different from descriptions posted on social media or reports in the mainstream media.
Ota believes there is a need for hands-on approaches with false information now widely distributed.
Fuji International has also been a behind-the-scenes supporter of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo) for its overseas activities.
It helped the anti-nuclear organization attend the United Nations General Assembly in 1982, where a hibakusha atomic-bomb survivor concluded his speech for disarmament by saying’ “No more Hiroshima. No more Nagasaki.”
In October this year, when Fuji International marked the 60th anniversary of its establishment, Nihon Hidankyo was named winner of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.
The company made the travel arrangements for and accompanied the group’s delegation to the award ceremony held on Dec. 10 in Oslo.
AloJapan.com