Welcome Message

I have been appointed President of the 68th Annual Meeting of the Japan Society of Human Genetics (JSHG). It is a great honor be given the responsibility of organizing this longstanding Annual Meeting, alongside some of the top scientists working in the field, and I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the membership of the JSHG.

The Annual Meeting will be held over four days from Wednesday, October 11 to Saturday, October 14, 2023, at the Toshi Center Hotel and the Zenkoku Toshi Kaikan in Tokyo, Japan.

The JSHG was founded in 1956 as an academic organization with the aims of contributing to the advancement of science through human genetics research, promoting clinical practice in the field of genetics, contributing to healthcare and welfare through research on diseases and health, and spreading knowledge of human genetics in society at large through education and outreach. I have been president of the JSHG since November 2019, and today we have become one of the largest societies in the field of medical genetics, with around 6,000 members and more than 3,000 attendees at Annual Meetings.

Medical genetics is a field that is attracting a huge amount of attention, both in terms of research and clinical practice, because of the dramatic technical revolution in genome analysis worldwide. Japan was the first Asian country to hold an International Congress of Human Genetics, hosting the 13th Conference in Kyoto in April 2016 (ICHG 2016). This contributed to raising awareness of the achievements of Japanese researchers, and our nation is now expected by other countries to play a driving role in international research activities. Against this backdrop, we received an ambitious proposal to hold a joint conference with the Asia Pacific Conference on Human Genetics (APCHG). In August 2022, key persons from the APSHG came to Japan, and after much careful discussion it was decided that this Annual Meeting should be a joint meeting of three societies that will also include the East Asian Union of Human Genetics Societies (EAUHGS), with “All Asia” as the theme. In addition to the 3,000 participants expected to attend from Japan, we will also welcome several hundred from overseas, and it is my fervent hope that we will engage in the lively, passionate discussions that are the attraction of in-person conferences across a larger number of venues.

I am doing my utmost to prepare a program for the Annual Meeting that will leave participants feeling happy that they attended. Under the clear skies of fall, I am very much looking forward to meeting you all.