Annual International Chambers Christmas Luncheon – 2025

Keynote Speaker: Consul General Hajime “Jimmy” Kishimori of Japan in Detroit
“How Japan and Japanese Companies Are Impacting Ohio”

Date: December 5, 2025 | Register
Time: 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM
Location: Windows on the River, 2000 Sycamore Street | Cleveland, OH 44113

We are pleased to announce that the British-American Chamber of Commerce, along with other International Chambers, will be hosting the Annual International Chambers Christmas Luncheon on December 5th. We warmly invite everyone from Cleveland’s international community to attend this special event, featuring keynote speaker Hajime “Jimmy” Kishimori, Consul General of Japan in Detroit. It is the Consulate’s ongoing mission to foster and strengthen Japan’s vibrant economic, governmental, educational, cultural, and people-to-people relations with Michigan and Ohio.

Register Today!

Consul-General Hajime “Jimmy” Kishimori is the Consul-General of the Consulate General of Japan in Detroit, whose main mission is to protect and support Japanese expatiates and companies in the states of Michigan and Ohio. He is a specialist of UN issues, having spent nearly 15 years in Geneva, Tokyo for UNHCR, and New York.

Consul-General Kishimori, born in Hiroshima in 1964, began his career with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1987, after graduating from the University of Tokyo. Since then, he received an MA at SAIS (School of Advanced International Studies, John’s Hopkins University), worked for the Embassy of Japan in the USA, Southeast Asia Division and Legal Division in the HQs, then served at the Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva from 1999 to 2002, where he assisted the then UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Madam Sadako Ogata. That changed his career as he quit the Japanese Foreign Service in July 2005 after working for the Embassy of Japan in Thailand from 2002 to 2005.

He was appointed as Deputy Representative of UNHCR, working for then UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr. Antonio Guterres who is now UN Secretary General.

Consul General Kishimori returned to the Japanese Foreign Service in July 2009, serving at the Embassy of Japan in Egypt as Director for the Japan Information and Culture Center (JICC) until December 2010. The East Japan Earthquake hit the Tohoku area on March 11, 2011, after which he was engaged with strategic communication at the HQs in Tokyo, including reputational damage control of the Fukushima nuclear accident and the establishment of JAPAN HOUSE in LA, London and Sao Paulo.

He was assigned to the UN again in August 2015 as Counselor at the Permanent Mission to the UN in New York from 2015 to 2019, then seconded to UNDP in New York as Senior Advisor & Director for the Japan Unit from 2019 to 2022.

He was transferred to San Francisco in March 2022 as Deputy Consul General and assumed the current post of Consul General of Japan in Detroit in December 2024.