Hiroshi Yoneyama is President of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) and

Vice Chancellor and Trustee of the Ritsumeikan Trust. Before joining APU, he taught and 
served in various administrative positions at Ritsumeikan University for twenty-one 
years, including the Dean of Academic Affairs (AY2012-14) and the Dean of the 
Faculty of Letters and Trustee of the Ritsumeikan Trust (AY2018-19). As the Associate 
Dean of the Faculty of Letters in 2007, Mr. Yoneyama received an Outstanding Faculty 
and Staff Award from the Ritsumeikan Trust for implementing an effective curriculum 
management system. Before Ritsumeikan University, he held full-time positions at 
Toyo Women’s College for five years and at the University of Tokyo for two years. Mr. 
Yoneyama’s field of research is the immigration history of the United States, especially 
the formation of the Japanese community in California. He has contributed to 
reforming the framework of the field into the international mobility of the Japanese population in the modern era.

 

He received two JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) for large-scale 
projects “An Interdisciplinary Study of the International Movement of the Japanese in the Pacific Region” (AY2006-9) and 
“Transnational Mobility and Occupations of Overseas Japanese in the Pacific Rim” (AY2013-17). 

His publications include:

• "The International Movements of the Japanese and Their Pacific World" (in Japanese) (Kyoto: Bunrikaku, 2015) co-edited with Norifumi Kawahara.

• “Internationalizing the Understanding of American History through Pre-WWII Japanese Immigrants’ Participation in the Economy of Southern California,” (in Japanese).

• "Journal of Cultural Sciences" (Literary Association of Ritsumeikan University), no. 597 (February 2007): 144-53.

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As Vice President of APU, he has been interviewed by many journals, including “Innovative Learning” (in Japanese) June 2022 issue: “Nurturing the Young People Needed for a Sustainable Society with APU’s Three Pillars of Academic Innovation for 2023” and August 2023 issue: “APU: Establishment of a New College for Its ‘Second Opening’ and a New Approach to Recurrent Education”, “Between” (in Japanese) no. 301 (January 2022) “APU Proposes a Redefinition of Global Education from the Standpoint of Enhancing the Sustainability of the University”, and no. 309 (September 2023) “From APU of Japan to APU of the World: Education to Enable Students to be Competitive Anywhere”.