Greetings from Ambassador Teruhiko Shinada
Ambassador of Japan to Barbados

It is a great pleasure to greet you. My name is Teruhiko Shinada, Ambassador of Japan to Barbados.

Until the end of 2015, the Japanese Embassy in Trinidad and Tobago covered Barbados, together with several other Eastern Caribbean states. At the beginning of 2016, however, a new Embassy was established in Barbados and I arrived in Bridgetown, its capital, in mid-October of the same year. Since then I have been trying, in my humble capacity, to strengthen ties between my country and this beautiful island. While the establishment of the Embassy was a concrete gesture of Japan to stress the importance of bilateral relations between the two countries, I feel especially privileged to have assumed the post as the first resident Ambassador of Japan to Barbados in the very year of its 50th Anniversary of Independence.

This year, 2017, is also significant as this is the 50th Anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between our two countries. Over the last 50 years, Japan and Barbados have been successfully developing friendly relations and nurturing mutual goodwill. In this pivotal year, preparations are under way at my Embassy for a series of cultural events, person-to-person exchange programmes as well as other activities. There is also a need to further intensify our cooperation in fields such as economics and trade, tourism, climate change, and disaster-management. My primary objective is to bring the citizens of both countries closer and to enable them to know each other better in order to propel our bilateral relations towards the future.

I am firmly determined to do all in my power to fulfill this important mission, and at the same time, would like to request the kind cooperation and support of the Government and people of Barbados.

(March 2017)