By Bruce Rutledge
Yoichiro Yamada arrived in Seattle earlier this month to take over as Japan’s new consul general.
Yamada is a well- travelled bureaucrat, having done stints in Moscow, Brussels, Warsaw, New York and Nairobi. He left his second posting in Brussels to take over the Seattle Consulate-General.
Yamada replaces Masahiro Omura, who served as consul general here for three and a half years.
The new consul general was born in Kobe. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Tokyo and a master’s in public administration from Columbia University in New York. His hobbies are golf, the board game Go and playing the piano. He and his wife have one son.
Yamada says he sees his job as a facilitator who can connect good- willed people with potential partners across borders. He added in his official greeting that Japan already has deep ties with Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks and other regionally based multinationals. The testing of the Mitsubishi Regional Jet at Moses Lake reinforces how close the two countries are, he wrote.
The Consulate-General of Japan in Seattle covers all of Washington and Montana as well as the northernmost 10 counties in Idaho. Japan operates 14 Consulate-Generals, three consular offices and one embassy in the US and its territories.
