ARCJ currently has 6staff members, plus 5 board directors, 3 advisor, and 2 auditor.
Also, members nationwide, and volunteers everywhere, are all driving ARCJ.

Representative Director: Chihiro Okada

If we can compromise just a little bit for non-human animals, our society will change drastically. It should not be so difficult to realize a society that does not exploit any animals if we try.

Cruelty towards animals is actually wearing us down as humans as well. The situations faced by other animals today could be replaced by humans at any time. When we consider how we treat other animals, we are actually considering how we treat ourselves as humans.

Let’s once reconsider our livelihood as humans from the animals’ points of view. Then we will see the world differently. Please think about this issue as your own and begin moving forward with us toward a solution. Please have the courage to take one step forward for the sake of the animals, the environment, and after all, for us humans.

Director: Mihoko Koike

I want to eat delicious vegan food! I want people to discover those vegan meals that are filling and nutritious without the use of any meat, fish, eggs, or dairy!

Although I loved animals since childhood, I was eating animals without any questions. In 2005, I happened to see a video of animal slaughter on the internet and was utterly shocked and decided to be vegan.

I am developing vegan versions of favorite recipes among everyone from children to elders, such as an omelette rice without eggs, gratin without dairy, Hayashi gravy rice without beef, etc. My motto is being able to to cook inexpensively, easily, and quickly with ingredients you can buy at local supermarkets.

Director: Yuka Watanabe

I became a veterinarian because as a kid I felt helpless when my cat friends who came to the garden died one after another from illness.
However, I often wondered: Isn’t the treatment actually afflicting the animals in the clinical setting? Isn’t it targeted by the economic system?  With the motto of taking care at home without doing extraneous things, I arrived at natural remedies.  Also, when I was living by putting emotional lids on feeling bad about lethal experiments, slaughterhouse visits, and inhuman treatment of laboratory animals and livestock animals that I experienced while in school, I learned about animal rights activities.  My eyes opened realizing I can’t be putting lids on this, I reviewed my eating habits and lifestyle, and participate in activism as a small contribution.

Director: Maiko Yasuno

“Humans are not the only ones living on this planet, but why are there so many people who are selfish and unable to think of other lives?”— I’m living as a human being with such a sense of incongruity. Although I have such a feeling now, I had not been able to think about lives other than human beings so deeply until a few years ago. That is because I didn’t know the “facts.” If you don’t know the facts, you can’t take actions to change. Knowing the current state of the animals, I decided to take actions to change them. I would like to continue to appeal from the field of education so that as many people as possible can know the “facts.”

Director: Kunie Imaizumi

I am originally from Muroran City, Hokkaido, and after getting married, I was transferred several times, and now I live in Iwate Prefecture.
In 2019, I launched Animal Rights Iwate, and in 2022, I started the ARCJ’s action team called Animal Rights Center Iwate.
I want to spread amimal rights and welfare from rural areas to every corner of Japan!
I would like to create a society where everyone, from small children to the elderly, thinks and acts of the welfare and rights of animals as a matter of course.
Our slogan is “Rights and Welfare!”
Let’s build a new era of consumers and businesses together.

Advisor: Tateshi Fujiyoshi

Declaring plant-based for 10 years
It’s been 10 years since I started being vegan after receiving encouragement from Ms. Shinomiya of now a non-profit organization Sakuraneuneu (TNR specialist project), who was working as an interpreter and secretary at our clinic.  I realize that I have been able to encounter many new worlds and have a broader view of the world.
In addition, thanks to a new realization from the coronavirus wreck, I declared that I would stop fighting the opposition in order to realize a world where we could live in harmony with animals sooner.  I would like to help animal rights by increasing the number of friends rather than fighting, valuing friends rather than fighting, supporting friends rather than fighting, and incorporating them into fellowship rather than fighting.

Staff: Sayuri Kitaho

Corporate negotiations specialist

After working for a publishing company and as a commercial writer, I went on to the path of social movement.  Encountering environmental damage from asbestos, while negotiating compensation with the perpetrator to help the patient, I recorded the incident by making a documentary film.  During a trip, on the deck of the ferry I boarded, I heard the screams of beef cattle restrained by ropes so short they could not even sit.  The black cattle on the small truck bed were bubbling white with sweat.  From that day, I became aware of the issues of treatment of livestock animals.  Next thing I realized, I had already become an ARC staff member.  For a “society that does not leave livestock animals behind”, I will do everything I can for the most oppressed beings, the farmed animals.  A vegan glutton who loves cooking.  Graduated from Waseda University and completed the master’s program at Nihon University Graduate School.

Staff: Akiko Sakaguchi

Accounting

I have been in charge of accounting for Animal Rights Center since 2019.  I had been participating in the weekday daytime street actions at the Hachiko square since 2013, and that’s apparently how I was recruited.  I had sometimes felt uncomfortable with what humans are doing to animals, such as the news reporting “I presented ice to the bear at the zoo in the heat of the summer” when I was a kid, but I didn’t investigate further and was eating animals for meals, carried a leather brand bag, and lived a life of dressing myself up and enjoying myself. However, when I learned about the bear bile farm, I was shocked and re-examined the discomfort I had felt until then, and arrived at animal rights activities.
I’m sure there are many people in the world who feel uncomfortable like me. Animals do not belong to us humans. I would like to convey that and increase the number of allies.
I am cultivating spiritual training with my tea ceremony hobby. I would like everyone to enjoy delicious matcha someday.

Staff: Akiko Shimoide

Corporate outreach

I joined the Animal Rights Center staff after volunteering for one and a half years. As a mother of two kids, I hope I can give some new ideas or ways of thinking from a parental point of view.
I believe that everyday is a sequence of little steps, which will someday lead to the goal that I hope for.
I’m interested in ecological issues, which drove me into an eco-friendly lifestyle, having fun with reused and up-cycled items. In addition I love handcraft, playing the piano, dancing, and figure-skating.
My dream is to take care of rescued animals, and to perform belly dance in a charity show.