The Chamber celebrated its 50th anniversary in the company of esteemed guests of the Ireland-Japan business community at the 2023 Ireland Japan Business Awards in the Conrad Tokyo on Wednesday 22nd November.

Each year the Ireland Japan Chamber of Commerce have the honour of celebrating key companies and individuals for their outstanding contributions to Ireland-Japan business relations. 

Historically, the IJCC has presented award certificates to each awardee in their category. In honour of our 50th anniversary, the IJCC were delighted to present engraved trophies to each awardee for this year's business awards. Many thanks to imageMILL for their generous sponsorship and for the brilliant trophy design.

The Special Recognition Award was one of 5 award categories presented this year.

The IJCC recognises the exceptional achievements of an outstanding group or individual who has made notable contributions to the relationship between Ireland and Japan.

On behalf of the Chamber, we are delighted to announce two winners in this category in commemoration of 50 years of the IJCC. The Ireland Japan Business Awards 2023 Special Recognition was awarded to Hideki Nakamura of Daon.

Daon has been one of the top digital identity companies and an industry leader in next-gen identity proofing, biometric authentication, and digital onboarding for over 20 years. The Japan Office was set up in 2008, led by Mr. Hideki Nakamura. Subsequently, Daon became the first Irish company to win a government procurement for border control from the Ministry of Justice. Daon's solutions contribute significantly to the prevention of unauthorised entry into Japan from terrorists and anti-social forces organisations. In 2017, a joint venture company between SMBC and NTT DATA was established as the first Fintech company after the amendment of the Banking Act. Polarify's eKYC solution is currently used by more than 200 companies in Japan. 

Special Recognition Award

Hideki Nakamura (https://www.daon.com/)

Mr. Hideki Nakamura accepted the award onstage and shared his comments on receiving the Special Recognition Award.

Mr. Hideki Nakamura, pictured with IJCC President Yoshihiro Tsuchiya, Embassy of Ireland Economic Counsellor Rory Conaty, Deputy Head of Mission Catherine O'Donovan and Agriculture Attaché Eoghan Murphy.

Comment by Mr. Hideki Nakamura:

"I am very honoured to receive such an award. In my early-stage business development, we had difficulties as an overseas startup company. For example, our prospects, including financial institutions often mistook Ireland for Iceland, and there were many questions about Daon's credibility and track records in Japan.

We made all the efforts to gain the understanding and trust of our customers. For example, I had to use printed documents when making presentations, instead of using PC Screen, as the papers were still the mainstream in the Japanese companies at that time.

After that, with the support of Enterprise Ireland, we met the right people from each company and managed to achieve this level of success. I am determined to continue our efforts so that Daon products can be of service in Japan."

Go raibh míle maith agat to all the awardees from the 2023 Ireland Japan Business Awards. We were privileged to honour such incredible achievements from the Ireland-Japan community on our stage and we know both Ireland and Japan will only go from strength to strength in 2024 and beyond.