Volunteer Leaders

Patricia Yarrow

Executive Assistant

Patricia Yarrow returned to Japan in 2005 with her M.A. in Japanese Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a thesis on Japanese saké labels iconography. Three years later, she settled into Ryogoku, in Tokyo, to start her current career as a teacher of academic reading and writing at several universities, including two years at the Yokosuka National Academy of Defense, where she felt quite a home. She is familiar with the military as her father was in the Air Force for 20 years, accounting for her original life imprinting of Japanese life and language as a pre-schooler, and later living in London and the château countryside of France. She counts herself as a West Coast gal from San Francisco with family in the Northwest. In 2020, she established Informasia (an international association of colleagues), and as Executive Director, she organizes the monthly Zoom meetings and secures academic speakers. She was a Council Member of the former Asiatic Society of Japan, recording the Council meetings, running the website and social media, as well as conducting a three-year copyright procurement project for the journal. Other interests include photography, traveling, small tour guiding, and continuing research into the expanding world of Japanese saké. Her academic papers concern saké labels and the saké makes as well as a comparative analysis of Japanese shipwrecks.