Councillor Biographies
Tadatoshi Akiba, Mayor of the city of Hiroshima
Tadatoshi Akiba is mayor of the city of Hiroshima, Japan. He studied mathematics at the University of Tokyo and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his PhD in 1970. Between 1970 and 1997 he taught atuniversities in the US and Japan, including Tufts in Cambridge and Shudo in Hiroshima. He was elected to the Lower House of the Japanese Diet in 1990 where he served until 1999 when he took office as mayor of Hiroshima. As president of Mayors for Peace, which counts more than 2200 member cities, he has demonstrated consistent devotion to world peace and environmental protection. The 2020 Vision Campaign launched in 2003, which aims to eliminate nuclear weapons, has earned Mayors for Peace the "World Citizenship" Award from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in 2004, the "Sean McBride" Award from the International Peace Bureau in 2006, and the "Nuclear-Free Future" Award from the Franz-Moll Foundation in 2007. Mayor Akiba has strengthened the relationships between Hiroshima and its six sister- and friendship cities: Chongqing, Hannover, Taegu, Montreal, Volgograd and Honolulu. He is committed to a transparent, democratic, fiscally responsible municipal government with global economic and cultural interaction a high priority.
