Remembering Hiroshi Kawai

As remembered by his friend and colleague at Fujichem Sonneborn, Edward Cox

It has been my great honour and privilege to have shared much time and space with Hiroshi Kawai during the past twelve years. From a personal point of view, I would say that my world is greatly diminished by his passing - at the ridiculously early age of 63.

However, I consider myself as fortunate that I had known him – even for that short passage of time – as he has left me with an abundance of happy memories and amusing anecdotes.

Both lovers of opera and ballet - although Hiroshi indulged himself more than I (attending the Wagner festival at Bayreuth and The Metropolitan in New York amongst others on a regular basis) but we got to the point where we attended the Royal Opera House together - with my wife accompanying us on occasions - although that was for the ballet as she is not such a fan of opera.

Hiroshi claimed to me that he had been considered the worst sportsman at school in Japan but had studied in the USA (not on a sports scholarship I can confidently say) but his career had been in banking and had worked for HSBC in Japan, London and in Germany (he spoke fluent German).

He started with FCS in late 2009, with his last postion being CFO. He passed away on Saturday 4th June.

Hiroshi might have been humble but he made up for that with his steely resolve and gigantic integrity and honour - coupled with a prodigious knowledge of all matters related to culture. He travelled widely to extract every ounce possible.

Right to the last, he truly believed that he would be coming home to London to continue his work. I am sure that all his close friends and colleagues will join me in saying “We will miss him”.

“The BCF are proud to have had Hiroshi as a member of our Board of Directors for 8 years - his contribution to the BCF and the coatings industry has been invaluable. He will be sadly missed”. - Tom Bowtell, Chief Executive of BCF