Kōji Sekimizu

Kōji Sekimizu is the kind of figure who quietly shapes the world while most people have never heard his name, and honestly that's kind of the whole deal with diplomacy. Born in Yokohama in 1952 — prime postwar Japan, a city practically built on international trade and foreign faces — he headed to Osaka University rather than the usual Tokyo conveyor belt, which already tells you something about the man. His most recognized role was as Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization, steering global shipping policy out of London through the 2010s, which is one of those jobs where if he's doing it right, nothing dramatic happens and container ships just keep moving. Low glamour, enormous real-world consequence. That's the diplomat's bargain, and from the looks of it, he took it seriously.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Kōji Sekimizu (born December 3, 1952) is a Japanese official who was Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization from 2012 to 2015, as well as Chancellor of the World Maritime University. He attended school in Yokohama and studied engineering at Osaka University before joining Japan's Ministry of Transport.

Name (English)

Kōji Sekimizu

Name (Japanese)

関水康司

Reading

せきみず こうじ

Born

December 3, 1952 (age 73)

Origin

Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Occupation

Diplomat

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Dragon

University

Osaka University

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%96%A2%E6%B0%B4%E5%BA%B7%E5%8F%B8
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15445363

Tags

• From Kanagawa
• Diplomat

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.