I am Kazuo Inui of Department of Gastroenterology, Fujita University Bantane Hospital. I have been appointed to oversee the 96th Congress of Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society. I am delighted to be appointed President of the Congress of the Society that is steeped in history and tradition. At the same time, I acutely feel the weight of my responsibility. The Congress will be part of JDDW 2018, which will be held from November 1 (Thu.) to 4 (Sun.), 2018.

Our Department is relatively new and established in April 1989 under the helm of Prof. Saburo Nakazawa, who also served as President of the 37th Congress in May 1989. Prof. Junji Yoshino, who was the previous director of the department, fulfilled the same role in the 77th Congress in May 2009. Therefore, I am the third person from the department to be presiding over the Congress. I also participated in JDDW 2011 as President of the 49th General Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastrointestinal Cancer Screening. Therefore, this will be the second time for me to be serving as president at JDDW.

JDDW brings together five gastroenterology societies to address and solve various issues. We have selected 15 themes in the hope of contributing to the development not only of gastroenterological endoscopy, but also of gastroenterology in general. Taking advantage of the collaborative feature of JDDW, we have many topics that will be addressed in joint sessions with other societies. In the International Session, we have prepared two themes: “International evaluation of endoscopic classification - JNET (IEE-JNET)” and “The current state and problem of endoscopic treatments for the malignant biliary stenosis.” We are looking forward to meaningful discussions with invited participants from overseas as well.

Starting at this Congress, all research requiring ethics screening will need to obtain ethics committee approval. As this might take extra time for some of the facilities, we decided to announce the topics sooner than in previous meetings. Those members whose facilities do not have an ethics committee can also use a system that Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society has established for ethics screening.

We hope to do our best in making JDDW 2018 a meaningful week. We would like to ask many of you to come to the venue in Kobe to actively participate in the discussions.