Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Japan Shoulder Society.

Established in 1974, the Japan Shoulder Society is the oldest shoulder society in the world. Shoulder societies on other continents were formed much later: North America in 1982, Europe in 1987, South Africa in 1990, and South America in 1994. The original founding members of our society were Dr. Hisao Endo, Dr. Katsuya Nobuhara, and Dr. Nagao Adachi, and a year later, the following four members joined this team: Dr. Ryuji Yamamoto, Dr. Hiroaki Fukuda, Dr. Motohiko Mikasa, and Dr. Kiyohisa Ogawa. The first Society Congress was held on October 18, 1974, in Tokushima City with Dr. Hisao Endo as the first Congress President. He is well known for his sophisticated clinical work on ‘‘loose shoulder’’ or so-called multidirectional instability. His first report of multidirectional instability and the effectiveness of pectoralis major transfer was published in Japanese in 1971 and recently published in English as a Classic Article in the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery in 2012. In 2013, we had the 40th Annual Meeting of the Japan Shoulder Society in Kyoto with Dr. Masao Kurokawa as the Congress President, and this year, 2014, we are celebrating the Society’s 40th anniversary. We would like to convey our sincere appreciation to all the shoulder and elbow societies in the world and their members for their continuous support. We would also like to thank all the founding members for starting our society and the currentmembers forbuildingupour society. The uniqueness of the Japan Shoulder Society is that it is probably the only society focusing on the shoulder alone, not on the elbow. We also have the Japan Elbow Society, which is an independent society from us, but the majority of the members of the Japan ElbowSociety are hand surgeons. In addition, most patients have isolated problems of the shoulder or the elbow, except throwing athletes, who might have both problems. Because of these reasons, we have not found an urgent need to combine the two societies despite the world trend. We are independent but cooperative at the same time. For example, both societies hosted the 12th International Congress on Shoulder and Elbow Surgery in Nagoya in April 2013, which had 1,150 attendees from 48 countries who actively participated. The meeting was a great success both academically and socially because of the collaboration of the two groups.