Hanako Montgomery is an award-winning international correspondent for CNN, based in Tokyo.

Before joining CNN, Montgomery was an East Asia reporter for VICE. She helped lead VICE’s coverage on numerous key stories from the region, including the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Beijing Winter Olympics and the Halloween crowd crush in Seoul. 

In 2023, Montgomery won a National News & Documentary Emmy Award as well as a Front Page Award for her work covering legal child abuse manga in Japan. She and her team secured rare access to examine the impact of this manga, including artists who actually drew these works, child abusers who consumed it and government representatives who have shirked responsibility for regulating these materials.

While at VICE, her beats spanned breaking news, politics, social issues, culture and the economy, with a focus on Japan and the Koreas. She reported across all of VICE’s formats, including TV, digital video, text, Instagram, TikTok and more. 

In 2022, Montgomery won “Best Factual Presenter in Japan” at the Asian Academy Creative Awards for her documentary about Okinawa prefecture’s hidden poverty. She has also reported for Al Jazeera. 

Prior to joining VICE, Montgomery was a TV Japan reporter for Japan’s state broadcaster, NHK, in its New York office. There, she covered the first major outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as culture and social stories across North America.

Montgomery graduated summa cum laude from Binghamton University. She also spent a year abroad in Tokyo’s Sophia University, where she studied Japanese politics and literature. She is fluent in English and Japanese, and is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA).

Born in London and raised in New York City, Montgomery now resides in Tokyo.