Dr. Yoichi Funabashi is a leading journalist in the field of Japanese foreign policy. He is an editorial member as well as a columnist for the Asahi Shimbun (Newspaper). Dr. Funabashi has been dispatched to Beijing and Washington D.C.. While in the U.S. he was the Chief of the American General Bureau as well as Diplomatic Correspondent of the Asahi Shimbun. He holds a Ph.D. from Keio University. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University as well as an Ushiba Fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington DC. He obtained his B.A. from the University of Tokyo. Dr. Funabashi has received a number of awards including the Japan Press Award, the Yoshino Sakuzo Prize, and the Asia Pacific Grand Prix Award by Mainichi Shimbun. His recent papers include "Japan's Depression Diplomacy" (Foreign Affairs, November/December 1998), "International Perspectives on National Missile Defense: TokyoÕs Temperance" (The Washington Quarterly, Summer 2000) and "JapanÕs Moment of Truth", (Survival, forthcoming).
Dr. Mike Mochizuki is holder of the Japan-US Relations Chair in Memory of Gaston Sigur at the Elliott School of International Affairs of George Washington University. His areas of expertise are Japanese domestic politics and foreign policy, US-Japan relations, and East Asian security. His previous associations include senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, co-director of the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy, associate professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, and assistant professor of political science at Yale University. He earned his A.B. at Brown University in 1972 and Ph.D.from Harvard University in 1982. Among his many publications, his recent works include Japan Reorients: The Quest for Wealth and Security in East Asia (2001), Toward a True Alliance: Restructuring US-Japan Security Relations in East Asia, ed. (1997), and Japan: Domestic Change and Foreign Policy (1995). He is now working on a book project entitledThe New Strategic Triangle: the US-Japan Alliance and the Rise of China.
Mr. Alan L. Romberg is currently Senior Associate at The Henry L. Stimson Center. Mr. Romberg spent 20 years as a Foreign Service Officer, focusing primarily on East Asian issues, including as Director of the Department of State's Office of Japanese Affairs. He was also Deputy Spokesman of the Department. He has since been C.V. Starr Senior Fellow for Asian Studies, Council on Foreign Relations; Director, Research and Studies Program, U.S. Institute of Peace; Principal Deputy Director, Policy Planning Staff, U.S. Department of State; and Senior Adviser and Director of the Washington Office of the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Most recently he has been Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy. He holds an MA from Harvard University, and a BA from Princeton University. He has been awarded a number of civil awards including the Distinguished Honor Award and Superior Honor Award by the Department of State.
Japan
enters the twenty-first century still languishing in the "lost
decade" of the 1990's. Much of its elite knows
that the country still has to confront its economic problems,
its lack of political dynamism and the inadequacy of its
communication infrastructure and skills. The era of one-dimensional
Japanese power - projected through economic diplomacy and
managerial verve - is long over. Confidence has been jolted
by chronic economic stagnation: between 1992-99, annual real
growth averaged a mere 1%. Many Japanese aspire to a social
economic transformation that keeps pace with globalization,
yet find these aspirations frustrated by a paradoxical combination
of political instability and immobility. These diminishing
expectations and Japan's preoccupation with domestic
problems have greatly constrained its diplomatic maneuverability.
The changing world order has eroded Japan's confidence
in its traditional foreign policy habits: reliance in US-Japan
alliance, economics led regional diplomacy and the G-7 tri-lateralist
order.
