Akio Kawato is a Research Fellow at the Tokyo Foundation and a Visiting Professor at Waseda University. He retired from the Japanese Foreign Service in 2004 after serving in West Germany, the U.S.S.R., Sweden, the U.S.A. (as Consul-General in Boston) and Uzbekistan (as Ambassador, also accredited to Tajikistan). After his retirement from the diplomatic service, he worked as Chief Economist at the Development Bank of Japan for two years, attempting to identify the major challenges for future Japanese politics, economy, society, and culture. In September 2006 he became a free-lancer, presiding over his own blog ěJapan-World Trendsî (www.akiokawato.com), designed for the international exchange of views among intellectuals (in the Japanese, English, Chinese and Russian languages). He has also traveled extensively in Asia. He does not hastily impose so-called "Western" values on developing countries, but believes that economic development always brings individualism, more democracy, and respect for human rights, a process that took four hundred years in Western Europe. He was educated at Tokyo University, Harvard University (where he received an M.A. in Sovietology and Russian), and Moscow State University. He has published four books on Russia and three others, including (in Japanese): How Japanís Diplomacy Ticks; The End of Meanings, which is on how liberalism and other European values are losing their efficacy; and most recently, The Job of Diplomats.
Evan A. Feigenbaum is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs. Before joining the bureau in July 2006, he served from 2001-06 as a Member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, where he had principal responsibility for East Asia and the Pacific. Prior to government service, Dr. Feigenbaum worked at Harvard University (1997-2001), where he was a Lecturer on Government, Executive Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Initiative, and Program Chair of the Chinese Security Studies Program. He also taught at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (1994-95) as Lecturer of National Security Affairs and was a consultant to the RAND Corporation (1993-94). He received his Ph.D. from Stanford. His publications include two books: China's Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear to the Information Age (2003); and Change in Taiwan and Potential Adversity in the Strait (1995). His articles have appeared in International Security, Survival, The New York Times, International Herald-Tribune, Washington Quarterly, China Quarterly, Far Eastern Economic Review, and elsewhere.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Japan has been an active player in Central Asia. It became the first G7 country to launch a permanent forum, "Central Asia plus Japan" at the ministerial level. What are the goals and effects of Japan's involvement: are they economic, political, or a mixture of both? What is the meaning of Japan's policy for the United States?
