Monday, March 23rd, 2009
4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Dr. Yoshinobu
Higurashi is Professor of Japanese political history and foreign policy
in the Faculty
of Law, Economics and the Humanities at Kagoshima University. He received
his B.A. from Rikkyo
University in 1986, and Ph.D. from Gakushuin University in 2000. He is
author of Tokyo Saiban no
Kokusai Kankei (The Tokyo War Crimes Trials and International Relations,
2002), which received the
Yoshida Shigeru Prize. His most recent books are Tokyo Saiban (The Tokyo
War Crimes Trials) and
Tokyo Saiban wo Tadashiku Yomu (Correctly Reading the Tokyo War Crimes
Trials, co-authored with
Kei Ushimura, both 2008). Other works include his translation of Arnold
C. Brackman’s The Other
Nuremberg into Japanese, and his supervision of the Japanese edition of
John G. Roos's In a Prison
Called Sugamo.
Dr. Yuma Totani is Assistant Professor of history at the University of Hawai'i
at Manoa. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley
in 2005 and was a post-doctoral
fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University. Her
publications include
"Tokyo saiban ni okeru senso hanzai sotsui to hanketsu: Nankin jiken to sei doreisei ni taisuru kokka
shidosha sekinin o chushin ni” (The Prosecution of War Crimes and the Judgment
of the Tokyo Tribunal: Focusing on the Responsibility of State Leaders for the
Nanjing Incident and Sexual
Slavery), in Gendai rekishigaku to Nankin jiken (Modern Historical Studies and
the Nanjing Incident, Kasahara Tokushi and Yoshida Yutaka, eds., 2006); and The
Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of
Justice in the Wake of World War II (2008).
Dr. Daqing Yang is Associate Professor at The George Washington University, where he specializes
in the modern history of Japan and East Asia. In 2004, Dr. Yang was appointed a Historical
Consultant to The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency
Working Group at the U.S. National Archives, and in fall 2006 he served as the Edwin O. Reischauer
Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. Dr. Yang grew up in Nanjing,
graduated from Nanjing University, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He co-edited
Contentious Issues in Sino-Japanese Relations: Toward a History Beyond
Borders (in Chinese and Japanese)
as well as Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast
Asia: the Korean Experience. His
book Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Expansion,
1895-1945 is forthcoming.
Dr. Mike Mochizuki is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The
George Washington University. He holds the Elliott School's endowed chair in Japan-U.S. relations
in memory of Gaston Sigur. Previously, Dr. Mochizuki was at the Brookings Institution where he
was a senior fellow. Before that he was with RAND where he served as co-director of the Center for
Asia-Pacific Policy. He has taught at the University of Southern California and at Yale University. He
received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. Some of his recent publications
include, Japan in International Politics, The Okinawa Question and the U.S.-Japan
Alliance, and Crisis on
the Korean Peninsula. He is currently working on a book entitled The
New Strategic Triangle: the U.S.-
Japan Alliance and the Rise of China.
The Tokyo War Crimes Trial is central to the world’s understanding of the causes, conduct, and
conclusion of World War Two in East Asia. Interpretations have traditionally been divided between
those who view the trial as either “victor’s justice” or a “judgment of civilization.” A new generation
of scholars has attempted to transcend these simplistic binary positions and forge a nuanced
interpretation of the trial’s meaning and relevance for today’s world.
