Professional Affiliation

Professor, Division of American Studies, Department of Foreign Studies, Osaka University of Foreign Studies

Expert Bio

Born in 1945, in Himeji City, a castle town of Western Japan, I studied English at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies in Osaka, Japan from 1964 to 1967. Awarded a Sankei scholarship, I studied first as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1967 to 1969. After returning to Japan, I entered the Kyoto University Graduate School (from 1972 to 1973) where I majored in the history of modern America. I was a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a Fellowship of the Committee on American-East Asian Relations of the American Historical Association which enabled me to study again at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a graduate student from 1973 to 1979. I began teaching American history at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies in Osaka in 1975. From 1985 to1986 I was a fellow affiliated with the University of Maryland-College Park under the sponsorship of the American Council of Learned Societies. I taught a course of the History of American East-West Relations as a visiting Fulbright professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1986, and was awarded the Hidalgo de San Antonio de Bexar by the City of San Antonio in the same year. I was an executive director of the Kansai American History Association in Kyoto, Japan from 1989 to 1991. Under my initiative and leadership, the Kansai Forum of U.S.-Japan Intellectual Exchange was formed, where every two months academics, professionals, public officials, businessmen, and foreign residents in the Kansai area discussed the problems relating to U.S.-Japan relations. I became the first president of the Kansai Forum of U.S.-Japan Intellectual Exchange in 1991 and in 1993, under the sponsorship of the United States Information Agency, I was a visiting scholar at the Summer Institute of the American Political System held at American University in Washington, D.C. From 1992 to 1998, I served as a member of the Abe Fellowship Program Committee of the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership in cooperation with the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. During the years 1996-97, I studied as a fellow affiliated with Wolfson College, Cambridge University and then with the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies of Harvard University, under the sponsorship of the Japanese Ministry of Education. As a social service, I currently serve as president of the Elderhostel Association of Japan.

 

Expertise

American history, especially 20th century America; history of American foreign relations, especially of American-East Asian relations; U.S.-Japan relations

Wilson Center Project

"Exploring Emergent 'J-American' Culture: A History of Postwar U.S.-Japan Cultural Relations"

Project Summary

In light of the recent trends of globalization, little work has been done to shed light on the growing inter-penetration of American and Japanese societies and cultures. This research proposal intends to address an important question of whether new shared values or a new shared culture has been emerging out of these close U.S.-Japan economic, political, and foreign policy relations that have lasted more than half a century. It will focus on U.S. efforts to produce pro-American Japanese liberals by educational and cultural interchange and also by promoting American studies in postwar Japan. With regard to its significance, first, "policy relevance" is a built in factor in this proposed project. Secondly, utilizing a multi-disciplinary approach comprising fields such as cultural anthropology, sociology, and history, the proposed project will make an important contribution to postmodern theorizing by addressing the issues of "cultural expansion" and "cultural imperialism" and by examining these concepts through the lenses of discontinuity, fragmentation, syncretism, and otherness

Major Publications

• Konomadade yoinoka nichibei kankei (The Past, the Present, and the Future of U.S.- Japan Relations). Tokyo: Tokyo sogensha, 1997.
  
   
• Entry of "American Studies, History." International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, v. 4. 11, Eds. Neil J. Smelser & Paul B. Baltes, Oxford, U.K: Pergamon, 2001.
  
   
• "The Formation of the New China Consortium: Anglo-Japanese Perceptions of the American Proposal of the New China Consortium, July 1918-May 1919." Gurohbaru hisutori no kochiku to rekishi kijutsuno shatei (The Construction of Global History and the Scope of Historical Writing), Osaka: Osaka University of Foreign Studies, 2000.