Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 2, 2007|Volume 35, Number 20

Conference on Japan to
honor Yale scholar's legacy

"Japan and the World," a conference exploring the geo-political realities that nation is facing, will be held at Yale Friday-Saturday, March 9-10.

The event, which honors the legacy of Yale scholar Asakawa Kan'ichi, is co-sponsored by the Council on East Asian Studies, part of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.

The organizers write: "After a century and a half as the dominant power in Asia, Japan is once again confronting a tectonic shift in Asia's geopolitical landscape. Nothing looms larger in Japan's foreign policy than China's rising power, but China's power appears to Japan as Janus-faced: China's economic dynamism draws in colossal quantities of Japanese investment and production, locking the two countries in closer economic interdependence than ever before and fueling Japanese economic growth. At the same time, China's economic growth is financing an enormous military build-up."

The "Japan and the World" conference, add the organizers, will bring together scholars and practitioners "to consider Japan's new geo-political environment, and to assess the domestic political process that presents policy options to the voting public."

The conference will open on Friday with a session on "Asakawa Kan'ichi and His Intellectual Legacy." Yale's first professor of the history of 19th-century Japan, Kan'ichi was an outspoken advocate for both world peace and Japan's national interest, and believed that the two were simultaneously possible. Asakawa labored, as a scholar and as an informal participant in U.S.-Japan bilateral negotiations, to define Japan's place in a peaceful world.

Other session topics will focus on Japan's national security issues and domestic policies, the nation's role in the world economy and its strategic choices. A conference schedule is available at http://research.yale.edu/eastasianstudies/japanworldprogram.pdf.

The conference sessions will be held in Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave. The event is free and open to the public. To register for the conference, send e-mail to anne.letterman@yale.edu before March 3.

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