Image of the Weatherhead Center and Centerpiece Logos

Newsletter of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs  |  Harvard University  |  Vol. 19 Num. 3  |  Fall 2005

Program on U.S.-Japan Relations

News

Image of a Program on U.S.-Japan Relations seminar
In a Program on U.S.-Japan Relations seminar that attracted 90 faculty, students, and researchers, Harvard's Ezra Vogel and Tokyo University's Akio Takahara (currently a visiting scholar at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research) debated contentious issues in contemporary Sino-Japanese Relations.
  • Professor Yasushi Watanabe of Keio University, an Academic Associate in 2003-04 at the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, won Japan's prestigious Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities. The Prize was awarded to his book, Afutaa Amerika, a political and social anthropological study of Bostonians. He also received another award from the Japan Academy, given to five scholars in the humanities and natural and social sciences.
  • In Japan's September 11 election, four alumni of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations—Yoichiro Esaki (1986), Taku Eto (1987), Katsuya Okada (1986), and Kozo Yamamoto (1982)—were elected to Japan's House of Representatives. In Japan's cabinet shuffle in early November, program alumnus Heizo Takenaka (1981) became Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications and continued to serve as Minister of State for Privatization of the Postal Services.