Alex Kerr is a leading authority on traditional Japanese art, culture and aesthetics.While living in Japan off and on since the 1960s, with interludes at Yale University (Japanese Studies) and as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, he has seen Japan undergo dramatic change as modernization has increasingly displaced traditional modes of life and transformed the landscape. Living nearby Kyoto in the village of Kameoka, he worked for a number of years at the Omoto-Kyo Shinto Sect, teaching Japanese arts (calligraphy, tea ceremony, Noh). Seeking a deeper connection with Japanese tradition, he took over a 400 year old Shinto shrine in Kameoka and converted it to a residence and, in the Iya valley, restored a 300 year old Minka farmhouse. Both have been acclaimed in architectural magazines as archetypes of how tradition and modernity can be integrated in ways that combine contemporary and traditional elements while being authentic to its history.

Professor Yashiro, one of Japan's leading economists, will look at the results of Abenomics (a term coined to describe Japan's economic policy while Shinzo Abe was premier) and Prime Minister Kishida's plans for what he calls a "New Capitalism."

State-level response to the Covid pandemic have varied significantly, ranging from differences in assessment (testing, diagnostic evaluation), quarantine protocols, vaccination rates, off-label treatment, and public compliance with government directives (mask-wearing, social distancing, isolation). Japan, like many Asian countries, has imposed strict policies with corresponding relatively low infection rates and less mortality than in many other countries. And yet despite general public acceptance of government recommendations, Japan was the slowest among the G-7 countries to implement vaccines, has never done comprehensive testing and is reluctant to fully open immigration to allow for general tourism, continuing to impose strict border control that is out of synch with international trends...

The public, at least in the West, has held fairly static understandings of the concepts of "Freedoms" and "Civil Liberties" for the last few decades, if not centuries. Whether we're talking about the United States' Bill of Rights or the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there has been somewhat tacit agreement on the values of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, as well as newer ideas like freedom of information and freedom of movement...

YCAPS & the Sasakawa Peace Foundation are pleased to announce the next event in the Community Conversations seminar series in Yokota! This event will feature Dr. Tomonori Yoshizaki. Dr. Yoshizaki will discuss how the war in Ukraine may impact US-Japan bilateral coordination including extended deterrence not only in Europe but also USFJ and the Indo-Pacific.

YCAPS & the Sasakawa Peace Foundation are pleased to announce the return of the Community Conversations seminar series in Sasebo. The inaugural event will feature Mr. Yasuhiro Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami (Rear Admiral Ret.) has served 32 years in the JMSDF, primarily in the Mine Warfare and Amphibious Warfare fields. He has also served five times as a commander and four times in Sasebo. He will discuss the history of Japanese Mine Warfare and the close cooperation between the Japan and U.S. Mine Warfare Forces after W.W.Ⅱ.

In the past decades, China has enjoyed the support of most, though not all, businesses in the liberal democracies that saw the PRC as an unlimited source of profits now or in the future.  In recent years and months, the Xi Jinping regime has taken measures that will likely limit opportunities for some foreign interests.  These include restrictions on Chinese IPOs in the US, a cracktown on some large Chinese conglomerates (thus also hurting their foreign shareholders), and the rapid demise of the rule of law in Hong Kong.   At the same time, rising tensions between the United States and China may force some to choose between China and the US. To examine the evolving political economy of China’s relations with the outside world, especially the United States, we will have a conversation followed by a Q&A session with Clyde Prestowitz.

Ambassador Orr had a remarkable career. After branching out from academia, where he taught at Temple University Japan and founded the Institute of Pacific-Rim Studies, he quickly ascended with a career in industry including a five-year tenure as President of Boeing Japan. He held various senior level posts with Motorola in Europe and Japan, in Japan culminating as Vice President and Director of Government Relations. From 2007 to 2010, he served as chairman of the board of the Panasonic Foundation. In September 2010, Ambassador Orr was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the United States Executive Director with the rank of Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank. He served as ambassador until December 31, 2015.

The year 1945 was probably the worst year of the war. Millions of lives were lost in the Götterdämmerung that was the downfall of the Axis. These were not just military deaths. For the first time in the history of modern warfare, the deaths of civilians exceeded those of soldiers. The culmination of the ever-increasing brutality of WWII was in the two nuclear bombs that exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the slaughter started much earlier, with civilians targeted in Nanjing, Warsaw, London, Manila, Hamburg, Tokyo, and many other places. Both the Allies and the Axis targeted non-combatants as a deliberate policy, abandoning earlier efforts to only strike military targets. In Japan, the United States Army Air Force burned whole cities in an effort to “break Japanese morale” with the use of the new and destructive weapons like napalm. At the same time, Japanese atrocities on the continent were continuing right up to and beyond the official end of the war. Why did governments that had previously decried…