As Japan faces a rapid population decline and a growing sense of national stagnation, how can its youths cultivate high aspirations and pursue a roadmap to achieve them? How can educators nurture globally competitive talents across Japanese economy, politics, culture, and sports?

Hanamaki Higashi High School, located in the small city of Hanamaki in Iwate Prefecture, has gained national and international recognition for producing top baseball talents, such as Shohei Ohtani (Dodgers), Yusei Kikuchi (Angels), and Rintaro Sasaki (Stanford Cardinal). What sets the high school’s baseball program apart?

The Japan Program at Stanford's Shorenstein APARC is excited to welcome Mr. Hiroshi Sasaki, the renowned head coach of Hanamaki Higashi High School’s baseball team, as he discusses his philosophy that “Assumptions make the possible impossible” and shares how he has built a winning team while nurturing individual growth — a challenge in Japan’s collective-oriented society. Join us and hear Coach Sasaki’s insights into developing motivation and equipping Japan's next generation with the mindset and strategies to achieve their goals.

Agenda

1:00 PM                                    Check-in opens in Encina Hall Lobby

1:30 PM - 3:30 PM                Documentary Screening of "Koshien" with opening remarks from Ema Yamazaki

4:00 PM - 6:00 PM                Keynote and conversation with Hiroshi Sasaki

Keynote Speaker:

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Hiroshi Sasaki - After graduating from Iwate Prefectural Kurosawajiri-Kita High School, Hiroshi Sasaki went on to Kokushikan University and coached at Yokohama Hayato High School before being transferred to Hanamaki-Higashi High School in 2000. In 2000, he was transferred to Hanamaki-Higashi High School, where he served as an advisor for the Badminton and Girls Softball teams before becoming the baseball coach in 2002. In his fourth year at the helm, he led the team to its first appearance in the Koshien Tournament in 2005, a runner-up finish in the Senbatsu Tournament in the spring of 2009, and a top-four finish in the summer Koshien Tournament. Since then, he has led the team to numerous national tournaments and made great strides, while at the same time nurturing many of his students to become promising professionals and professional players. His success with MLB players Yusei Kikuchi (LA Angels) and Shohei Ohtani (LA Dodgers) and his personality have become the talk of the world, and many people are interested in learning about his high school training methods.

• He was a coach for the U.S.-Japan High School Team (2009)
• He was awarded the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Outstanding Teacher Award (2011)
• The 12th Japan Sports Academy Grand Prize (2021)

Moderator:

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at Shorenstein APARC, the Director of the Japan Program and Deputy Director at APARC, a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Professor of Sociology, all at Stanford University. Tsutsui received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Kyoto University and earned an additional master’s degree and Ph.D. from Stanford’s sociology department in 2002. Tsutsui’s research interests lie in political/comparative sociology, social movements, globalization, human rights, and Japanese society. His most recent publication, Human Rights and the State: The Power of Ideas and the Realities of International Politics (Iwanami Shinsho, 2022), was awarded the 2022 Ishibashi Tanzan Award and the 44th Suntory Prize for Arts and Sciences.

Documentary Introductory Remarks:

Ema Ryan Yamazaki was recently nominated for an Academy Award for her short documentary film INSTRUMENTS OF A BEATING HEART which follows a group of Japanese 1st grade students on the journey in performing "Ode to Joy." She is also the Editor of Shiori Ito's BLACK BOX DIARIES, which was also nominated for the Academy Awards in the feature documentary category. Raised in Osaka by a Japanese mother and British father, Ema grew up navigating between Japanese and Western cultures. Having studied filmmaking at New York University, she uses her unique storytelling perspective as an insider and outsider in Japan. In 2017, Ema’s first feature documentary, MONKEY BUSINESS: THE ADVENTURES OF CURIOUS GEORGE’S CREATORS was released worldwide after raising over $186,000 on Kickstarter. In 2019, Ema’s second feature documentary about the phenomenon of high school baseball in Japan, KOSHIEN: JAPAN’S FIELD OF DREAMS, premiered at DOC NYC. In 2020, the film aired on ESPN, and was released theatrically in Japan. It was a New York Times recommendation for international streaming and featured on the Criterion Channel. Ema's latest documentary feature, THE MAKING OF A JAPANESE, follows one year in a Japanese public school. 
 

An enduring puzzle in comparative politics is why voters in some democracies continuously support dominant parties in elections, and whether their support is based on policy congruence or non-policy factors like valence. Smith and his team consider the preeminent case of a dominant party—Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)—and investigate whether voters’ support for its policies can explain its recent landslide election victories. They first introduce a new measurement strategy to infer individuals’ utility for parties’ policy platforms from conjoint experiments. Unlike most other uses of conjoint designs, their approach quantifies individual preferences for entire platforms rather than the average effect of any one component. Using this measure, they then show that many voters supported the LDP in the 2017 and 2021 elections despite preferring the opposition’s policies. To understand what accounts for this disconnect, Smith and his team experimentally manipulate party label and decompose its effect, revealing that trust is an important non-policy factor motivating LDP voters. Together, their findings support the argument that the LDP’s recent dominance can be attributed to its valence advantage over the opposition rather than voters’ support for its policies.

This event is part of APARC's Contemporary Asia Seminar Series.

Daniel M. Smith is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests cover a range of topics in comparative politics and Japanese politics, with a core focus on elections and democratic representation. He is the author of Dynasties and Democracy: The Inherited Incumbency Advantage in Japan (Stanford University Press, 2018), and articles appearing in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, and Comparative Political Studies, among other journals and edited volumes. He also co-organizes the Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS), and co-edits the Japan Decides election series.

How stable is politics in today's China? Many observers inside and outside the country were stunned by the sudden dismissal in December of Miao Hua, the head of the powerful political work department of the PLA and a member of the Central Military Commission. Takahara will discuss the state of Chinese politics and look into what we can expect of China's response to the 2nd Trump Administration.

This webinar event is co-hosted by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center Japan Program and the Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco

Speaker:

Akio Takahara is Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Tokyo Woman’s Christian University and former Professor of Contemporary Chinese Politics at the Graduate School of Law and Politics at The University of Tokyo. From April to July 2024, he is also serving as Senior Fellow of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS). He received his DPhil in 1988 from Sussex University, and later spent several years as Visiting Scholar at the Consulate-General of Japan in Hong Kong, the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, Harvard University, Peking University, the Mercator Institute for China Studies, and the Australian National University. Before joining The University of Tokyo, he taught at J. F. Oberlin University and Rikkyo University. He served as President of the Japan Association for Asian Studies, and as Secretary General of the New Japan-China Friendship 21st Century Committee. Akio was Dean of the Graduate School of Public Policy at The University of Tokyo from 2018 to 2020, and Director of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development from 2020 to 2023. He currently serves as Senior Adjunct Fellow of the Japan Institute of International Affairs, Distinguished Research Fellow of the Japan Forum on International Relations, Senior Research Adviser of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development, and Trustee of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. His publications in English include The Politics of Wage Policy in Post-Revolutionary China, (Macmillan, 1992), Japan-China Relations in the Modern Era, (co-authored, Routledge, 2017), and “How do smaller countries in the Indo-Pacific region proactively interact with China? An introduction”, Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies, DOI: 10.1080/24761028.2024.2309439, 26 January 2024.

Discussant:

Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009.

From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Moderator:

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at Shorenstein APARC, the Director of the Japan Program and Deputy Director at APARC, a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Professor of Sociology, all at Stanford University. Tsutsui received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Kyoto University and earned an additional master’s degree and Ph.D. from Stanford’s sociology department in 2002. Tsutsui’s research interests lie in political/comparative sociology, social movements, globalization, human rights, and Japanese society. His most recent publication, Human Rights and the State: The Power of Ideas and the Realities of International Politics (Iwanami Shinsho, 2022), was awarded the 2022 Ishibashi Tanzan Award and the 44th Suntory Prize for Arts and Sciences.