Japan | FSI

Aging Asia: Economic and Social Implications of Rapid Demographic Change in China, Japan, and Korea

Wednesday, February 25, 2009 | 9:00 AM -Wednesday, February 25, 2009 | 5:30 PM

This conference, sponsored by the Asia Health Policy Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Global Aging Program of Stanford Center on Longevity, explored the impact of rapid aging on economic growth, labor markets, social insurance financing, long term care, and health care in China, Japan, and Korea.

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Michael H. Armacost

Former Shorenstein APARC Fellow

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Michael Armacost (April 15, 1937 – March 8, 2025) was a Shorenstein APARC Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) from 2002 through 2021. In the interval between 1995 and 2002, Armacost served as president of Washington, D.C.'s Brookings Institution, the nation's oldest think tank and a leader in research on politics, government, international affairs, economics, and public policy. Previously, during his twenty-four-year government career, Armacost served, among other positions, as undersecretary of state for political affairs and as ambassador to Japan and the Philippines.

Armacost began his career in academia, as a professor of government at Pomona College. In 1969, he was awarded a White House Fellowship and was assigned to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of State. Following a stint on the State Department's policy planning and coordination staff, he became a special assistant to the U.S. ambassador in Tokyo from 1972 to 74, his first foreign diplomatic post. Thereafter, he held senior Asian affairs and international security posts in the State Department, the Defense Department, and the National Security Council. From 1982 to 1984, he served as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and was a key force in helping the country undergo a nonviolent transition to democracy. In 1989, President George Bush tapped him to become ambassador to Japan, considered one of the most important and sensitive U.S. diplomatic posts abroad.

Armacost authored four books, including, Friends or Rivals? The Insider's Account of U.S.–Japan Relations (1996), which draws on his tenure as ambassador, and Ballots, Bullets, and Bargains: American Foreign Policy and Presidential Elections (2015). He also co-edited, with Daniel Okimoto, the Future of America's Alliances in Northeast Asia, published in 2004 by Shorenstein APARC. Armacost served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards, including TRW, AFLAC, Applied Materials, USEC, Inc., Cargill, Inc., and Carleton College, and he currently chairs the board of The Asia Foundation.

A native of Ohio, Armacost graduated from Carleton College and earned his master's and doctorate degrees in public law and government from Columbia University. He received the President's Distinguished Service Award, the Defense Department's Distinguished Civilian Service Award, the Secretary of State's Distinguished Services Award, and the Japanese government’s Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun.

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Wed, 03/12/2025 - 11:45

Divided Lenses: Film and War Memory in Asia

Friday, December 5, 2008 | 8:30 AM -Friday, December 5, 2008 | 5:45 PM

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center is currently in the midst of a three-year research project, “Divided Memories and Reconciliation.” Divided Memories is a comparative study of the formation of elite and popular historical consciousness of the Sino-Japanese War and Pacific War periods in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United States with the aim of promoting understanding and reconciliation. The first phase, which has been completed, is a comparative study of high school history textbooks from all five nations, focusing on the way the textbooks treat the wars and their aftermath. The second phase focuses on the impact of popular culture, especially films, on the formation of public memory.

The main goal of this international conference is to examine the role of dramatic cinema in shaping popular and elite perceptions of the historical period from 1931-1951, ranging from the treatment of Japanese colonialism to the post-war settlement and the beginnings of the Korean War. Panelists will survey the cinemas of Japan, China, Korea and the United States, identifying important films made during the post-war period and their impact on war memory. The conference will then focus on key issues of the wartime period as they are represented in film, including the Nanjing Massacre, nationalism in Japan, the colonial experience in Korea and the Korean war. Finally, we will examine other forms of popular culture, including manga and anime.

This conference is aimed at promoting public discussion crossing national borders and disciplinary boundaries – and producing an edited volume for publication. It will be preceded by a film series, featuring significant films on this wartime period from China, Japan, South Korea and the United States. The series will conclude on the evening of December 4, preceding the opening of the conference, with a showing and discussion of Letters from Iwo Jima with director Clint Eastwood.

Bechtel Conference Center

Michael Berry Associate Professor Panelist University of California, Santa Barbara

David Desser Director, Unit for Cinema Studies Panelist University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Aaron Gerow Assistant Professor of Film Studies and East Asian Languages and Literatures Panelist Yale University

Kyung Hyun Kim Associate Professor Panelist University of California, Irvine

Kyu Hyun Kim Associate Professor Panelist University of California, Davis

Hyangjin Lee Speaker University of Sheffield, UK

Chiho Sawada

Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-6530

csawada@stanford.edu

Research Fellow

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Chiho Sawada holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from Harvard University (specialty in East Asian history; secondary field in Western intellectual history) and a B.A. from the University of California, San Diego (major in economics; minor in visual arts). In addition, he has attended the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy (concentration in International Politics and Development), conducted research at numerous other institutions in Asia and the United States, and served stints in U.S. Embassies in Beijing and Seoul.

Dr. Sawada is currently working on several collaborative and individual research projects: (1) Historical Injustice, Redress, and Reconciliation: Global Perspectives, (2) Public Diplomacy and Counter-publics: Asia and Beyond, 1945 to the present, and (3) Student and Urban Cultures in Colonial Contexts. He recently contributed a chapter entitled "Pop Culture, Public Memory, and Korean-Japanese Relations" to the first volume of project one, Rethinking Historical Injustice in East Asia (Routledge, forthcoming). For project two, he is lead organizer of a Stanford workshop and conference, and editing the conference book. Project three is a book project that expands his dissertation to consider colonial context not just in Northeast Asia, but also India, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

Chiho Sawada Visiting Fellow and Professor in the Kiriyama Chair, Center for the Pacific Rim, University of San Francisco & Research Fellow, Stanford University Stanford University Panelist

Robert Brent Toplin Professor of History Panelist University of North Carolina Wilmington

Ban Wang Professor of Chinese Literature Speaker Stanford University

Yingjin Zhang Director, Chinese Studies Program Speaker University of California, San Diego

Scott Bukatman Associate Professor Art and Art History Panelist Stanford University

Alisa Jones Northeast Asia History Fellow Panelist Stanford University

Jenny Lau Associate Professor Panelist San Francisco State University

Daniel C. Sneider Speaker

Conferences

Fourth Wave on the Korean Peninsula: Transforming Conflicts into Opportunities

Thursday, December 4, 2008 | 3:00 PM -Thursday, December 4, 2008 | 4:15 PM

Dong-Young Chung, a former South Korean unification minister and ruling party leader, believes that the Korean Peninsula’s geopolitical location among China, Japan, Russia, and the United States offers major opportunities to the international community. If the legacy of Korean national division caused by the Cold War is overcome, the Korean Peninsula can lend impetus to a "fourth wave" of regional and global cooperation. Minister Chung will review his own extensive talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and discuss the essential role played by the embattled Gaeseong Industrial Complex in reconciling the two Koreas. He will also offer recommendations as to how the incoming U.S. administration can best deal with North Korea.

Dong-Young Chung, currently a visiting scholar at Duke University, is a leading South Korean politician. He was unification minister from 2004 to 2005. A former two-term member of the National Assembly, he served as chairman of the ruling party and ran unsuccessfully for the country’s presidency in 2007. Mr. Chung has a bachelor's degree in Korean History from Seoul National University and a master’s degree from the University of Wales. He began his career as a TV journalist.

Philippines Conference Room

Dong-Young Chung Former Minister of Unification, South Korea Speaker

Conferences

Richard Dasher

Read more about Richard Dasher

U.S.-Asia Technology Management Center
School of Engineering
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-0096 (650) 725-9974

Consulting Professor

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At Stanford University, Dr. Dasher has directed the US-Asia Technology Management Center since 1994, and he has been Executive Director of the Center for Integrated Systems since 1998. He holds Consulting Professor appointments at Stanford in the Departments of Electrical Engineering (technology management), Asian Languages and Cultures (Japanese business), and at the Asia-Pacific Research Center for his work with the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He is also faculty adviser to student-run organizations such as the Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society and the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford.

From 2004, Dr. Dasher became the first non-Japanese person ever asked to join the governance of a Japanese national university, serving a term as a Board Director (理事) of Tohoku University . He continued as a member of the Management Council (経営協議会) until March 2010, and he now serves as Senior Advisor to the President (総長顧問) of Tohoku University. Dr. Dasher has been a member of the high-profile Program Committee of the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI) of the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT) since 2007. He has served on the Multidisciplinary Assessment Committee of the C$500 million Canada Foundation for Innovation Leading Edge Fund in 2007 and again in 2010, and as a member of the Phase I and Phase II Review Panels of the C$200 million Canada Excellence Research Chairs Program in 2008 and again in 2010. He was a distinguished reviewer of the Hong Kong S.A.R. study on innovation in 2008–09, and since 2007 he has been a member of the Foresight Panel of the German Ministry of Education and Research. From 2001–03, Dr. Dasher was on the International Planning Committee advising the Japanese Minister of State for Science and Technology Policy in regard to the formation of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

As allowed by Stanford policy, Dr. Dasher maintains an active management consulting practice, through which he is an advisor to start-up companies and large firms in the U.S., Japan, and China. He has been a board director of Tokyo-based ZyCube Inc. since 2006, and he is founder and chairman of Pearl Executive Shuttle in Valdosta, Georgia, U.S.A. In the non-profit sector, he is a Board Director of the Japan Society of Northern California and the Keizai Society U.S. – Japan Business Forum, and he is an advisor to organizations such as the Chinese Information and Networking Association, the Silicon Valley – China Wireless Technology Association, and the International Foundation for Entrepreneurship in Science and Technology (iFEST). In 2010 he served as a consultant to The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) in regard to their establishment of a worldwide remote mentoring program for entrepreneurs. Dr. Dasher frequently gives speeches and seminars throughout Japan and Asia, as well as in the U.S. Recent appearances include the Nikkei Shimbun Business Innovation Forum, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, speaking tours of Japan co-sponsored by METI and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, and guest lectures at Chubu University, Kochi University of Technology, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, and the University of Tokyo.

From 1990–93, Dr. Dasher was a board director of two privately-held Japanese companies in Tokyo, at which he developed new business in international licensing of media rights packages and other intellectual properties. From 1986–90, he was Director of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute advanced field schools in Japan and Korea, which provide full-time language and area training to U.S. and select Commonwealth country diplomats assigned to those countries. He received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Linguistics from Stanford University and, along with Prof. Elizabeth Closs Traugott, he is co-author of the often-cited book Regularity in Semantic Change (Cambridge University Press, 2002). He received the Bachelor of Music degree in clarinet and orchestra conducting from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he served on the faculty from 1978-85.

The Impact of Entrepreneurs in Asia on the Evolution of Global Technology Development

Thursday, November 20, 2008 | 4:15 PM -Thursday, November 20, 2008 | 5:30 PM

Patterns of technology development are changing. While once it was mainly large firms and multinational corporations that thrived globally, now many start-up firms here are engaged in technology development outside the United States. Some of these changing globalization patterns include offshore outsourcing of R&D, cross-border collaborations between researchers or technology providers, as well as contextual pressures like new government policies.

This panel, comprised both of American entrepreneurs operating in Japan and China and scholars of entrepreneurship here and in Japan, will discuss this growth of globalization in patterns of technology development and how entrepreneurs have figured in the process.

This event is presented in conjunction with the US-Asia Technology Management Center (US-ATMC) and features Shigeo Kagami, Professor, University of Tokyo; Michael Alfant, CEO, Fusion Systems KK; Robert Eberhart, SPRIE Researcher, Stanford University, and moderated by Richard Dasher, Director, US-ATMC & Consulting Professor, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

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Skilling Auditorium

Shigeo Kagami Professor Speaker University of Tokyo

Robert Eberhart Speaker

Michael Alfant CEO Speaker Fusion Systems KK

Richard Dasher

U.S.-Asia Technology Management Center
School of Engineering
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-0096 (650) 725-9974

Consulting Professor

richard-lg0001-200x300.jpg PhD

Richard Dasher Moderator

Seminars

Obama administration will give diplomacy a chance to deal with the North Korean nuclear problem

Read more about Obama administration will give diplomacy a chance to deal with the North Korean nuclear problem

News Type

Commentary

Date

Mon, 11/10/2008 - 12:00

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David Straub, the acting director of Korean Studies Program, argues that Obama administration will finally give diplomacy a chance to deal with the North Korean nuclear problem. He stresses that Senator Obama understands the difficulties of dealing with North Korea and will proceed carefully. If North Korea does not respond to this more nuanced American approach, he concludes, the international community is likely to be more supportive of U.S. efforts to constrain North Korean behavior.

Among conservatives in Korea and other American allied countries, there seems to be some anxiety about the election of a relatively unknown, young African-American liberal as the next American president. Typically, when a new U.S. president is elected, American diplomats seek to reassure allies by telling them that the incoming president will pursue fundamentally the same policies as the outgoing president. However, President Obama clearly will adopt a significantly different foreign policy than President Bush, including toward North Korea.

Obama’s soaring rhetoric has led to a widespread (and correct) impression of him as idealistic, but the long presidential campaign also revealed him to be a disciplined politician and a skillful manager. His foreign policy will be much closer to the prudent realpolitik of President Bush’s father than it will be to the “neo-con” approach of President Bush himself.
And while it is true that Obama does not have deep experience in foreign affairs, his youthful years spent in Indonesia and Hawaii, taken together with his successful navigation of American society as a young African-American man, have given him a genuine empathy for different peoples and cultures. He has the self-confidence and intelligence to listen with an open mind to others and then carefully to make his own decisions.

President Obama’s policy toward North Korea will defy stereotypes of the past. In some ways he will be “softer” on North Korea than President Bush; in other ways, he will be “tougher.” Like President Bush and his predecessors, President Obama will take the position that he can never accept a North Korea with nuclear weapons. On the other hand, Obama will not engage in bluster such as “all options are on the table,” which most South Koreans reject and which only plays into the DPRK’s hands.

Instead, Obama will finally give diplomacy a fighting chance. Even during the past couple of years, President Bush remained very reluctant to engage fully in negotiations with North Korea. President Obama will order that a policy review be conducted expeditiously, and he will probably appoint a very senior special envoy to take charge of negotiations with North Korea. While maintaining the framework of the Six-Party Talks and consulting very closely with the Republic of Korea and Japan, he will also authorize meaningful bilateral negotiations with North Korea. If those negotiations bear real fruit, he may even visit Pyongyang himself if he is confident that he will be able to strike a deal completely ending North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

President Obama will probably offer North Korea a “more for more” deal. In other words, compared to President Bush he will propose a much more detailed and concrete series of steps to be taken by North Korea, the United States, and other members of the Six-Party Talks. The aim will be agreement on an early end to North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs.

The North Koreans should not think that President Obama will be “easier” than President Bush. If, as may well be the case, the North Koreans reject President Obama’s approach or drag their feet in responding to it, he, unlike President Bush, will have the international credibility to work more effectively with other members of the Six-Party Talks and the international community to limit North Korea’s options.

Moreover, as a hardheaded domestic politician, President Obama will be careful to avoid situations in which the Republican opposition could credibly criticize him as being naïve about North Korea. Indeed, Obama’s team recognizes clearly that, having declared itself a nuclear weapons state and tested a nuclear device, North Korea may not be prepared to verifiably give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.

In formulating and conducting his policy toward North Korea, President Obama will have access to many trusted experts on North Korea, beginning with Vice President Biden and his staff. Obama is also advised by a number of experienced officials from the Clinton administration, from former Defense Secretary Bill Perry to former career diplomat Jeffrey Bader.

U.S. relations with the Republic of Korea are key to any successful American policy toward North Korea. Obama and his team fully appreciate the importance of U.S.-ROK relations and the security alliance. They will coordinate very closely with the Lee Myung-bak administration and never sacrifice the interests of the Republic of Korea, which is immeasurably more important to the United States than the DPRK is or ever will be.

President Obama will support the implementation of the agreements President Bush reached with the Republic of Korea on the realignment of U.S. Forces of Korea and the transfer of wartime operational control, as befits the ROK’s military and economic might.

Under President Obama, the United States will also aim to approve, with some adjustments, the U.S.-ROK Free Trade Agreement, although it may take a year or so to do so as he perforce deals first with the global financial and economic crises and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama must be cognizant of the viewpoint of leading congressional Democrats and the constituencies they represent. It may be counterproductive if the ROK pushes too hard, too fast for U.S. approval of the FTA.

Obama’s inauguration will also open up new possibilities for U.S.-ROK coordination and cooperation on global issues. Unlike President Bush, whose early unilateralist mindset and specific policies caused dismay among international friends and foes alike, President Obama begins with a vast reservoir of sympathy and respect throughout the world. That will make it easier, and more useful, for the Republic of Korea to cooperate globally more with the United States.

In short, South Koreans should be reassured, not that President Obama’s foreign policy will be like that of President Bush, but that it will be different. Perhaps South Koreans will even begin to feel that their alliance with the United States is not just one that they feel they must have for their country’s long-term interests – but also one of which they can feel proud.

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The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed

Friday, November 21, 2008 | 2:00 PM -Friday, November 21, 2008 | 3:15 PM

Soon we will be able to say about old Beijing that what emperors, warlords, Japanese invaders, and Communist planners couldn't eradicate, the market economy has. Nobody has been more aware of this than Michael Meyer. A long-time resident, Meyer has, for the past two years, lived as no other Westerner in a shared courtyard home in Beijing's oldest neighborhood, Dazhalan, on one of its famed hutong (lanes). There he volunteers to teach English at the local grade school and immerses himself in the community, recording with affection the life stories of the Widow, who shares his courtyard; coteacher Miss Zhu and student Little Liu; and the migrants Recycler Wang and Soldier Liu; among the many others who, despite great differences in age and profession, make up the fabric of this unique neighborhood.

Their bond is rapidly being torn, however, by forced evictions as century-old houses and ways of life are increasingly destroyed to make way for shopping malls, the capital's first Wal-Mart, high-rise buildings, and widened streets for cars replacing bicycles. Beijing has gone through this cycle many times, as Meyer reveals, but never with the kind of dislocation and overturning of its storied culture now occurring as the city prepares to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Weaving historical vignettes of Beijing and China over a thousand years through his narrative, Meyer captures the city's deep past as he illuminates its present. With the kind of insight only someone on the inside can provide, The Last Days of Old Beijing brings this moment and the ebb and flow of daily lives on the other side of the planet into shining focus.

Michael Meyer first went to China in 1995 with the Peace Corps. A longtime teacher, and a Lowell Thomas Award winner for travel writing, Meyer has published stories in Time, Smithsonian, the New York Times Book Review, the Financial Times, Reader's Digest, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. In China, he has represented the National Geographic Society's Center for Sustainable Destinations, training China's UNESCO World Heritage site managers in preservation practices.

Philippines Conference Room

Michael Meyer Speaker

Seminars

Collateral Damage: The U.S. financial crisis and Asia

Collateral Damage: The U.S. financial crisis and Asia

Aging Asia: Economic and Social Implications of Rapid Demographic Change in China, Japan, and Korea

Michael H. Armacost

Divided Lenses: Film and War Memory in Asia

Chiho Sawada

Fourth Wave on the Korean Peninsula: Transforming Conflicts into Opportunities

Korea and the Next American Presidency (Audio)

Richard Dasher

The Impact of Entrepreneurs in Asia on the Evolution of Global Technology Development

Richard Dasher

Obama administration will give diplomacy a chance to deal with the North Korean nuclear problem

The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed

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