This is part of Global Research Workshop Series: Developing an Interdisciplinary Research Platform Toward ‘Next Asia’ co-sponsored by Stanford Global Studies.

Abstract:

This paper examines the evolving and context-specific nature of race discourses through an analysis of state party reports (1978–2023) submitted by 16 Asian countries to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), along with their related interactions with the Committee. We trace how Asian states follow, negotiate, and oppose/resist the Committee’s definitions and recommendations in their reporting—constituting processes through which racism “denial” is (re)constructed within the CERD framework and shaped by both international and national conjunctures. The paper inductively identifies and details five areas of contestation: (1) the boundaries of the people/national; (2) intra-Asian refugee “crises” as racialized oppression; (3) “counter-insurgency” and the securitization of CERD; (4) the “Southern” question and postcolonial Asia’s developmental ideology; and (5) the decline of decolonial solidarity and nationalism. The paper concludes by proposing pathways to expand the analytical scope of research on racisms in Asia and the global politics of anti-racism.

Presenter:

Junki Nakahara is a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab, housed within the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Her research interests include nationalism, critical and cultural studies, feminist media studies, and postcolonial/decolonial international relations. She studies the contemporary dominance and institutionalization of nationalism, entangled with racism, xenophobia, historical revisionism (e.g., denial of wartime atrocities), and misogyny, primarily focusing on East Asia. She earned her PhD in Communication (2023) and MA in Intercultural and International Communication (2019), both from American University. Her publications include contributions to New Media & Society, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.

Discussants:

Angana P. Chatterji is a Research Anthropologist and Founding Chair of the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at UC Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender. She co-leads the Berkeley-Stanford Archive on Legacies of Conflict in South Asia and is affiliated with Berkeley’s Institute for South Asia Studies and Human Rights Center, as well as Stanford’s Center for Human Rights and International Justice. Chatterji holds a B.A. in Political Science, an M.A. in Political Science, and a Ph.D. in the Humanities. Her recent scholarship focuses on political conflict and coloniality in Kashmir; prejudicial citizenship in India; and Islamomisia, caste, gender, and violence as agentized by majoritarian, Hindu nationalism. Her research excavates issues of decitizening, impunity laws, everyday militarizations, and their incursion on rights protections and defenders. She has co-founded the People’s Tribunal on Religious Freedom and Human Rights in Odisha (2005) and on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir (2008) and has testified before the UN, U.S. Congress, and other national and international bodies.

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.

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) is the largest funding agency for academic research in Japan. Fellowships are offered for graduate students, Ph.D. students, post-doctoral fellows, researchers, and professors at all levels in all fields. If you are interested in researching in Japan, join us for a hybrid information session with JSPS SFO staff to find out more. 

Featuring Prof. Kiyoteru Tsutsui, director of the Japan Program at APARC and center deputy director.

JSPS SFO will be hosting a giveaway and providing lunch! 

If you have any questions, you can reach JSPS SFO at: (510) 665-1890 or sfo-fellowship@overseas.jsps.go.jp

This is part of Global Research Workshop Series: Developing an Interdisciplinary Research Platform Toward ‘Next Asia’ co-sponsored by Stanford Global Studies.

Who drives elite discourse on U.S.-China relations – Congress, the executive branch, or the media? Although prior research suggests that each actor may hold distinct agenda-setting capacities, their relative influence – and the directionality of influence among elites in foreign policy discourse – remains insufficiently theorized and empirically underexamined. This study investigates issue attention (what topics are discussed) and framing dynamics (how topics are discussed) surrounding China by analyzing communications from the legislative and executive branches alongside coverage from major U.S. media outlets. Drawing on unsupervised topic modeling and vector autoregression (VAR) models, we examine the evolution of issue attention and framing across two periods: the 116th Congress (January 3, 2019 – January 3, 2021) and the 118th Congress (January 3, 2023 – January 3, 2025). Our analysis disentangles the mechanisms of issue attention and framing and illustrates how partisan and individual-level differences structure elite-media interactions in the context of rising great power rivalry.

Presenter:

Xinru Ma is an inaugural research scholar at the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab housed in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where she leads the research track on U.S.-Asia relations. Her work primarily examines nationalism, great power politics, and East Asian security, with a methodological focus on formal and computational methods. Empirically, a common theme of her research challenges prevailing assumptions that inflate the perceived risk of militarized conflicts in East Asia, offering original data and analysis grounded in local knowledge and regional perspectives. Her work is published in the Journal of East Asian Studies, The Washington Quarterly, Journal of Global Security Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, and edited volumes by Palgrave. Her co-authored book, Beyond Power Transition, is published by Columbia University Press.

Discussants:

Pablo Barberá is a Research Scientist in the Computational Social Science team at Meta, as well as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California. His research combines computational methods and the use of social media data to examine the impact of digital technologies on political behavior and public opinion.

Matthew Dolbow is a Visiting Scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  Before coming to APARC, Mr. Dolbow led U.S. diplomatic outreach to Japan's southernmost islands near Taiwan as U.S. Consul General in Okinawa.  Over nearly 10 years as a diplomat in China, Mr. Dolbow led teams that assessed the impact of China's security goals on its trade policy, trained colleagues across the Department of State on China's economic statecraft, and created social media programs that attracted hundreds of thousands of subscribers.  As Chief of Staff in the U.S. National Security Council’s international economics office during the first Trump administration, Mr. Dolbow also contributed to the 2017 U.S. National Security Strategy, which solidified a new bipartisan U.S. consensus on China economic policy.  

This lecture is the final installment in the Japan Program's spring 2025 seminar series, Reexaminations of Major Issues in Modern Japanese Politics and Diplomacy.

Session 6: Japan's Official Development Assistance

Japan began its Official Development Assistance in 1954, only 9 years after its defeat, and became No. 1 donor in the 1990s. The amount of ODA began to decline in 1997, reaching half of its peak, and Japan is now No. 3 in the world. However, Japan developed various unique approaches in its ODA. Now, as the US withdraws from ODA and the conflict between advanced and developing countries becomes tense, Japan’s ODA may provide unique approaches to developing countries.

Join us for our 2025 spring quarter seminar series featuring Shorenstein APARC Visiting Scholar and Japan Program Fellow Dr. Shinichi Kitaoka, Emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo and a distinguished scholar in modern Japanese politics, as he presents new interpretations of six major issues in modern Japanese politics based on recent studies in Japan and his own experience as the Ambassador to the United Nations and the President of Japan International Cooperation Agency.

This seminar series re-examines several important and well-known issues in modern Japanese politics and diplomacy from the late 19th century to the 21st century based on the lecturer’s recent research and experience within the government. Topics include Meiji Restoration as a democratic revolution; the resilience of Taisho Democracy; the military as a bureaucracy; surrender and the American occupation; the Yoshida Doctrine and the regime of 1955; the development of ODA policy; and the recent development of security policy in the 21st century.

Catered dinner will be served at seminar sessions.

Speaker:

Shinichi Kitaoka is the former President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA: 2015-2022) and Emeritus Professor, University of Tokyo. Previous posts include President of the International University of Japan (2012-2015), professor at University of Tokyo (1997-2012), Professor of National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) (2012-), Professor of Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, the University of Tokyo (1997-2004, 2006-2012), Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Deputy Permanent Representative of Japan to the United Nations (2004-2006), and Professor of College of Law and Politics, Rikkyo University (1985-1997).

Dr. Kitaoka’s specialty is modern Japanese politics and diplomacy. He obtained his BA (1971) and PhD (1976) from the University of Tokyo. He is also Emeritus Professor at Rikkyo University. He received many awards including the Medal with Purple Ribbon for his academic achievements in 2011.

This lecture is the fourth installment in the Japan Program's spring 2025 seminar series, Reexaminations of Major Issues in Modern Japanese Politics and Diplomacy.

Session 4: The Regime of 1955

In 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Japan Socialist Party were formed. While the former led Japan for 38 years, the latter remained out of power. The reasons for this rivalry and the consequences of this system will be discussed.

Join us for our 2025 spring quarter seminar series featuring Shorenstein APARC Visiting Scholar and Japan Program Fellow Dr. Shinichi Kitaoka, Emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo and a distinguished scholar in modern Japanese politics, as he presents new interpretations of six major issues in modern Japanese politics based on recent studies in Japan and his own experience as the Ambassador to the United Nations and the President of Japan International Cooperation Agency.

This seminar series re-examines several important and well-known issues in modern Japanese politics and diplomacy from the late 19th century to the 21st century based on the lecturer’s recent research and experience within the government. Topics include Meiji Restoration as a democratic revolution; the resilience of Taisho Democracy; the military as a bureaucracy; surrender and the American occupation; the Yoshida Doctrine and the regime of 1955; the development of ODA policy; and the recent development of security policy in the 21st century.

Catered dinner will be served at seminar sessions.

Speaker:

Shinichi Kitaoka is the former President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA: 2015-2022) and Emeritus Professor, University of Tokyo. Previous posts include President of the International University of Japan (2012-2015), professor at University of Tokyo (1997-2012), Professor of National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) (2012-), Professor of Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, the University of Tokyo (1997-2004, 2006-2012), Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Deputy Permanent Representative of Japan to the United Nations (2004-2006), and Professor of College of Law and Politics, Rikkyo University (1985-1997).

Dr. Kitaoka’s specialty is modern Japanese politics and diplomacy. He obtained his BA (1971) and PhD (1976) from the University of Tokyo. He is also Emeritus Professor at Rikkyo University. He received many awards including the Medal with Purple Ribbon for his academic achievements in 2011.

This lecture is the first installment in the Japan Program's spring 2025 seminar series, Reexaminations of Major Issues in Modern Japanese Politics and Diplomacy.

Session 3: Surrender and Occupation

What was the purpose of the United States? What did unconditional surrender mean? Why were the atomic bombs dropped? How was the constitution written and the Tokyo International Tribunal conducted? The legacies of occupation will also be discussed.

Join us for our Spring Quarter Seminar Series featuring Shorenstein APARC Visiting Scholar and Japan Program Fellow Dr. Shinichi Kitaoka, Emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo and a distinguished scholar in modern Japanese politics, presents his new interpretations of six major issues in modern Japanese politics based on recent studies in Japan and his own experience as the Ambassador to the United Nations and the President of Japan International Cooperation Agency.

This seminar series re-examines several important and well-known issues in modern Japanese politics and diplomacy from the late 19th century to the 21st century based upon the lecturer’s recent research and experience within the government. Major topics are, Meiji Restoration as a democratic revolution, resilience of Taisho Democracy, Military as a bureaucracy, Surrender and the American Occupation, Yoshida Doctrine and the Regime of 1955, Development of ODA policy, and recent development of Security Policy in the 21st Century.

Catered dinner will be served at seminar sessions.

Speaker:

Shinichi Kitaoka is the former President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA: 2015-2022) and Emeritus Professor, University of Tokyo. Previous posts include President of the International University of Japan (2012-2015), professor at University of Tokyo (1997-2012), Professor of National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) (2012-), Professor of Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, the University of Tokyo (1997-2004, 2006-2012), Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Deputy Permanent Representative of Japan to the United Nations (2004-2006), and Professor of College of Law and Politics, Rikkyo University (1985-1997).

Dr. Kitaoka’s specialty is modern Japanese politics and diplomacy. He obtained his B.A. (1971) and his Ph.D. (1976) both from the University of Tokyo. He is Emeritus Professor of the University of Tokyo and Rikkyo University. He received many awards including the Medal with Purple Ribbon for his academic achievements in 2011.