This event is co-sponsored by the Consulate General of Japan, San Francisco and the US-Asia Technology Management Center, Stanford University

The United States ushered in new leadership at the same time as an economic crisis swept over the globe. Responding to today’s crisis is an urgent task, but we simultaneously face the question of what kind of world order to create after the crisis. What is Japan’s core orientation as it looks to the future? Can America resume its role as moral leader once again?

About the Speaker

Yotaro Kobayashi is former Chairman of the Board, Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd. and serves on the boards of Callaway Golf Company, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) and Sony Corporation. He is also the Pacific Asia Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, Chairman of the Aspen Institute Japan, and Chairman of International University of Japan.

After receiving his B.A. in economics from Keio University and his M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, he joined Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., in 1958 from where he was assigned to Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd. in 1963. He became President and CEO in 1978, and Chairman and CEO in 1992. He served as Chairman of the Board from 1999 till March 2006 to become Chief Corporate Advisor in April the same year, and retired from that position in March 2009.

Mr. Kobayashi was awarded the Medal with Blue Ribbon (Japan) in 1991, the Insignia of Commander First Class of the Royal Order of the Polar Star (Sweden) in 1995, and the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit (Norway) in 1997.

Is Japan Adrift?

The political drift in Japanese politics and the meteoric rise of China have led many analysts to begin discounting Japan as a major player in the international system. However, beneath the frustration caused by Prime Minister Taro Aso's abysmal poll ratings and opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa's campaign finance scandal, Japan continues moving steadily forwrd in pursuit of a more active national security strategy. While Japanese poliics are in structural paralysis, Japanese political thought is not. Indeed, a consensus is apparent in a series of unofficial strategic documents issued by scholars and politicians this last year. Meanwhile, the Japan Self Defense Forces have recently stood up their first fully independent and joint operational commands to deal with the North Korean missile launch and Somali pirates.

Japan has always been a conservative society, slow to change well established institutions and patterns of behavior in the face of new strategic circumstances. But Japan has also historically been finely attuned to three strategic coordinates:the power of the world's leading hegemon, the power of China, and the threat from the Korean peninsula. All three are in flux, and so too is Japan's future strategic trajectory

About the Speaker

Michael Green is a senior adviser and holds the Japan Chair at CSIS, as well as being an associate professor of international relations at Georgetown University. He served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council (NSC) from January 2004 to December 2005. He joined the NSC in April 2001 as director of Asian affairs with responsibility for Japan, Korea, and Australia/New Zealand. From 1997 to 2000, he was senior fellow for Asian security at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directed the Independent Task Force on Korea and study groups on Japan and security policy in Asia. He served as senior adviser in the Office of Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of Defense in 1997 and as consultant to the same office until 2000. From 1995 to 1997, he was a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and from 1994 to 1995, he was an assistant professor of Asian studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where he remained a professorial lecturer until 2001.

Green speaks fluent Japanese and spent over five years in Japan working as a staff member of the National Diet, as a journalist for Japanese and American newspapers, and as a consultant for U.S. business. He graduated from Kenyon College with highest honors in history in 1983 and received his M.A. from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 1987 and his Ph.D. in 1994. He also did graduate work at Tokyo University as a Fulbright fellow and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a research associate of the MIT-Japan Program. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, The International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Aspen Strategy Group and is vice chair of the congressionally mandated Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. He serves on the advisory boards of the Center for a New American Security and Australian American Leadership Dialogue.

Major change seems virtually certain to occur eventually in North Korea. The regime, already under great stress from the collapse of its economy and continuing international isolation, is being further tested by the apparently serious medical condition of top leader Kim Jong Il. North Korea’s neighbors, the PRC and South Korea, are concerned about the possibility of instability in North Korea resulting from the succession issue and other issues. The United States fears that chaos in North Korea could endanger the security of nuclear materials and technology that North Korea possesses. ROK General (RET) Byung Kwan Kim will analyze patterns of possible change in North Korea and how its neighbors and the United States are likely to respond.

General (RET) Byung Kwan Kim is the inaugural Koret Fellow for 2008-09 academic year. He was the Deputy Commander of the ROK-US Combined Forces Command and the Commander of the Ground Component Command.

The Koret Fellowship was established with generous support from the Koret Foundation to bring leading professionals in Asia and the United States to Stanford to study United States-Korea relations. Fellows conduct their own research on the bilateral relationship, with an emphasis on contemporary relations, with the broad aim of fostering greater understanding and closer ties between the two countries.

This event is supported by a generous grant from the Koret Foundation.

A Workshop in honor of Professor Michel Oksenberg
Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Stanford China Program

We continue to honor the legacy of Professor Michel Oksenberg (1938-2001), a core faculty member of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and one of the country's leading authorities on China and on U.S.-China relations. Professor Oksenberg was one of the most powerful voices advocating a consistent and thoughtful policy of American engagement with China, and with Asia more broadly. The annual Shorenstein APARC Oksenberg Lecture has recognized distinguished individuals who have carried on this legacy of advancing understanding between the United States and China, and the nations of the Asia-Pacific region.

This year, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China and a time of global economic crisis, Shorenstein APARC is broadening the Oksenberg Lecture to a full afternoon workshop to examine the future of US-China relations and China's new role in this turbulent world.  Invited speakers are experts who have had deep experience in the academic, business, and policy worlds.

Agenda: