The Asan Institute for Policy Studies hosted a book launch for Japan in Crisis: What Will It Take for Japan to Rise Again? (Bong Youngshik & T.J. Pempel, Eds.) on Thursday, April 4th in San Francisco

Date/Time: Thursday, April 4th, 2013/ 12:30-13:30
Place: San Francisco

To view more pictures from the event, please visit our flickr page

For any questions about this book or other Asan Insitute publications, please email Ms. Park Joo-young at publications@asaninst.org.


About the Book

This volume is the result of a conference held by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in November, 2011. Organized in the aftermath of the crisis presented by the triple disaster that struck the Tohoku region of Japan the previous March 11, the conference had as its overarching theme “Japan in Crisis: What Will it Take for Japan to Rise Again?” Many authors began by addressing the question of what it would take for Japan to “recover” from 3/11 but, while that disaster was on everyone’s mind, it was just the latest in a series of challenges that have plagued the country since the bursting of its economic bubble at the end of the 1980s.

To most of the chapter writers, for Japan to “rise again” would mean recovery not simply from the triple disaster –the March, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown—but from the 20-plus years of almost unilateral economic stagnation, political fumbling, and deterioration in the country’s regional and global influence. Returning to the halcyon heyday of Japan’s economic successes in the 1970s and 1980s might be too much to wish for but the authors were largely in agreement that recreating a sense of optimism about the future direction of the country’s economy and politics would surely be essential to any meaningful “rise.”
- T.J. Pempel, Introduction –

Contributing Authors:

Michael Auslin is the Director of Japan Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Bong Youngshik is the Senior Research Fellow and the Director of the Center for Foreign Policy at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

William W. Grimes is the Department Chair of International Relations and a Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Boston University.

Tetsundo Iwakuni is a Visiting Professor at various institutions in the US and Asia, including the University of Virginia and Nankai University.

Kim Mikyoung is an Associate Professor at the Hiroshima City University-Hiroshima Peace Institute in Japan.

Kim Sok Chul is the Principal Researcher and the Director of the Emergency and Security Preparedness Department at the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety.

Gregory W. Noble is a Professor at the Institute of Social Science, the University of Tokyo.

Masakatsu Ota is a Senior Writer at Kyodo News and an Adjunct Fellow for the Program on Global Security and Disarmament at the University of Maryland.

T.J. Pempel is the Jack M. Forcey Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jun Saito is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University.

Kazuhiko Togo is a Professor and the Director of the Institute for World Affairs, Kyoto Sangyo University.