The Kennedy Legacy and US-Japan Relations

Yukio Okamoto 
Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow, Center for International Studies (CIS), MIT;
President, Okamoto Associates Inc.; and former Special Advisor to Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Ryutaro Hashimoto

Jennifer Lind
Associate Professor of Government, Dartmouth College


Andrew Gordon
Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Harvard University

Moderator: Susan J. Pharr
Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, and Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics

(Co-sponsored by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies)

Mr. Okamoto has had a distinguished career as a diplomat, consultant, author, and advisor to Japan’s Prime Ministers. As a career diplomat in Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), he served in Paris at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and in the embassies in Cairo and Washington. After retiring from MOFA, he established Okamoto Associates Inc., a political and economic consultancy. Mr. Okamoto has served in a number of advisory positions, including Special Advisor to Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto (1996-98), Special Advisor to the Cabinet (2001-03), and Special Advisor on Iraq to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (2003-04). Concurrent with the above last two posts, he was Chairman of the Prime Minister's Task Force on Foreign Relations. He also served as a member of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's Study Group on Diplomacy (2007-08). His books include Okamoto Yukio: Genbashugi wo tsuranuita gaikokan (Asahi Shimbun, 2008), Nichibei doumei no kiki (Bijinesusha, 2007), and Sabaku no sensou (Bungei Shunju, 2006). His recent articles and interviews have appeared in Bungei Shunju, Chuo Koron, Sankei Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun, and Zaikai. Mr. Okamoto teaches as an adjunct professor of international relations at Ritsumeikan University, and sits on the Board of Directors of several multinational companies. He is the president of Shingen'eki Net, a non-profit group for active seniors with 16,000 members.

Professor Lind has published extensively on East Asian security, war memory and international reconciliation, North Korea, and Japanese security policy. She is the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics (Cornell, 2008), and articles in International Security, Security Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of East Asian Studies, Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, New York Times, Washington Post, and other publications. Her recent article in the National Interest examined the role of Robert Kennedy in U.S.-Japan relations in the early 1960s. Professor Lind has worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense. She is Fellow in the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future and an Associate in Research at Harvard’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Her current research projects include articles on the coming struggle for the Western Pacific between the United States and China, and a book project about the speed and complexity with which countries rise to the status of great powers.

Professor Gordon has published extensively on modern Japanese history. He is the author of A Modern History of Japan (Oxford, 3^rd edition, 2013), Fabricating Consumers: The Sewing Machine in Modern Japan (California, 2011), The Unknown Story of Matsuzaka’s Major League Revolution (in Japanese, Asahi shinsho, 2007), The Wages of Affluence: Labor and Management in Postwar Japan (Harvard, 1998), Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (California, 1991; Winner, John King Fairbank  Prize in 1992 for the best book on modern East Asian history), and The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan: Heavy Industry, 1853-1955 (Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies Monographs, 1985). He has also edited Postwar Japan as History (California 1993), and is translator of Portraits of the Japanese Workplace by Kumazawa Makoto (Westview, 1996) and The Ashio Copper Mine Riot by Nimura Kazuo (Duke, 1997).  Professor Gordon has served as Chair of the History Department and Director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies.