Our good friends at the Japanese Consulate in Toronto (in
collaboration with the University of Toronto and the Munk School of Global
Affairs) are continuing their JAPAN NOW Lecture series on Thursday, January 12th
between 2 and 4pm at the Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility (Munk
School of Global Affairs) Professor Akihiko
Tanaka from the University of Tokyo will be presenting “Japan’s Global Reach:
Development Cooperation and Foreign Policy”.
Japan has been engaged in development cooperation throughout
the world since the 1950s. The initial efforts of development cooperation were
made to augment and reinforce the postwar settlements with the countries
invaded by Japan. Japan’s development cooperation expanded quantitatively and
geographically in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the projects conducted in this
period illustrate Japan’s approach to international development cooperation, an
approach that emphasizes both human capacity development and infrastructure
building. Reviewing the history of Japan’s activities globally, Professor
Tanaka would discuss challenges Japan faces in the 21st century as a civilian
power.
Akihiko Tanaka is Professor of International Politics at the
Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University Tokyo. He served as
President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) from April, 2012
to September, 2015. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in International
Relations at the University of Tokyo and Ph.D. in Political Science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has numerous books and articles on
world politics and security issues in Japanese and English, including The New
Middle Ages: The World System in the 21st Century (Tokyo: The International
House of Japan, 2002). He received the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2012 for his
academic achievements.
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