On a recent Friday afternoon at Stanford, the weather reminded me of some crisp yet clear winter days in Japan. The sun brightly lit the Falcon Lounge on the 5th floor of Encina Hall as six alumni from the 2014 to 2018 Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) and Sejong Korean Scholars Program (SKSP) cohorts gathered to celebrate the new year. This annual shinnenkai (literally, “new year gathering,” in Japanese) luncheon offers alumni of SPICE’s pre-collegiate online courses to meet or reconnect over lively conversation and delicious food. For the SPICE instructors, the shinnenkai is often the first time to meet alumni in person.

The RSP is an online course on Japan and U.S.–Japan relations that is offered to U.S. high school students each spring, and will welcome its seventeenth cohort in a few weeks. The SKSP is preparing for its eighth cohort, and offers an intensive online study of Korea and U.S.–Korea relations to U.S. high school students. SPICE also offers a third online course to U.S. high school students on China and U.S.–China relations, the China Scholars Program. The CSP is preparing for its sixth cohort.

One of the attendees, James Noh (RSP ‘16, Stanford University ‘22), reflected on his RSP experience following the shinnenkai: “My RSP experience not only nurtured my interest in East Asia, but also made me realize that I wanted to incorporate my interest in East Asia into both my academic and professional careers. Looking back, I think participating in RSP played an important role in influencing my decision to take a gap year to study Mandarin in China after high school and major in international relations with a focus on East Asia.” During the shinnenkai, it was interesting to hear other alumni share thoughts on how their experiences in the RSP and SKSP helped to prepare them for and also shape their college life. Comments ranged from “informing choices” like class or major selection to “honing skills” like writing research papers.

Through the many years in which SPICE has engaged U.S. high school students in these intensive online courses, we have been fortunate to work with many exceptional students such as James. As the instructor of the RSP, I especially treasure the face-to-face opportunities to meet with alumni of these courses. These opportunities are rare treats given that our courses take place entirely online. The annual shinnenkai is truly a highlight of my year.

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Stanford e-Japan is an online course that teaches Japanese high school students about U.S. society and culture and U.S.–Japan relations. The course introduces students to both U.S. and Japanese perspectives on many historical and contemporary issues. It is offered biannually by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). Stanford e-Japan is currently supported by the Yanai Tadashi Foundation. The Spring 2019 cohort was the eighth group of students to complete Stanford e-Japan.

In Summer 2020, three of the top students of the Spring 2019 Stanford e-Japan online course will be honored at an event at Stanford University. The three Stanford e-Japan Day honorees—Rinko Kawamoto (UWC ISAK Japan, Nagano), Renee Ohnuki (Senior High School at Sakado, University of Tsukuba, Saitama), and Kota Watanabe (Waseda University Senior High School, Tokyo)—will be recognized for their coursework and exceptional research essays that focused respectively on “Hollywood and U.S. Society: A Study Through the Ages,” “U.S.–Japan Drone Technology Collaboration and Its Application to Photocatalytic Technology to Resolve Air and Water Pollution,” and “A More Sufficient Language Learning Environment for Foreign Students in Japan: A Comparison with the American ESL Education System.”

Isshin Yunoki (Kaisei Academy, Tokyo) received an Honorable Mention for his research paper on “The Characteristics and Social Influence of Traditional Music in Japan and America.”

In the Spring 2019 session of Stanford e-Japan, students from the following schools successfully completed the course: Canadian Academy (Hyogo); Clark Memorial International High School (Osaka); Fudooka High School (Saitama); Hiroo Gakuen High School (Tokyo); Hiroshima Jogakuin Senior High School (Hiroshima); Hiroshima University High School (Hiroshima); Hokkaido Sapporo Minami High School (Hokkaido); Ichikawa Gakuen Senior High School (Chiba); Inagakuen Comprehensive High School (Saitama); Kaisei Academy (Tokyo); Kaishi Kokusai High School (Niigata); Kaiyo Academy (Aichi); Katayama Gakuen Senior High School (Toyama); Katoh Gakuen Gyoshu Senior High School (Shizuoka); Keio Shonan Fujisawa High School (Kanagawa); Komaba Toho Senior High School (Tokyo); Kwansei Gakuin Senior High School (Hyogo); Kyuyou High School (Okinawa); Senior High School at Otsuka, University of Tsukuba (Tokyo); Senior High School at Sakado, University of Tsukuba (Saitama); Shiba Junior and Senior High School (Tokyo); Tokyo Metropolitan Mita High School (Tokyo); Tokyo Minamitama Secondary Education School (Tokyo); UWC ISAK Japan (Nagano); and Waseda University High School (Tokyo).

For more information about the Stanford e-Japan Program, please visit stanfordejapan.org.

To stay informed of news about Stanford e-Japan and SPICE’s other programs, join our email list and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Related articles:

• SPICE’s Stanford e-Japan Instructor Waka Takahashi Brown Honored with the Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award
• Stanford e-Japan: My Window to the Wider World
• The Yanai Tadashi Foundation and Stanford e-Japan: Cultivating Future Leaders in Japan
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The Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award recognizes exceptional teachers who further mutual understanding between Americans and Japanese. EngageAsia administers the Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award, which is funded by the United States-Japan Foundation. The 2019 Award focused on the humanities and the 2020 Award will focus on Japanese language. It is named in honor of Elgin Heinz for his commitment to educating students about Asia as well as for the inspiration he has provided to the field of pre-collegiate education.

“Waka walks in the footsteps of Elgin Heinz as a key leader in educating the next generation about the U.S.–Japan relationship,” stated David Janes, Chair of the Board, EngageAsia. Heinz was born in China in 1913 and taught in the San Francisco Unified School District for 40 years. Challenging Americans’ lack of knowledge about Asia was central to Elgin’s life’s work. Janes has overseen the Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award since its inception in 2001. Daniel Tani, Director of Foundation Grants at the U.S.-Japan Foundation, and Janes formally presented the award to Brown.

In addition to teaching Stanford e-Japan for the last five years, Brown previously served as instructor for SPICE’s Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP). The RSP is an online course that introduces Japanese society and culture and U.S.–Japan relations to high school students in the United States. Current RSP Instructor and Manager Naomi Funahashi is a 2017 Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award recipient.

Waka Brown, Professor Daniel Okimoto, and Miles Brown (husband of Waka)

Prior to joining SPICE, Brown taught Japanese language at Silver Creek High School in San Jose and served as a Coordinator for International Relations (CIR) on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. Brown obtained both her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University.

In her acceptance speech, Waka noted: “As a Japanese American growing up in Kansas in the 1970s and 80s, and then as a Japanese American woman working in Japan, I’ve felt the need and immediacy for fostering cross-cultural understanding for my entire life. I feel extremely fortunate that I am able to work toward this goal through my professional work. My students and their knowledge and passion humble me. I am constantly in awe of them and their accomplishments. It is a true honor to receive the Elgin Heinz Award, and I am grateful for the opportunity to use these funds to foster connections between the future leaders in U.S.–Japan relations.”

Through Stanford e-Japan, Brown has engaged Japanese high school students from throughout Japan in an intensive study of U.S. society and culture. Since its first session in 2015, over 200 Japanese students have successfully completed the course. Some of her students have matriculated to universities in the United States.

In a very meaningful moment of the ceremony, Ryoga Umezawa, one of Brown’s former Stanford e-Japan students and now a university student at the Minerva Schools at KGI in San Francisco, expressed his gratitude to Brown, noting that the online format of Stanford e-Japan eased his transition to the online format of his university studies and also noted that the knowledge he gained from Stanford e-Japan has been invaluable to his transition to life in the United States.

The ceremony ended with a duet by Norman Masuda, an inaugural recipient of the Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award in 2002 (Japanese language category), and Irene Nakasone, instructor of kutu (Okinawan koto). Nakasone played the kutu and Masuda, the sanshin (Okinawan shamisen). They performed “Akanma Bushi” (red horse folk song), which was symbolic to the occasion as it is a congratulatory classical piece from the Yaeyama Islands, Okinawa Prefecture.

Irene Nakasone and Norman Masuda play a duet at the 2019 Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award ceremony.

For more information on the Stanford e-Japan Program, visit stanfordejapan.org. The Spring 2020 application period is open now until January 8, 2020. To be notified when the next Stanford e-Japan application period opens, join our email list or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

• Stanford e-Japan: My Window to the Wider World
• The Yanai Tadashi Foundation and Stanford e-Japan: Cultivating Future Leaders in Japan
• Honoring High School Students from Japan and the United States: A Glow for Global Peace
• SPICE’s Waka Takahashi Brown Receives 2019 Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award

This article examines a set of public controversies surrounding the role of nuclear power and the threat of radioactive contamination in a post-Fukushima Japan. The empirical case study focuses on the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan most influential ministry and, more importantly, the former regulator of nuclear energy before the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Through participant observation of METI’s public conferences, as well as interviews with state and non-state actors, I examine how particular visions of nuclear power continue to affect the basis of expert authority through which state actors handle post-Fukushima controversies and their subsequent uncertainties. In its post-Fukushima representations, METI frames nuclear power as an apolitical necessity for the well-being of the Japanese nation-state and the common humanity. It does so by mobilizing categories of uncertainty around specific political scenes, such as global warming. For METI, the potential uncertainties linked with the abandonment of nuclear power have the power to trigger political turmoil of a higher scale than those linked with Fukushima’s radioactive contamination. A form of double depoliticization takes place, in which the issue of Fukushima’s radioactive contamination gets depoliticized through perceived priorities that are paradoxically depicted as ‘post-political’ – that is, in an urgent need for immediate action and not open to in-depth deliberation. I refer to this process as establishing ‘post-political uncertainties’. This kind of depoliticization raises ethical questions surrounding meaningful public participation in decisions that happen at the intersection of politics and science and technology study.

Read the rest at Social Studies of Science

Stanford e-Tottori is a distance-learning course sponsored by the Tottori Prefectural Board of Education and the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) at Stanford University. Tottori Governor Shinji Hirai and Superintendent Hitoshi Yamamoto of the Tottori Prefectural Board of Education were instrumental in its establishment. Offered for the first time in 2016, Stanford e-Tottori presents a creative and innovative approach to teaching Japanese high school students about U.S. society and culture. Stanford e-Tottori Instructor Jonas Edman recently wrote these reflections on his work with students in Tottori.

While visiting Tottori Prefecture during the summer, I came to realize that Tottori, which once seemed like a distant and isolated place in my mind, has become a central part of my life’s neighborhood. In early August, I attended the closing ceremony for the third-year course offering of Stanford e-Tottori. On the same day, I attended the opening ceremony for the fourth-year course offering of Stanford e-Tottori. During the ceremonies, student representatives from several high schools in Tottori—Seishokaichi High School, Tottori Nishi High School, and Yonago Higashi High School—offered very meaningful messages. While listening to them, I felt so fortunate to be living in a time when technology affords me the opportunity to work in real time with students on the other side of the Pacific.

We are now in the midst of the fourth-year course offering, and I am already noticing significant growth in the English abilities and critical thinking skills of my 30 students. We have discussed topics ranging from studying at universities in the United States to the popularity of Japanese manga (comics or graphic novels) in the United States. My colleagues Rylan Sekiguchi and Naomi Funahashi led a very engaging discussion on studying at universities in the United States, and my students shared thoughts on what they perceive to be similarities and differences in studying at universities in Japan. The discussion of manga led to feelings of pride among my students, having come to realize the prevalence of Japanese manga in the United States. Tottori is very famous for its manga artists.

Whenever I work with my students in online classes from Stanford on topics like manga, I feel like I have been transported back to Tottori as I see the 30 familiar faces of students whom I first met in Tottori. This inevitably prompts me to reflect upon several key observations that I have made during my several visits to Tottori. First, while traveling in Tottori, one can almost feel that Tottori is the least populated prefecture in Japan. Perhaps correlated with this fact is how I have always been struck by the attention the students receive from their teachers. This infectious dedication to educating the next generation of leaders has had a ripple effect across the Pacific to us at SPICE and my guest speakers for Stanford e-Tottori. For example, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Takeshi Homma, who hails from Tottori, puts his heart and soul into his talk on “Entrepreneurship and Silicon Valley” each year. Second, Tottori is known for its nature and agriculture, and the importance of preserving the environment seems foremost on people’s minds. This is a global mindset that I wish others in the United States and Japan would share. Our online class on the environment has always prompted spirited discussions. Third, since I spent 16 years of my youth in Tokyo, I cannot help but notice the slower pace of life in Tottori. Magically, the slower pace helps me to take notice of each valuable moment that I spend with my students not only in person but virtually as well. Topics like aging and population decline are ones that have drawn interest and critical attention not only in Tottori but across Japan.

• Inaugural Stanford e-Tottori Day
• Honoring Stanford e-Tottori students
• From Sand Dunes to Detective Conan

This fall, the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) began its ninth offering of Stanford e-Japan, an online course that introduces U.S. society and culture and U.S.–Japan relations to high school students in Japan. Stanford e-Japan is made possible through the support of the Yanai Tadashi Foundation, Tokyo. The fall 2019 Stanford e-Japan online course has continued the tradition of enrolling students from various parts of Japan; engaging students with leading American and Japanese academics, entrepreneurs, and community leaders as guest speakers; and encouraging students to study in the United States.

The 28 students of the fall 2019 cohort were selected from among a competitive group of applicants from throughout Japan. The selected students represent the prefectures of Chiba, Ehime, Gunma, Hiroshima, Hyogo, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Kyoto, Mie, Miyagi, Nara, Okayama, Saitama, and Tokyo. Stanford e-Japan Instructors Meiko Kotani and Waka Brown have noted that their students not only continue to learn important content and perspectives from the guest speakers but also important perspectives from their fellow students. Brown recalled, “…last year, I was particularly struck by the impact a student from Okinawa had on the other students in his cohort as he shared insights on the U.S. military presence in Okinawa from his personal experiences.”

The fall 2019 course recently featured guest speaker Suzanne Basalla, who has become a regular speaker for Stanford e-Japan. Basalla is Chief of Staff at the Toyota Research Institute in Silicon Valley and a former officer (Lieutenant Commander) of the U.S. Navy. Following her naval career, Basalla served as Director for Japan in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and as Senior Advisor to U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos, serving at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo from 2010 to 2012. During her talk with the students, she touched upon her work with security-, economic-, political-, and cultural-related issues in the U.S.–Japan relationship and also offered keen insights into her current work as a leading entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.

Speakers like Basalla as well as Instructors Brown and Kotani have been encouraging Japanese students to consider studying in the United States. Many Stanford e-Japan alumni have enrolled in summer programs in the United States, spent a year studying abroad in the United States, and several have enrolled in four-year colleges in the United States. Among the latter are Jun Yamasaki (Fall 2017 Stanford e-Japan cohort) and Hanako “Hannah” Tauchi (Spring 2017 Stanford e-Japan cohort), who are recipients of Yanai Tadashi Foundation Scholarships. The following is noted on the scholarship’s website.

[The] Yanai Tadashi Foundation Scholarship aims to provide promising young people with leadership potential the opportunity to study at world-class universities in the United States. The scholarship enables recipients to mix with an internationally diverse student body to cultivate their entrepreneurial skills and enhance their global perspective, encouraging their development as future drivers of a better society.

Yamasaki, a freshman at Northwestern University, and Tauchi, a freshman at the University of California, San Diego, recently commented on how Stanford e-Japan helped them as high school students to prepare for undergraduate studies in the United States. Their comments follow.

Yamasaki: As an institution, Northwestern places a great emphasis on interdisciplinary studies and learning—a characteristic that is apparent in both its research and the academic interests and aspirations of its students. The structure of the Stanford e-Japan program itself encouraged me to examine the U.S.–Japan relationship through multiple perspectives, ranging from sports to entrepreneurship. In addition to furthering my understanding of the dynamics of the U.S.–Japan relationship, Stanford e-Japan helped me identify the intersection between my past interests and the potential future needs and topics pertaining to the U.S.–Japan relationship, and construct my future goals accordingly. This in turn has allowed me to better plan out how I can take full advantage of Northwestern’s unique characteristics and offerings, which I am extremely thankful for. 

Tauchi: The Stanford e-Japan Program was an amazing opportunity for me both to consider undergraduate studies in the U.S. as a realistic option and to improve my English skills overall. As a student who was schooled in Japanese for my entire life, the course—lectures, reading assignments, discussions, and essays—was at first quite challenging, but looking back the half a year I worked on the program, I would definitely say that the program is one of the most important experiences that I had during my high school life. Offered by one of the most renowned colleges in the world, I could feel and imagine how college life in the U.S. would be like. Of course, the contents of the course—things that students do not normally learn in Japanese high school—were all interesting and motivated me to learn more about the U.S.–Japan relationship and beyond. 

Kotani and Brown hope that Stanford e-Japan alumni like Yamasaki and Tauchi will continue to play roles in U.S.–Japan relations beyond their college years. Kotani recently shared that “the Stanford e-Japan guest speakers like Suzanne Basalla, with such fascinating careers, are such excellent role models for the students. My hope is that many alumni of Stanford e-Japan will consider working for businesses in places like Silicon Valley and other organizations in Japan and the United States that focus on the U.S.–Japan relationship.” Brown, who will be recognized with the Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award at a ceremony at Stanford University on December 5, 2019, has noted that, “I feel so honored to be recognized with the 2019 Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award for my work as the Instructor of Stanford e-Japan and am especially looking forward to seeing one of my former Stanford e-Japan students, Ryoga Umezawa, who is studying at the Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute in San Francisco.”

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To stay informed of SPICE-related news, join our email list and follow SPICE on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

• Honoring High School Students from Japan and the United States: A Glow for Global Peace
• SPICE’s Waka Takahashi Brown Receives 2019 Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award
• Yanai Tadashi Foundation and SPICE/Stanford University

The recent escalation of diplomatic and trade disputes between South Korea and Japan has alarmed numerous observers and is rather confusing to many around the world to whom the two countries seem to have much to lose and little to gain by the deterioration of the bilateral relationship. What underlying forces are driving the conflict? Are these new forces, or the same historical forces coming to a head? How much are factors from the international environment, such as the behavior of the United States, influencing the current escalation?

These were some of the questions that took center stage at a recent conference, “Japan and South Korea on the Brink: Escalating Friction Amidst an Uncertain World,” convened jointly by APARC’s Japan Program and Korea Program. The conference brought together experts in the international affairs and trade relations of South Korea, Japan, and the United States to shed light into the current conflict between the two U.S. allies. 

In his welcome remarks, APARC Director and Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin reminded the audience that Japan and South Korea have experienced tensions over colonial and wartime history and hence, in that sense, the recent conflict is nothing new. In the past, however, the tensions were mostly kept under control because the two countries well understood that it was in their mutual interest to maintain a cooperative relationship and keep history issues separate from other important economic and security issues. Over the past year, however, tensions over history have permeated economic and security issues amid rising nationalism in both countries.

A Problem of Alliance Management

The conference opened with a panel on diplomacy and international relations. Kak-Soo Shin, former Korean ambassador to Japan, situated the current crisis in the context of the regional strategy environment, noting that the Northern triangle – composed of North Korea, China, and Russia – has been gaining influence, while the Southern triangle – composed of South Korea, Japan, and the United States – has weakened. “The souring Japan-Korea relationship is a big blow to the maintenance of the Southern triangle and its ability to cope with the volatile security environment in Northeast Asia,” Shin cautioned.

Hitoshi Tanaka, chairman of the Institute for International Strategy at the Japan Research Institute, ltd., offered an overview of the reasons underlying the escalation in the bilateral relationship between Japan and South Korea, foremost of which, he said, is the declining mutual importance of the two nations to each other vis-à-vis China’s emergence as their largest trade partner. “Unless we feel that the future relationship is essential to both nations there is no way to address the conflict,” he said.

Joseph Yun, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Korea and Japan and former special representative on North Korea, emphasized that Tokyo and Seoul are “eroding the trilateral security arrangement that the United States has led in Northeast Asia since the end of the Second World War” – an arrangement that has been responsible for prosperity throughout Northeast Asia. The root problem, he argued, is alliance management, from which the United States “has been conspicuously absent.”

Watch the panel:

A Conflict in an Age of Changing Global Trade Order

The second panel turned eyes to the trade issues involved in the conflict between Japan and South Korea. Professor Yukiko Fukagawa of the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University, an expert in Korean economic development, observed that the friction between the two countries has escalated since 2000, when Korean global businesses like Hyundai and Samsung rose to fame. Since then, she argued, what has happened in Korea is a process of economic nationalism and “Korea seems to find it or interpret it as a kind of transitional justice against Japan.”

Seokyoung Choi, former Korean ambassador to the WTO and UN and former deputy minister for trade, explained the background for the Japan-Korea trade row and each side’s arguments. As a way forward, he said, both countries must consider several important imperatives, including the needs to cooperate in an era of tectonic changes to the global trade order, to address expanding fault lines in East Asia given the spillover effects of the U.S.-China trade war, and to complement for deficits of leadership and trust in Northeast Asia. 

Aiko Lane, executive director of the U.S.-Japan Business Council, discussed the main concerns the Japan-Korea friction poses for U.S. businesses, including regulatory uncertainty, supply chain disruptions, and delays in shipment. Further escalation in the relationship, she argued, could potentially inflict long-term damage to the regional ICT and manufacturing industries. Potential impacts include driving costs up for consumers and making it more lucrative for other countries to supply semiconductor materials to Korea.

Watch the panel: