Thursday 12 May – Thursday 28 July 2011
Japan’s Global Role: the Diplomacy of Aid, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
This lecture considered Japan’s role in peacekeeping and peace-building in the context of her position in Asia and her relationships with Europe and theUnited States. The March 2005 meeting of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, held in Tokyo and Nagoya, highlighted various areas of UK-Japan cooperation in responding to global challenges. Peace and security, as well as aid issues, increasingly dominate the geopolitical agenda. How both countries might work together in future to share knowledge and experience and to meet these global challenges were addressed by the speaker, Professor Akiko Yamanaka, a former Member of Japan’s House of Representatives with an extensive portfolio of involvements relating to international diplomacy and security and crisis management.
About the contributors
Professor Akiko Yamanaka
Professor Akiko Yamanaka is Senior Researcher at St Antony’s College, Oxford University, and Visiting Professor at the United Nations University in Tokyo and the Graduate School of International Media and Communication, Hokkaido University. She is also a Council Member at the Japan Institute of International Affairs and a member of the Advisory Group on the International Peace Cooperation in the Prime Minister’s Office. Professor Yamanaka is a former member of the House of Representatives where she was a member of the committees on Foreign Affairs, the Okinawa and Northern Problems, and Defence Guidelines, and the Research Committee on Security.
Melville Guest
Melville Guest (chair) is Executive Director of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, the UK-Korea Forum for the Future, and Rapporteur of the UK-India Round Table. He is also a Senior Adviser, Corporate Affairs, to Imperial College London. A former diplomat, he has a long-standing connection to Japan and was posted there on three occasions, firstly as a language student and then in the Political and Commercial sections of the British Embassy. He has also served as Head of the South Pacific (Australasia) and South East Asian Departments in the FCO. He was the first Chief Executive of Asia House, 1996-2002.