JPRI - Officers

CHALMERS JOHNSON is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, a non-profit research and public affairs organization devoted to public education concerning Japan and international relations in the Pacific. He taught for thirty years, 1962-1992, at the Berkeley and San Diego campuses of the University of California and held endowed chairs in Asian politics at both of them. At Berkeley he served as chairman of the Center for Chinese Studies and as chairman of the Department of Political Science. His B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in economics and political science are all from the University of California, Berkeley.

He first visited Japan in 1953 as a U.S. Navy officer and has lived and worked there with his wife, the anthropologist Sheila K. Johnson, every year between 1961 and 1998. Chalmers Johnson has been honored with fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation; and in 1976 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has written numerous articles and reviews and some sixteen books, including Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power on the Chinese revolution, An Instance of Treason on Japan’s most famous spy, Revolutionary Change on the theory of violent protest movements, and MITI and the Japanese Miracle on Japanese economic development. This last-named book laid the foundation for the “revisionist” school of writers on Japan, and because of it the Japanese press dubbed him the “Godfather of revisionism.”

He was chairman of the academic advisory committee for the PBS television series “The Pacific Century,” and he played a prominent role in the PBS “Frontline” documentary “Losing the War with Japan.” Both won Emmy awards. His most recent books are Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000); The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004); and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007).

Email: chaljohnson@mindspring.com

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CHIHO SAWADA is director of the Japan Policy Research Institute at the University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim. He is concurrently assistant professor of history and co-director of the History Program at Holy Names University; research fellow and project coordinator at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC), Stanford University; and associate editor of the Journal of Korean Studies.

His research emphasizes cultural and ethical dimensions of Asia-Pacific relations, in particular Japanese-Korean interactions. He leads collaborative research efforts of the USF Center for the Pacific Rim and Stanford's Shorenstein APARC in the project areas of (1) "Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in the Asia Pacific" and (2) "Public Diplomacy and Emerging Publics in the Pacific Rim." He recently contributed a chapter entitled "Pop Culture, Public Memory, and Korean-Japanese Relations" to the inaugural volume of project one, Rethinking Historical Injustice in East Asia (Routledge, 2007). For project two, he is co-editor of the forthcoming book Divided Lenses: Film and War Memories in the Asia Pacific , and preparing a book manuscript on the history of public/cultural diplomacy in the Pacific Rim.

Sawada is also actively engaged in public outreach and international service learning. He is currently working with the Stanford Program in International and Cross-Cultural Education to produce high-school curricular units for Clint Eastwood's paired films on the Battle of Iwo Jima: Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima . He also serves as co-coordinator of the San Francisco portion of the Taiwan Film Festival for the Western United States. He is a board member of Panango, a non-profit organization that sends student volunteers to Papua New Guinea, and is preparing the launch of a broader Pacific Rim service learning initiative.

Chiho Sawada holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from Harvard University (specializing in East Asian colonial history) and a B.A. from University of California at San Diego (Major in Economics; Minor in Visual Arts). In addition, he has attended the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy (Concentration in International Politics and Development), conducted research at numerous other institutions in Asia and the United States, and served stints in U.S. Embassies in Beijing and Seoul.

email: jpri@usfca.edu

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SHEILA K. JOHNSON was born in 1937 in The Hague, Holland and emigrated to the U. S. in 1947. She received an A.B. and a Ph.D. in Anthropology, and an M.A. in English, from the University of California, Berkeley. She specialized in cross-cultural gerontology, and her dissertation, Idle Haven: Community-Building Among the Working-Class Retired was published by the University of California Press. After teaching at San Francisco, Hayward, and Sonoma State Universities, she became a free-lance writer and published numerous articles in The New York Times Magazine, Commentary, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. In 1975, she published American Attitudes Toward Japan, 1941-1975, a book that she first updated and revised in 1986 for the Simul Press in Tokyo, which published it as Amerika jin no nihon kan. In 1988, Stanford University Press published a still further revised edition as The Japanese Through American Eyes, which appeared as a paperback in 1991.

Sheila Johnson is married to Chalmers Johnson, and first traveled to Japan with him in 1961. She made numerous trips to Japan between 1961 and 1993. She continues to publish articles and book reviews about women and aging in Japan. Since 1994, she has been the editor for the Japan Policy Research Institute.

Email: knip@mindspring.com

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