 |
 |
|
 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) and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, which was published by Metropolitan in January 2004. Blowback won the 2001 American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation.
Email: chaljohnson@jpri.org
Return to Top of Page
 STEVEN C. CLEMONS serves as co-founding Director of the Japan Policy Research Institute and also as Executive Vice President of the New America Foundation, a centrist policy think tank in Washington, D.C.
From 1987-1994, Steve Clemons served as Executive Director of the Japan America Society of Southern California. In 1994, he became Executive Director of the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom, a bipartisan foreign and domestic policy center founded and supported by the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation. In 1995, Clemons became Senior Policy Adviser for International and Economic Affairs to U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) from 19! 95 to 1997. From 1997-99, Clemons served as Executive Vice President of the Economic Strategy Institute, a centrist economic policy think tank in Washington. Clemons previously served on the Advisory Board to the Center for U.S.-Japan Relations at the RAND Corporation and is presently on the Advisory Board of the Clarke Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Contemporary Issues at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Steve Clemons is also a co-founder and Executive Committee member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. Clemons also maintains a personal website with various writing and commentary, as well as a daily political web commentary.
Clemons publishes articles widely in journals and newspapers in the U.S., Middle East, Europe, and Asia on American security and defense policy and on U.S.-Japan relations and is a frequent contributor on national radio and news programs. Clemons is also an avid marathon runner, fisherman, and collector of contemporary art. He is also a member of many of the nation's leading foreign policy and economic policy associations.
Email: clemons@jpri.org and steve@steveclemons.com
 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
Return to Top of Page
|
|
|
