Will President Trump demand higher defense spending by Japan? How will Japan respond? President Trump has pledged to negotiate a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine War in the first 100 days of his administration. Will it happen? How will he do that? What will the truce influence the situations in East Asia? Will Japan’s policy to advance defense technologies and promote defense industry succeed? Will Ishiba’s minority government be able to handle it?

Zoom Webinar
Friday, 21 February 2025 9:00 - 10:15 JST/ Thursday February 13, 19:00 - 20:15 EST

The past, it is said, is a foreign country, and historians seek to understand it without imposing present-day values. Yet inevitably, to write history is to engage in a dialogue between the past and the present. In this talk I will introduce my internal dialogue over the 25 years during which I wrote four editions of A Modern History of Japan, and am now considering a fifth edition.

Zoom Webinar
Thursday, 27 February 2025, 15:00-16:30 JST

This lecture explores the influence of the Japanese language on the global branding of Japan beyond its borders. It examines how the Japanese language is strategically employed to evoke distinct imagery, cultural significance, and authenticity. The lecture highlights how Japanese writing elements are rephrased or combined with a product’s identity and with design cues evoking Japaneseness. The Japanese language has become a strong branding tool in Europe.

Zoom Webinar
Tuesday, 4 March 2024, 15:00-16:30 JST

This blog post was created as part of the interdisciplinary zengaku seminar "Knowledge Encounters in Global History and the Contemporary World" offered at the University of Tokyo during the 2023-2024 academic year.

KAWASAKI Takehiro
December 20, 2024

Tokyo College is an organization like no other. Founded in 2019 to serve as an interface between the University of Tokyo and overseas researchers and research institutions, our core philosophy centers around the “Joy of Discovery and Power of Knowledge.”