Invitation to the prof. Yasushi Watanabe (KEIO University, Tokyo) lecture Tokyo 2020 and Japan’s Soft Power

Faculty of Political Science and International Studies would like to invite to the lecture by prof. Yasushi Watanabe (Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Tokyo)

Tokyo 2020 and Japan’s Soft Power

Amidst the flux of the liberal international order, Japan’s public diplomacy, which relies solely on its cultural uniqueness, is inadequate.  Professor Yasushi Watanabe of Keio University proposes new principles for an age where the diplomatic sphere is expanding from negotiation tactics to agenda setting and norm setting.  In this presentation, Professor Watanabe reviews the trajectory of Japan’s public diplomacy, its challenges and possibilities, with particular attention to the Tokyo 2020 Games.

March 12, 2020, 10:00-11:30

Czarnowski Room, Krakowskie Przedmieście 3

Professor WATANABE Yasushi

Professor WATANABE Yasushi is Professor of Public Diplomacy at the Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University. Before joining Keio University, he was awarded a PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard University and undertook post-doctoral research at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. He was previously a Fellow at Downing College, University of Cambridge in 2007, a Visiting Professor at Sciences-Po in 2013, a Japan Scholar at the Wilson Center, and Visiting Scholars at Peking University and College of Europe in 2018. Yasushi serves on the Advisory Panel at the Japan Foundation, as a programme director of the International House of Japan, and a co-chair of the Japan Advisory Council of the Salzburg Global Seminar. His books include the co-edited volume Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States (2008) and the edited volume Handbook of Cultural Security (2018). In 2005 he was awarded the prestigious Japan Academy Medal, which is the highest national prize awarded to mid-career academics.