Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan
Ian Buruma was born in the Netherlands, where he studied Chinese at Leyden University. From 1975 to 1978 he was a research fellow in Japanese cinema at Nihon University College of Arts. He lived in Tokyo until 1980, and worked as a translator, actor, photographer, documentary filmmaker and journalist.
From 1982 to 1986, he was cultural editor for the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong. During that time he traveled to most parts of Asia. He moved to London in 1990, where he worked for one year as foreign editor for the Spectator. In 1991, he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. In 1990 he spent a year in Washington, D.C. at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, and in 1991 he was the Alistair Horne Fellow at St. Anthony's College, Oxford.
Buruma is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, and other publications in the United States and Europe. He writes a weekly column for The Guardian in London.
Buruma's book The Wages of Guilt analyzes the collective memory of Germany and Japan in the post-war years. Delving into their emotions, thoughts and anger, Buruma tries to uncover how people in both countries dealt with, and are still dealing with, the stigma of being the war aggressors in very different ways.
Join us for a panel discussion of the issues raised in Buruma's book. The panel discussants are Professor's Daniel Okimoto, Shorenstein APARC and Political Science and James Sheehan, History. Professor Thomas Rohlen of Shorenstein APARC will be the moderator.
Bechtel Conference Center
Daniel I. Okimoto
A specialist on the political economy of Japan, Daniel Okimoto is a senior fellow emeritus of FSI, director emeritus of Shorenstein APARC, and a professor of political science emeritus at Stanford University. His fields of research include comparative political economy, Japanese politics, U.S.-Japan relations, high technology, economic interdependence in Asia, and international security.
During his 25-year tenure at Stanford, Okimoto served as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Northeast Asia-United States Forum on International Policy, the predecessor organization to Shorenstein APARC, within CISAC. He also taught at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, the Stockholm School of Economics, and the Stanford Center in Berlin.
Okimoto co-founded Shorenstein APARC. He was the vice chairman of the Japan Committee of the National Research Council at the National Academy of Sciences, and of the Advisory Council of the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He received his BA in history from Princeton University, MA in East Asian studies from Harvard University, and PhD in political science from the University of Michigan.
He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Between MITI and the Market: Japanese Industrial Policy for High Technology; co-editor, with Takashi Inoguchi, of The Political Economy of Japan: International Context; and co-author, with Thomas P. Rohlen, of A United States Policy for the Changing Realities of East Asia: Toward a New Consensus.