Stanford University

Fukushima Accident and Its Aftermath

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Plese note: we're no longer accepting RSVPs for this event.

 

Eight years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. Steady progress has been made towards the reconstruction of Fukushima, repopulation of surrounding areas, and the decommissioning of the plant, of which Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) must shoulder 16 trillion yen of the 22 trillion yen, the total estimated cost of the accident. Meanwhile, with Japan having fully liberalized its electricity and gas retail market, the business environment surrounding TEPCO is undergoing a major change. In the long term, TEPCO foresees a decrease in demand for their power service and increased competition among utility companies. In this program, Naomi Hirose, who endeavored to manage the Fukushima incident spearhead reforming the company as President of TEPCO from 2012 to 2017, shares his insights on the current situation in Fukushima, lessons learned and implications from the accident.

 

naomi hirose photo
Naomi Hirose is senior executive whose service at the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) spans four decades.  He joined the company in 1976, having gained an appreciation for the energy industry following the 1973 Oil Shock, and worked in a number of management positions from 1992 to 2005, including corporate planning, sales, marketing, and customer relations.  Mr. Hirose became an executive officer in 2006, and in 2008, conceived and spearheaded a campaign promoting the economic and environmental benefits of electrification, called “Switch” that was a Japan-first. In 2010, he re-energized the company vision for global expansion.  Immediately after the 3.11 Fukushima Accident, Mr. Hirose dedicated himself to create the system for Nuclear Damage Compensation. After becoming President and CEO in 2012, he led the company in addressing a number of highly complex issues such as water management and decommissioning plans for the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, compensation for the accident and Fukushima revitalization, and keeping TEPCO competitive while facing the deregulation of Japan’s electricity market.  He currently serves as Executive Vice Chairman, Fukushima Affairs, overseeing the utility’s passionate and steadfast efforts to reconstruct and revitalize Fukushima Prefecture.  Mr. Hirose received his B.A. in Sociology from Hitotsubashi University in 1976,and his MBA from Yale School of Management in 1983.

Naomi Hirose, Vice Chairman, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. (TEPCO)
Seminars
Japan Colloquium Series

Book Talk - Empire of Hope: The Sentimental Politics of Japanese Decline

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The event is jointly sponsored by the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.

In this talk, David Leheny (Waseda University) discusses his new book Empire of Hope (Cornell University Press, 2018), which challenges current trends in debates about emotion and politics, arguing that we should instead look at the role of narrative in shaping emotional representation. In the book, Leheny draws from debates about status in international relations theory and from debates about affect and narrative in literary and historical studies to analyze cases from Japan’s Bubble and post-Bubble eras. This talk will focus especially on a 2001 crisis in US-Japan relations over a collision between a US Navy nuclear submarine and a fisheries training boat that resulted in the deaths of nine Japanese, including four high-school students. By presenting grief as both a national emotion and as one that could be narrated through the lens of timeless cultural difference, the US and Japanese governments crafted a crisis resolution that ostensibly rested on “mutual understanding” but that also hid the messier realities of power and of loss in the collision’s aftermath.

lehenyphoto
David Leheny is Professor in the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies at Waseda University. He previously was an assistant and associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1998-2007) and the Henry Wendt III ’55 Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University (2007-2017). He is the author of, in addition to Empire of Hope, The Rules of Play: National Identity and the Shaping of Japanese Leisure (Cornell University Press, 2003) and Think Global, Fear Local: Sex, Violence, and Anxiety in Contemporary Japan (Cornell University Press, 2006).

Philippines Conference Room Encina Hall, 3rd Floor 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305
David Leheny Professor in the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies Waseda University
Seminars
Japan Colloquium Series

Pressure for Pressure: North Korean Strategic Culture and the Risks of Policy Blowback

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EMERGING ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY ASIA

A Special Seminar Series

RSVP required by January 29, 2019 to: https://goo.gl/forms/0bPqyoTQwub8WaRo2

VALID STANFORD ID CARD MUST BE PRESENTED UPON ARRIVAL

 

ABSTRACT: How does North Korea think about coercion—that is, threats and the use of force to achieve political goals? The answer affects not only the kinds of “sticks” to employ as part of North Korea policy, but the potential cost of using sticks or pressure at all. In this presentation, Jackson argues that part of North Korean strategic culture—specifically its beliefs about coercion—helps explain a durable pattern in its foreign policy and crisis bargaining history: generating deliberate friction with adversaries despite the risk of its own destruction. This presentation will explain the offensive and reputational underpinnings of how North Korea thinks about coercion, detail how this aspect of North Korean strategic culture helps us make sense of its foreign policy history, and explore the implication of this set of beliefs for recent North Korea policy. It will argue that the policy of “maximum pressure,” and its “strategic patience” antecedent, both contained implicit assumptions about North Korean behavior at odds with the historical record— assumptions that were blind to the risks of blowback they were generating.

PROFILE: Van Jackson is a senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University of Wellington, the defense and strategy fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies, and a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is also a senior editor with War on the Rocks and an associate editor with the Texas National Security Review. Jackson's first book, with Cambridge University Press, was Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in U.S.-North Korea Relations (2016). His second book, just out and also with Cambridge University Press, is On the Brink: Trump, Kim and the Threat of Nuclear War (2018). He is a former Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. From 2009-2014, Jackson held positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) as a strategist and policy adviser focused on the Asia-Pacific, senior country director for Korea, and working group chair of the U.S.–Republic of Korea Extended Deterrence Policy Committee. He was a contributor to the 2013 Strategic Choices Management Review, the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, and OSD’s implementation of the U.S. policy of rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific. He started his career as a Korean linguist in the U.S. Air Force.


 

Philippines Conference Room Encina Hall, 3rd Floor 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305

 

Van Jackson Senior Lecturer, Victoria University of Wellington; Defence and Strategy Fellow, Centre for Strategic Studies Wilson Center; Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Seminars

A New Russia in a New World?

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RSVP here

 

Abstract: Russian foreign and security policy are changing, both to shape and respond to what appears to be a rapidly shifting geostrategic environment. Olga Oliker will discuss the sources of Russian foreign and security policy, how they manifest in defense planning and strategy, Moscow's actions in Ukraine and Syria, and Russian interaction with the United States and European countries. She will then consider the implications of a more active Russia for global security and stability and for the interests and policies of the United States and its allies.

Bio: As Crisis Group's Program Director for Europe and Central Asia, Olga Oliker leads the organisation’s research, analysis, policy prescription and advocacy in and about Russia, Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Oliker’s own research interests center on the foreign and security policies of Russia, Ukraine, and the Central Asian and Caucasian successor states to the Soviet Union, domesticpolitics in these countries, U.S. policy towards the region, and nuclear weapons and arms control. Prior to coming to Crisis Group, Oliker directed the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and held research and management roles at the RAND Corporation. Oliker holds a B.A. from Emory University in international studies, an M.P.P. from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Olga Oliker Director, Europe and Central Asia Program Center for Strategic & International Studies
Seminars
European Security Initiative

Research in Progress: Are the Mentally Ill Rational? Evidence from Insurance Behavior with Eric Sun

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Are the Mentally Ill Rational? Evidence from Insurance Behavior
Eric Sun, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Pain and Perioperative Medicine

Eric Sun received his PhD in business economics from the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business in 2006 and a MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine in 2010.  He then completed his residency in anesthesiology at Stanford University in 2014.  Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Pain and Perioperative Medicine at Stanford University, where his research examines the economic effects of physician consolidation as well the economics of policies related to chronic pain.

CHP/PCOR Conference Room 123
Encina Commons (Located behind Encina Hall)
615 Crothers Way

Seminars

Japan-US Trade Frictions Past and Present: Implications for China-US Trade War

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The event is jointly sponsored by the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.

urata shujiro1
Japan and the US were involved in fierce trade frictions beginning with textiles in the 1950s to semi-conductors in the 1990s. Bilateral trade problems between Japan and the US have resurged recently after Donald Trump became US President. Analysis of Japan-US trade frictions can provide useful implications for ongoing trade war between the US and China.

Shujiro Urata is a Professor at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda Univeristy.  His focus of research is in international and development economics.  He received his PhD in Economics from Standford University in 1978.

Philippines Conference Room Encina Hall, 3rd Floor 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305
Shujiro Urata Professor Waseda University
Seminars
Japan Colloquium Series

North Korea and Myanmar: Divergent Paths

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andray book cover

The stories of North Korea and Myanmar (Burma) are two of Asia’s most difficult. For decades they were infamous as the region’s most militarized and repressed, self-isolated and under sanctions by the international community while, from Singapore to Japan, the rest of Asia saw historic wealth creation. Andray Abrahamian, author of the recent book North Korea and Myanmar: Divergent Paths (McFarland, 2018), examines and compares the recent histories of North Korea and Myanmar, asking how both became pariahs and why Myanmar has been able to find a path out of isolation while North Korea has not. 

Abrahamian finds that both countries were faced with severe security threats following decolonization. Myanmar was able to largely take care of its main threats in the 1990s and 2000s, allowing it the space to address the reasons for its pariah status. North Korea's response to its security threat has been to develop nuclear weapons, which in turn perpetuates and exacerbates its isolation and pariah status. In addition, Pyongyang has developed a state ideology and a coercive apparatus unmatched by Myanmar, insulating its decision makers from political pressures and issues of legitimacy to a greater degree.

Dr. Andray Abrahamian is currently the 2018-19 Koret Fellow in Korea Program at Stanford. He is a member of the US National Committee on North Korea and an Adjunct Fellow at Pacific Forum and at Griffith University. Working for a non-profit, Choson Exchange, has taken him to the DPRK nearly 30 times; he has also lived in Myanmar.

Philippines Conference Room Encina Hall, 3rd Floor 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305

Andray Abrahamian

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Lecturer
Koret Fellow, 2018-19
andray_abrahamian.jpg Ph.D.
Andray Abrahamian was the 2018-19 Koret Fellow at Stanford University. He is also an Honorary Fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney and an Adjunct Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute. He is an advisor to Choson Exchange, a non-profit that trains North Koreans in economic policy and entrepreneurship. He was previously Executive Director and Research Director for Choson Exchange. That work, along with supporting sporting exchanges and a TB project, has taken him to the DPRK nearly 30 times. He has also lived in Myanmar, where he taught at Yangon University and consulted for a risk management company. He has conducted research comparing the two countries, resulting in the publication of "North Korea and Myanmar: Divergent Paths" (McFarland, 2018). Andray has published extensively and offers expert commentary on Korea and Myanmar, including for US News, Reuters, the New York Times, Washington Post, Lowy Interpreter and 38 North.  He has a PhD in International Relations from the University of Ulsan, South Korea and an M.A. from the University of Sussex where he studied media discourse on North Korea and the U.S.-ROK alliance, respectively. Andray speaks Korean, sometimes with a Pyongyang accent.
<i>2018-19 Koret Fellow, APARC, Stanford University</i>
Seminars
Korean Studies Colloquium Series

Frontline Battles for Civil Rights and LGBT+ Equality: Breaking Myths

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Recent decades of rapid social transformations across the globe provoked tectonic shifts: minorities are more visible than ever, equality movements spread across many borders and historic milestones were achieved. However, the same globalization processes allowed hate groups to become smarter, more effective and coordinate globally. "Transborder Hate Movements" is new, but overlooked phenomenon of internationally organized effort by vast spectrum of hate groups utilizing politics and disinformation to trump equality movements all across emerging democracies and in the Global South. It is also a strengthening ideology binding millions from Russia to the US and from Brazil to Uganda. Breaking myths about what an actual frontline against civil rights inequality really looks like in 2019 is key for figuring out an adequate response. First step would be to realize that global fight against homophobia won't be winnable without fully addressing civil rights inequality in the West.
 
 

Speaker Bio:

eristavi
Maxim Eristavi is the only openly gay journalist coming from Ukraine, one of the few in Eastern Europe. Self-described 'bridge-builder', his work concentrates on amplifying and explaining stories from global frontline battles for equal human and civil rights. He is a research fellow with the Atlantic Council, a DC-based foreign policy think-tank; co-founder of the Russian Language News Exchange, the biggest support network for independent journalism in Eastern Europe; policy adviser at the European Parliament; writer for Washington Post, Politico, Foreign Policy, among others and sits on the managing board of Kyiv Pride, the biggest pride event in the post-Soviet space. Eristavi is a 2015 Poynter fellow at Yale University with a focus on informational wars and pan-regional LGBTI civil rights movements. Find out more at maximeristavi.com
 

 

Seminars

Reelection, Political Selection, and Economic Development

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Abstract:
 
We assemble novel data from approximately 120 countries around the world on recent reelection rates of legislators to the national lower house of representatives. Data
show that incumbent reelection rates increase substantially with acountry's level of economic development. Using a formal model to inform our understanding, we argue that as acountry develops economically, the pool of individuals who seek political office improves. As better candidates enter the political arena, more good types are elected and then reelected. Historical data buttresses this line of argument.  We use empiricalmethods to explore mechanisms to account for the pattern in political entry that we identify. 
 
 
Speaker Bio:
 

miriam golden
Miriam Golden is Professor of Political Science. She was educated at the University of California at Berkeley, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Cornell University.  Professor Golden's research is in the area of political economy. She has conducted field research on issues of corruption and political malfeasance in Europe, Asia, and Africa.  With economist Raymond Fisman, Professor Golden has recently authored Corruption: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2017).  Her current field project concerns political responsiveness in Pakistan. She is also engaged in a cross-national and historical study of how and when politicians secure reelection.

 
 
Miriam Golden Professor of Political Science, University of California at Los Angeles
Seminars

The Populist Citizen

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Abstract:

To what extent do European citizens have a populist view of politics? Under what conditions are these populist attitudes more prevalent? What are their political consequences in terms of individual behavior? The talk will present an overview of the causes and consequences of populist attitudes in Europe using comparative and longitudinal survey data. The effect of economic conditions (both objective and perceived), emotional reactions of anger and fear, and internal political efficacy are explored. Our evidence suggests that populism is more related to sociotropic perceptions than to objective economic hardship, and to anger than to fear. Populist attitudes seem to be also powerful mobilisatory motivations for political engagement, particularly for people with low levels of income and education. 
 
 
Speaker Bio:
 

eva perea
I am professor of political science at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona where I am also ICREA Academia research fellow. I direct the research group on Democracy, Elections and Citizenship and I have until recently directed also the Master in Political Science. I am currently 2018-19 fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford University. My main areas of research deal with different aspects of citizens’ involvement in politics in advanced democracies. This includes an interest in the causes and consequences of electoral turnout, political protest, digital media and political attitudes. I am also interested in attitudes towards corruption and in survey and experimental methodology. Recently my research has focused on the attitudinal consequences of the economic crisis, with a special focus on populist attitudes. In my next project I intend to explore how individuals’ attitudes towards gender equality and feminism change along time.

 
Eva Anduiza Perea Professor of Political Science at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Seminars
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