After a decade of gloom, the sun seems at last to be shining brightly on Japan. Its economy has now grown at a respectable pace for four years and the clouds of deflation seem finally to have broken. International factors were the proximate cause of this improvement, but below the surface fundamental changes have also started to occur in the structure of the domestic economy. These changes are largely benign in nature, though they do raise questions about Japan's fiscal health, its ability to fund the twin US deficits, and the trajectory of its relations with its neighbors. The purpose of this speech is to explain how these dynamices will unfold and what they mean for Japan, East Asia, and the United States.

Robert Madsen is a Senior Fellow at MIT's Center for International Studies. He also advises such private equity firms as Unison Capital and the Robert M. Bass Group and was Asia Strategist at Soros Private Funds Management, which undertook leveraged buyouts and corporate restructuring in Europe and East Asia. From time to time he consults for several government agencies, including in the past year an economics ministry, a foreign ministry, an intelligence agency, and a central bank. Madsen graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University's Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and then attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he earned a Masters Degree, with Distinction, and a Doctorate in International Relations. He additionally holds a J.D., with Distinction, from Stanford Law School and is a member of the California State Bar.

Alla Kassianova has spent most of her professional life at Tomsk State University in Russia where she received an undergraduate degree in history and a PhD in historiography. She now teaches at the university's Department of International Relations. She is interested in Russia's foreign policy and security policy. Currently, Kassianova's research focuses on the defense industrial dimension of international security relationships.

Gideon Maltz is studying the role of presidential term limits in advancing democracy, strategies for more effectively enforcing term limits, and the question of term limits in the context of parliamentary systems. Maltz has worked as a Junior Fellow in the Democracy & Rule of Law program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and as a Business Analyst at McKinsey & Company. He has also spent time working on comparative constitutionalism as a part-time consultant at the National Endowment for Democracy, on Sudan and Zimbabwe at the International Crisis Group, and on international trade at the law firm of Hogan & Hartson.

Maltz is a pre-doctoral (law) fellow at CDDRL in 2005-2006.

Co-sponsored by the Consulate General of Israel, San Francisco and the Jewish Community Relations Council

Yaron Deckel is considered by many to be one of Israel's top political reporters and commentators. Mr. Deckel has covered the trials and tribulations of Israeli politics since 1985, including five general election campaigns. He is a seasoned radio and television journalist, having unprecedented access to all the major players in Israeli politics during the last 17 years. Since September of 2002, Mr. Deckel has been reporting from Washington as the IBA's Bureau Chief. Of special note is Mr. Deckel's recent interview with President Bush at his Texas ranch - the first exclusive interview granted to an Israeli journalist. Mr. Deckel has also served as guest expert on Israeli politics to NPR, ABC News Radio, CBC TV and others. Additionally, he has briefed U.S. administration officials, congressmen, ambassadorial staff at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, U.S. and European policymakers and business people about the state of Israeli politics. Mr. Deckel holds a Bachelor's degree in Criminology and a Master's degree in Political Science from Bar-Ilan University. His Master's degree focus was on the intersection of politics and the media in Israel.

About the series: The year 2005 marked the 60th anniversary of the end of Pacific War and Japan's unconditional surrender. Post-war Japan has embraced a new constitution that renounced war as a right of the nation and for the past six decades pursued economic growth under democratic government. Ironically, the years leading to this anniversary were filled with various disputes over territorial and historical issues with China and Korea and questions from neighboring countries whether Japanese society is shifting towards the right. Triggered by Prime Minister Koizumi's official visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines "A" class war criminals, anti-Japan sentiment is widely spreading among its neighboring countries, accompanied by strong nationalism, and is posing a potential threat to the political stability of the region.

This colloquium series will focus on Japan's relationship with China and Korea and the historical controversies that are central to their deteriorating political relationship. The series speakers will address the following questions: What are the historical roots of these controversies? How did post-war Japanese foreign policy effect and was effected by Japan's handling of its militaristic past? What is the nature of domestic politics of these three countries that politicizes these historical issues and influences their responses to one another?

Each of the speakers in this series has been asked to address a specific aspect of Japan's relations. Professor Iriye will address how Japan's post war relationship with its neighboring countries was greatly influenced by the international politics of the time, especially the looming rivalry between Soviet Union and U.S.

Akira Iriye was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1934 and graduated from a Tokyo high school in 1953. He received a B.A. from Haverford College in 1957 and a Ph.D. in U.S. and East Asian History from Harvard in 1961. Prof. Iriye was an Instructor and Lecturer in history at Harvard following receipt of his Ph.D. He then taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Rochester, and the University of Chicago before accepting an appointment as Professor of History at Harvard University in 1989, where he became Charles Warren Professor of American History in 1991. Professor Iriye has written widely on American diplomatic history and Japanese- American relations. Among those works are Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and American Expansion, 1897-1911(1972); Power and Culture: The Japanese-American War, 1941-1945 (1981); Fifty Years of Japanese-American Relations (in Japanese, 1991); China and Japan in the Global Setting (1992); The Globalizing of America (1993); and Cultural Internationalism an World Order (1997).

Philip Coyle is a recognized expert on U.S. and worldwide military research, development and testing, on operational military matters, and on national security policy and defense spending, including defense acquisition reform and defense procurement. He also has extensive background in missile defense, in military space systems, and in high-technology weapons, such as high power lasers and other directed-energy weapons.

From Sept. 29, 1994, through Jan. 20 2001, Coyle was assistant secretary of defense and director of Operational Test and Evaluation, in the Department of Defense, and he is the longest serving director in the 20-year history of the office. In this capacity, he was the principal advisor to the secretary of defense on test and evaluation at DoD.

Appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the 2005 Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission, Coyle is currently serving on that commission, and was nominated for this position by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Coyle has 40 years experience in research, development, and testing matters. From 1959 to 1979, and again from 1981 to 1993, he worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. From 1987 to 1993, he served as laboratory associate director and deputy to the laboratory director. In recognition of his 33 years service to the laboratory and to the University of California, the university named him laboratory associate director emeritus.

Coyle graduated from Dartmouth College with an MS in mechanical engineering (1957) and a BA (1956). His wife, Dr. Martha Krebs, was assistant secretary of energy and director of the office of science from 1993 to 2000, and was the founding director of the new California NanoSystems Institute, a research partnership between UCLA and U.C. Santa Barbara. They have four grown children and four grandchildren, and live in Los Angeles.

In his recent book, Daniel Kliman argues that the years following September 11, 2001, have marked a turning point in Japan's defense strategy. Utilizing poll data from Japanese newspapers as well as extensive interview material, he chronicles the erosion of normative and legal restraints on Tokyo's security policy, and he notes that both Japanese elites and the general public increasingly view national security from a realpolitik perspective. Japan's more realpolitik orientation has coincided with a series of precedent-breaking defense initiatives: Tokyo deployed the Maritime Self-Defense Force to the Indian Ocean, decided to introduce missile defense, and contributed troops to Iraq's post-conflict reconstruction. Kliman explains these initiatives as the product of four mutually interactive factors. In the period after 9/11, the impact of foreign threats on Tokyo's security calculus became more pronounced; internalized U.S. expectations exerted a profound influence over Japanese defense behavior; prime ministerial leadership played an instrumental role in high-profile security debates; and public opinion appeared to overtake generational change as a motivator of realpolitik defense policies. However, the author rebuts those who exaggerate the nature of Japan's strategic transition. Evaluating potential amendments to Article 9, he demonstrates that Tokyo's defense posture will remain constrained even after constitutional revision. Dan will discuss his recent book and his research.

Daniel M. Kliman is pursuing a Ph.D. at Princeton University in New Jersey. He was a Fulbright Fellow in the Faculty of Law at Kyoto University. While there he prepared a book manuscript for publication with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He has been affiliated with the Institute for Defense Analyses in Washington, D.C., the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University in California, and the Institute for International Policy Studies in Tokyo.

Matthew Rojansky is a JD candidate at Stanford Law School and a CISAC predoctoral fellow. His research focuses on international law and security, counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation. He is currently conducting a study of UN Security Council legitimacy in the global counter-terrorism context, and developing a theory of network-based attribution for internationally wrongful acts. He has worked for the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and private law firms, where he has worked on international trade and IP litigation.

He received an AB in Soviet history from Harvard University. Next year, he will serve as a clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.

Kent Eaton is Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. A political scientist by training, Dr. Eaton is interested in political institutions and comparative political economy. He is the author of Politicians and Economic Reform in New Democracies and Politics beyond the Capital: The Design of Subnational Institutions in South America. Currently Dr. Eaton is conducting research on police reform and on the relationship between decentralization and security in Latin America.

Singapore's general elections in 2006 are unlikely to shake the country's legendary political stability. Despite repeated predictions over decades that the long-ruling People's Action Party (PAP) would falter, opposition parties and dissident groups have made little headway. Cherian George will offer a counter-intuitive reason for this situation: deliberate self-restraint in the use of violence by the state against its opponents. Since the 1980s, modes of repression in Singapore have grown increasingly subtle and sophisticated. Thanks to "calibrated coercion," the PAP has been able to neutralize opposition with minimum political cost. The study of authoritarian regimes would benefit from more nuanced attention to the methodology of coercion. It is time for analysts to stop treating coercion as if it were not problematic - a black box that need not be taken apart. Or so, based on Singapore's case, Prof. George will argue.

Cherian George is the author of Contentious Journalism and the Internet: Towards Democratic Discourse in Malaysia and Singapore (2006) and Singapore: The Air-Conditioned Nation: Essays on the Politics of Comfort and Control (2000). After completing his PhD in communication at Stanford in 2003, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute, Singapore. He is now deputy head of the journalism program at Nanyang Technological University.