No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Abstract
This essay describes a campaign by nationalist Japanese journalist Komori Yoshihisa against a public symposium and workshop on historical memory and reconciliation in East Asia held at George Washington University in 2003. When conservative politicians, led from behind the scenes by current prime minister Abe Shinzo, alleged anti-Japan bias in the Diet (parliament), the cosponsor and funder of the workshop, the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, wilted under intense political pressure from the Right and withdrew support for the book project. A counterprotest in defense of academic freedom by senior American Japan specialists revived the workshop only to have the Foreign Ministry intervene. Funder interference—insistence on progovernment authors—undermined the project and the essay collection based on conference papers was never published. Fear of the Right led American and Japanese professors to reject a highly qualified fellowship applicant in 2015 and still haunts prominent bilateral intellectual exchange competitions. This essay's scrutiny of the Komori Affair leads to other contemporary concerns, such as the integrity of peer review in a context of funder intervention and the compromise of US academic partners dependent on intellectual exchange activities bankrolled by foreign governments.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Authors 2019
References
Notes
1 The workshop, part of the Abe Fellowship Program CGP-SSRC Seminar Series, was titled “Memory, Reconciliation, and Security in the Asia-Pacific Region: Implications for Japan-U.S. Relations.” It was held January 31–February 1, 2003. The symposium, convened on January 30, 2003, was sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, Elliot School of International Affairs, GWU.
2 Komori Yoshihisa, “Gaimushō no kabukikan Bei de tai-Nichi kyūdan seminā, Chu-Kan no gakushara sengo taiō o hinan [Foreign Ministry Agency Sponsors Anti-Japan Seminars in United States: Chinese and Korean Scholars Criticize Japan's Stance on War Issues],” Sankei Shimbun, February 12, 2003.
3 Komori, “Gaimushō no kabukikan Bei.”
4 Komori, “Gaimushō no kabukikan Bei.”
5 Komori Yoshihisa, “Kokusai Kōryū Kikan seminā [Japan Foundation Seminar],” Sankei Shimbun, February 12, 2003.
6 David Featherman, “The Abe Fellowship Program: Investing in the Future of the Trans-Pacific Dialogue,” CGP Newsletter 1, no. 1 (Summer 1993), 1, 4–5.
7 McDonnell was senior vice president for strategic learning and special initiatives at the SSRC. As founding director of the Abe Fellowship Program at SSRC, she oversaw it until June 2019.
8 Honma Nagayo, “Newly Appointed Executive Director's Greeting,” CGP Newsletter 7 (Winter 1995): 1, 8.
9 Author, email message to Mary McDonnell, March 20, 2003.
10 The Japan Foundation was dependent on annual appropriations. Income from the CGP's endowment, invested by law in Japanese government bonds, shrank by more than half after the speculative real estate and stock market bubble burst in 1992.
11 Untitled report by the CGP to its Advisory Committee, title and front pages missing, Section 5, “Sankei Shimbun” ni yoru 'Nihon kyūdan seminā hōdō ni tsuite no hōkoku (Report on Sankei Shimbun's coverage of the “Censure Japan Seminar”), June 23, 2003 and Mike Mochizuki, memorandum, “Controversy Triggered by Mr. Yoshihisa Komori's Articles in Sankei Shimbun,” June 24, 2003.
12 The lecture by Patricia Maclachlan of the University of Texas, Austin, was cancelled on February 28, 2003.
13 The hearing was March 5, 2003.
14 Mary McDonnell, email message to author, July 12, 2003.
15 Carlton Vann, email message to author, October 7, 2004. Basic Agreement, Appendix 1, Section 2, “Selection Process,” 4.
16 In 2003 Japanese committee members faulted the CGP for not defending academic freedom in the Komori Affair. The following year Chano said they should choose awardees on merit regardless of the CGP's position on political issues.
17 The Japan Foundation initially demanded that the organizers retain Komori: “Continuation of this project without Mr. Komori is unthinkable.” Yoshizawa Yutaka, untitled memorandum, received by the SSRC March 28, 2003.
18 From Harvard; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, San Diego; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively.
19 Richard J. Samuels, “Academic Freedom and Public Funding,” January 17, 2005, Abe Fellows Retreat, Amelia Island, Florida. Samuels noted three cases funded by the CGP that raised concern about academic freedom in “the American Japan studies community.”
20 Aurelia George Mulgan, The Abe Administration and the Rise of the Prime Ministerial Executive (New York: Routledge, 2018), 45.
21 Interview with a former CGP official, April 2015.
22 Martin Fackler, “Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media Is Working,” New York Times, April 26, 2015, 1.
23 Aurelia George Mulgan, “Shinzo Abe's ‘Glass Jaw’ and Media Muzzling in Japan,” Diplomat, May 18, 2015, accessed February 15, 2019.
24 Mulgan, The Abe Administration, 61; Fackler, “Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media.”
25 The executive directors, in order, were Kusuda Minoru, Homma Nagayo, Wakamoto Yoshihiko, Taida Hideya, Numata Sadaaki, and Nomura Akio. Numata suggested that the SSRC be a fig leaf for the CGP.
26 Named after Mike Mansfield, former ambassador to Japan, the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation manages several intellectual exchanges with Japan.
27 Mansfield Foundation, public symposium announcement, “Challenges Facing Japan: Perspectives from the U.S.- Japan Network for the Future,” May 21, 2014.
28 “Japan-South Korea Relations and Litigation,” 11-20.
29 Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, Financial Report, June 30, 2014.
30 “Japan Moves Forward: Views from the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future,” January 24, 2012.
31 Celeste Arrington, telephone interview, February 19, 2019; Arrington, email message to author, February 21, 2019.
32 Celeste Arrington, email message to author, February 27, 2019.
33 See Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, “Navigating Uncertainties on the Korean Peninsula: In Search of a Roadmap,” September 7, 2017. CGP participation is acknowledged in U.S.-Japan Network application announcements.
34 I participated in nearly all committee meetings from 1996 to 2012.
35 Celeste Arrington, Application, SSRC Abe Fellowship 2015.
36 The committee members present were Chair Barbara Stallings, Brown University; Kanie Norichika, Keio University; Anil Deolalikar, University of California, Riverside; Edward J. Lincoln, George Washington University; Nakanishi Hiroshi, Kyoto University; and Shirahase Sawako, University of Tokyo. Stallings joined the committee in 2002, became chair in 2009, and served until 2017.
37 The highlighted sentence is “Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, meanwhile, has done little since resuming the premiership in late 2012 to dispel perceptions that he is a right-wing revisionist.”
38 The letter reads in part: “Committee members were very impressed with the quality of this year's applicant pool. Unfortunately, we received far more applications than we can support… we are unable to offer you a fellowship.”
39 Charles Burress foresaw the likelihood of long-term damage even if the Japan Foundation and the CGP “averted the immediate threat.” Charles Burress, email message to author, February 27, 2003.
40 Social Science Research Council, Financial Statement, June 30, 2016, 18–19.
41 Steve Kolowich, “The American Campus under Siege,” special report, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 9, 2018.
42 Erica L. Green and Stephanie Saul, “What Charles Koch and Other Donors to George Mason University Got for Their Money,” New York Times, May 5, 2018.
43 UnKoch My Campus, Violations of Academic Freedom, Faculty Governance, and Academic Integrity: An Analysis of the Charles Koch Foundation, June 2016 (republished December 2018), 51–56.
44 Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, “Japan's Cultural Diplomacy, with Warren Stanislaus,” August 28, 2018.
45 Lawrence Lessig, “How Academic Corruption Works,” Chronicle Review, October 12, 2018.
46 David Brooks, National Public Radio, All Things Considered, February 15, 2019.