President of Okamoto Associates. He is a Senior Research Fellow at MIT/CIS. He was a career diplomat in Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1968-1991). His overseas postings were at Paris, Cairo and Washington. He was a Special Advisor to Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto (1996-1998) and he was again a Special Advisor to Prime Minister Jun-ichiro Koizumi (2001-2004), also serving as the Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Foreign Relations. He is a visiting professor of international relations at Ritsumeikan University as well as Tohoku University. He has written many books on Japanese diplomacy and is a regular contributor to major newspapers and magazines.
For a reasonably open world
