[Feature: New Year's Dialogue] New Year's Dialogue: Toward a Juku That Nurtures Global Citizens

Happy New Year. Today, we are joined by Mr. Glen S. Fukushima. From 1985 to 1990, during the bubble economy, Mr. Fukushima was responsible for the formulation, coordination, and implementation of U.S. trade policy toward Japan and China at the Office of the United States Trade Representative. His book summarizing those experiences, "The Politics of Japan-U.S. Economic Friction," was awarded the 9th Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize.

After that, he joined AT&T in the U.S. and held several key positions, including Vice President of AT&T Japan, President and Representative Director of Arthur D. Little Japan, President and Chairman of Cadence Design Systems Japan, Co-President and Representative Director of NCR Japan, Senior Vice President at Airbus headquarters, and President and CEO of Airbus Japan.

During this time, he has served in many roles related to Japan-U.S. relations and various cultural organizations, including President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, Vice Chairman of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, U.S. Vice Chair of the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON), Vice President of the America-Japan Society, Councilor of the U.S.-Japan Council, and Trustee of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (Keizai Doyukai). Since 2012, he has been a Special Designated Keio University alumni.

More recently, in 2022, the "Fulbright-Glen S. Fukushima Fund" was established through a $1 million donation from Mr. Fukushima to the Fulbright Program, supporting Japan-U.S. Fulbright exchange activities. This donation to Fulbright is reportedly the largest ever made by a single American individual.

So, today we would like to welcome Mr. Fukushima back to the Mita Campus and talk with him. Mr. Fukushima, you grew up in the U.S. as a third-generation Japanese American and studied at Stanford University, but during that time, you came to Japan twice to study at Keio University. In 1969, you spent your summer vacation at Keio as a short-term exchange student, and two years later, you studied for two years as an exchange student under Professor Fuji Kamiya and Professor Tadao Ishikawa. Could you start by telling us about your memories from that time?

Thank you for inviting me today. As you mentioned, I had the opportunity to come to Keio University twice while I was an undergraduate at Stanford University. The summer of 1969 was when I had just finished my sophomore year at Stanford. At that time, 12 students from Stanford came to Keio every summer, and 12 students from Keio went to Stanford during spring break.

When I came to Japan in July '69, I stayed with a host family, the Hanadas, in Kamiosaki. The father of the Hanada family was an executive at a major company and had studied at UCLA and Harvard Business School before the war, so it was a very international household.

He had three sons, all of whom went to Keio. The younger two were still Keio students at the time, and one of them was Mitsuyo Hanada, who later became a professor at the Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) (now Professor Emeritus). They welcomed me very warmly for two months, and it was a great experience.

How much Japanese could you speak at that time?

I had just finished my first year of formal Japanese study after entering Stanford, so I could understand listening to some extent. My father worked for the U.S. Army, and I had opportunities to live on U.S. military bases in Japan. My education was entirely in English, but I had opportunities to hear Japanese through sports like sumo and baseball on television.

And now your Japanese is so perfect.

No, not at all. When I first came, I couldn't speak much Japanese. Because I had such a good experience at Keio in the summer of '69, I returned to study at Keio again from 1971 to 1972. At that time, there was a one-year exchange program. When I was at Stanford, a person named Shinichi Kitajima was studying at Stanford from Keio. He later became a successful diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and we became close friends.

The Stanford student who studied at Keio before me came to Keio after graduating, but since it was during the Vietnam War, he had to undergo a physical exam for the draft at Camp Zama. His host family at Keio was a doctor, and apparently, he was given medicine to raise his blood pressure so he wouldn't pass the physical (laughs). Because of that, I was told it would be better to study at Keio as an undergraduate while still having required credits for graduation left, so I studied at Keio from April '71 as a senior.

At that time, I mainly studied Japanese at the International Center. It just so happened that Professor Gerald Curtis from Columbia University was at Keio's Faculty of Law as a Guest Professor. He was teaching a senior seminar on Japan-U.S. relations together with Professor Kamiya. Since I could mostly understand spoken Japanese, I was allowed to join that seminar as an auditing student, and that's where I received guidance from Professor Gerald Curtis and Professor Kamiya.

Additionally, since I was studying modern Chinese history and Chinese politics at Stanford, I was also allowed to join the graduate seminar on Chinese politics as an auditor; Professor Tadao Ishikawa was the Dean of the Faculty of Law and Tatsuo Yamada was an assistant at the time.

Also, Yasunori Sone was a graduate student then, and at his invitation, I went to Tokyo Institute of Technology once a week to attend Professor Yonosuke Nagai's seminar on international relations. Basically, while studying Japanese, I was able to study the content of international politics in the classes of Professors Kamiya, Ishikawa, and Nagai, and I spent a very fulfilling year.

Do you have any episodes or impressions that stand out regarding Professor Kamiya or Professor Ishikawa?

In Professor Kamiya's seminar, we read quite a lot of materials about the occupation period of Japan. As a result, I became interested in the occupation period. And I happened to run into two students who participated in that seminar much later. One was Hiroshi Takaku, who later worked in international personnel exchange at the Japan Center for International Exchange, focusing particularly on relations between Japan and Australia, for which he was decorated by the Australian government.

The other was a woman named Aguri Matsuda, who turned out to be the wife of Hugh Hara, a man I worked with at the U.S. Embassy in Japan as a press officer after I joined the USTR in '85. In that way, I have had professional relationships with Mr. Takaku and Ms. Matsuda since entering the workforce.

Keio has produced many researchers who conduct research across a very wide range of the world, with regional studies being very active, starting with Mr. Ishikawa, as well as Mr. Kamiya and Mr. Yamada. That trend continues today, with many faculty members mainly at the Mita Campus and Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) conducting research as experts in various regional studies. And during times like the Ukraine crisis, they frequently provide commentary on television and in newspapers.

It is Keio's tradition and pride to take a bird's-eye view of the overall picture and contribute to policy recommendations and international cooperation, especially during turning points in international affairs.

Among Keio professors, I have relationships with people like Ken Jimbo, Yasushi Watanabe, and Yoshinari Kokubun (Professor Emeritus), in addition to Toshihiro Nakayama, who passed away recently. I have had opportunities to discuss policy regarding Japan-U.S. relations and relations with China, and I think it is wonderful that so many excellent scholars are active at Keio.

I believe it has become Keio's strength that all these people connect with individuals like you, Mr. Fukushima, and contribute as world-class citizens.

Did you choose Keio at Stanford just because there happened to be an exchange program?

That's right. Since the 1960s, there has been a one-year exchange program from Keio to Stanford and Stanford to Keio. I believe the first participant was the economist Yoshihiro Tsurumi...

He is the economist who was active as a professor at the City University of New York.

I think the relationship between Stanford and Keio has been very good since the 1960s. So, when I heard there was an exchange program with Keio, I applied.

When I studied abroad for a year, through Keio's introduction, I stayed in a boarding house about a 15-minute walk from Mita. It was a fairly large house belonging to the wife of a man in his 70s who was related to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, named Mrs. Katagiri, located at the bottom of Sendai-zaka, behind the Korean Embassy. I lived in a four-and-a-half-mat room and came to Keio every day to study, passing by the Australian Embassy from Ninohashi.

Fifty years have passed since then; are you glad you chose Keio? I'm sure you are well aware that there are many different universities in Japan now.

I am glad. In the late 1990s, I had the opportunity to work on the external evaluation committee for the Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) with Takeo Shiina, Tomosaburo Mogi, and Yoshiharu Fukuhara, and I was also selected as a Special Designated Keio University alumni. Personally, in addition to the professors I mentioned earlier, I have also given lectures at Jiro Tamura's study group in the Faculty of Law.

Also, Shigeo Kashiwagi graduated from Keio around '73 and joined the Ministry of Finance, serving in Washington twice with the IMF; I just met him the other day. My personal associations with Keio graduates have lasted over 50 years and are very precious.

After graduating from Stanford, you went on to graduate school at Harvard and completed both Harvard Business School and Law School—you're a superman—but in the summer of 1979, you came to Japan again through the Japan Business Fellow Program and did an internship at Dentsu, didn't you?

From 1977 to 1995, the Japan Society in New York and the International House of Japan in Tokyo operated a program called the Japan Business Fellow Program. The Japanese economy grew rapidly in the 70s, and in '79, when I was a graduate student at Harvard, my supervisor Professor Ezra F. Vogel published the book "Japan as Number One."

At that time, even at Harvard Business School, half of the cases in international business classes focused on two major themes: Japanese industrial policy and Japanese-style management, and there was an atmosphere of America learning from Japan. This program selected five students from American business schools to be placed in Japanese companies for a two-month internship during the summer between their first and second years to study Japan.

In the summer of '79, I applied for that program after finishing my first year at Harvard Business School. I came to Japan with five other students from other American universities, and we were each assigned to a Japanese company. I didn't choose it; the International House of Japan decided to put me in Dentsu, and I spent two months as a trainee there.

Right around that time, a fairly large article about Dentsu appeared in "Fortune." That year, Dentsu had overtaken J. Walter Thompson and was attracting attention as the world's largest advertising agency in terms of sales. Reading this article, I expected to go to such a large global company as a trainee. However, once I got in, I realized that 99% of Dentsu's business was domestic and it was by no means a global company.

What was impressive at that time was that among the Dentsu projects I participated in, there was one about Japan's demographics, predicting that Japan's population would age faster than any other G7 country, and looking at what products and services Japanese companies could provide for the 65-and-older age group.

It was already being predicted back then.

Yes. As of '79, they knew Japan would become such an aging society. There were almost no policies for it, but that project was very educational.

After that, you were active as the person in charge on the American side at the Office of the United States Trade Representative. You faced the semiconductor and automobile negotiations during the bubble era strictly as a member of the U.S. team. It was a situation where Japan's trade surplus became too large, and Japanese products were being destroyed in America; what was that experience like?

I had many interesting experiences. I wrote about it in my book "The Politics of Japan-U.S. Economic Friction," and that book actually has a connection to Keio as well.

After finishing my five years at the USTR, I joined AT&T, and when I was posted to Japan in the summer of 1990, I was approached by Mitsuko Shimomura, a Keio graduate. She had become the editor-in-chief of "Asahi Journal" and asked if I would write a weekly serialized article about my experiences at the USTR. In the end, I published over thirty weekly articles in "Asahi Journal." As a result, we decided to compile them into a book, added a few chapters, held a roundtable discussion with Yukio Okamoto and Takashi Inoguchi, and thanks to Ms. Shimomura, it became a book and won the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize.

It was a time of very high tension in Japan-U.S. trade friction. As you mentioned, we held Japan-U.S. Trade Committee meetings about twice a year on items like semiconductors, supercomputers, beef, citrus fruits, and telecommunications. About 30 items would come up as Japan-U.S. cases, and there were many problems that had to be solved, making it a very busy job. Even when I was in the U.S., I worked from morning till night, and even when I came to Japan once a month, I would negotiate from morning till evening and meet with U.S. Embassy officials and business people at night. After returning to my hotel room, I would communicate with Washington by phone, and I only got about four hours of sleep every day. I negotiated around-the-clock, just like the Japanese negotiators.

At that time, there was no other Japanese American who had experience contacting Japan as a high-ranking U.S. government official. In that sense, I received various interesting treatments and learned a lot.

At that time, did your connections—being Japanese American and having many Japanese friends from studying at Keio—prove useful?

Studying at Keio, and my experience studying at the University of Tokyo for a year from '82 to '83, were very helpful. Also, I spent about eight years in graduate school at Harvard, and many international students came from Japan. Quite a few people who studied at Harvard graduate school as officials later became politicians. People like Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Toshimitsu Motegi, Yoshimasa Hayashi, and Yoichi Miyazawa. The current governor of Kumamoto Prefecture, Ikuo Kabashima, was also studying at Harvard at the time. In that way, I was able to get to know people from various fields in Japan even at Harvard.

At Harvard, I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to be an assistant to three prominent professors: Professor Ezra F. Vogel, Professor Edwin O. Reischauer, and the famous sociologist David Riesman, who wrote "The Lonely Crowd." Also, I ran a lecture series called the Japan Forum at the Japan Institute, Harvard's Japanese research center, and served as its director for five years from '75 to '80.

You served as the director of the Japan Forum as a graduate student?

Yes. For example, I invited Sadako Ogata from the UN headquarters in New York to give a speech, and I had people like Shoichi Kuriyama, who was working at the Japanese Embassy in Washington at the time and later became the Ambassador to the U.S. during the Clinton administration, give lectures as speakers. In this way, my eight years at Harvard were an opportunity to further strengthen my relationship with Japan.

When I was at the USTR, my counterparts were mainly Japanese bureaucrats, but I also had associations with bureaucrats I had met at Keio, Todai, and Harvard, and in that sense, I felt I understood Japan better compared to other U.S. government officials.

An American expert on Japan, then.

Let me give you one example. A delegation comes from America to conduct government-to-government consultations between Japan and the U.S. for a week. At the end of the first day's negotiations in a meeting room at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the leader of the Japanese delegation asks, "How should we explain this to the Japanese press corps?" We say that since negotiations are still ongoing, we have nothing prepared to say to the Japanese media at this stage, but the Japanese side says they must say something because the media is waiting outside. So we negotiate again and agree on how to convey it to the media.

However, when I look at the morning paper the next day, it says something completely different from what was agreed upon. It's written in a way that is advantageous to the Japanese side. Seeing that, my colleagues in the U.S. government take it very critically, saying, "We were betrayed. The Japanese officials lied again. They aren't keeping their promises."

However, because I knew that the reporting methods of journalists differ between Japan and the U.S., I didn't necessarily interpret it as "the officials betrayed us." For example, in Japan, while the Japanese government may hold an official press conference after negotiations end, there are also various other reporting methods such as informal talks and "night rounds" (yo-mawari), and they collect a lot of information on those occasions to write articles. Also, in the U.S., it is customary for the person who did the reporting to write the article under their byline, but in Japan's case, the person who wrote it isn't necessarily the person who did the reporting, and the person who writes the headline might not be the person who did the reporting either; it goes through various stages before the article is finished. So I thought that the officials hadn't necessarily lied.

That is ultimately very helpful for Japan.

It should be, but some Japanese officials thought it was inconvenient to have someone who knew Japan well as a negotiating partner. So I was excluded from meetings several times. Those officials seemed to think that if I wasn't there, no one would know Japanese, so they could speak in Japanese and not be understood.

There was also this. In 1958, when I was working at a law office in Los Angeles and was approached for the job of Director for Japanese Affairs at the USTR and accepted it, reporters from the Los Angeles bureaus of two major Japanese newspapers insisted on interviewing me. I gave them interviews, but the articles that finally came out were by no means positive. I was treated as "This person has studied Japan, studied at both Keio and Todai, and can speak Japanese. He is a very dangerous person for Japan, a formidable opponent."

In contrast, the following year, a Japanese man named Masahiro Hayafuji, who graduated from Brown University, joined the then Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). He was the first person who hadn't graduated from a Japanese university to become an elite official at MITI, and that report was welcomed from Washington. The tone was, "We heartily welcome the fact that someone who graduated from an American university, can speak English, and understands America has joined the Japanese government." However, the fact that someone who knew Japan joined the U.S. government was not welcomed by the Japanese government and was viewed with caution.

I see, so that happened. After that, you served as the head in Japan for technology-related companies such as AT&T, Arthur D. Little, and Cadence Design Systems Japan. You've moved between companies quite a bit.

I studied science subjects until about my first or second year of college. After that, my specialties were always social sciences, law, and business, but I was very interested in advanced technology.

At the USTR, I had opportunities to work on semiconductors, supercomputers, and telecommunications. So when I left the USTR, I had offers from three companies: AT&T, Intel, and Motorola. At Intel, I received an offer directly from the legendary president at the time, Andy Grove. This was from late '89 to early '90, but at the time, semiconductor experts in Silicon Valley told me, "Major Japanese companies are competitive, so there's no future in going to a place like Intel" (laughs).

And five years later, they would conquer the world (laughs).

What those people told me was, "In international business, large companies with assets and technology have the advantage. Small companies like Intel are risky." Partly because of that, I joined AT&T, which was a giant company and had Bell Labs, which had produced seven Nobel Prize winners.

However, when I left AT&T eight years later, Intel's stock price had skyrocketed 39 times. So if I had gone to Intel then, I would have made millions of dollars just from stock and retired early (laughs). From that experience, I decided to listen to experts' stories carefully.

And then, you served as President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan and engaged in numerous other initiatives to serve as a bridge between Japan and the U.S., expanding your network of relationships in both Japan and America. Now you live your daily life based in three locations: San Francisco, Japan, and Washington, D.C.

Something I particularly wanted to ask today is about your identity as a Japanese-American. You grew up in America as a third-generation Japanese American. I think you were in the Asian American community in a broad sense.

When you were young, Japanese Americans had the largest population among Asian Americans and had a large community. However, since around 1965, immigration to America from Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, and Southeast Asia including Vietnam has increased, and now the Japanese American community is about the sixth largest among Asian Americans. Based on your experience growing up in the Japanese American community within the Asian American community, your experience studying at Keio as a person of Japanese descent, and your experience working in America and Japan as a person of Japanese descent, what have been your thoughts from your position as a third-generation Japanese American?

As you said, in the 1960s, Japanese Americans were the most populous among Asian Americans, but with the revision of the Immigration Act in 1965, the number of people immigrating to America from various Asian countries other than Japan increased significantly. It was mainly China, then as a result of the Vietnam War, immigrants from Vietnam, and immigrants from Korea increased. Recently, those of Indian descent are particularly increasing. Now, among Asian Americans, Chinese Americans are the most numerous, and I believe Filipino Americans are second. After that come Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese is sixth. So Japanese Americans have a relatively smaller population share among Asian Americans.

Another thing is that 30 years ago, many Japanese Americans participated in politics. At one time, from Hawaii, there were Senators Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga, and Representative Patsy Mink. On the U.S. mainland, there were Representatives Norman Mineta and Bob Matsui. At one time, five Japanese Americans were working in Congress, but now that has decreased to three. In comparison, there are four Korean Americans and four Indian Americans in the House of Representatives. So whether considering population or political participation, Japanese Americans' influence is becoming relatively smaller.

When I was growing up in California, there wasn't much of a recognition of being "Asian American." During the student movements at the end of the 60s when I was attending Stanford—amidst the anti-Vietnam War movement, the women's liberation movement, and the movements of Black or Hispanic students—the single category of "Asian American" was created in the late 60s. Since people who immigrated from Asia had no political voice if they were fragmented by country, they thought of Asian Americans as one group and created one category.

Meaning lobbying wouldn't progress.

That's right. With that background, Chinese Americans and Korean Americans began to participate in politics, and recently Indian Americans in particular are actively participating in politics and their voice is growing in Washington. And as far as I can see, the relationships between people who immigrate to America from Asian countries other than Japan and their homelands all seem to be quite close. This is especially true for the relationship between Taiwanese Americans and Taiwan.

In comparison, the relationship between Japanese Americans and Japan is quite thin. Compared to other third-generation Japanese Americans of my generation, I have a close relationship with Japan and can speak Japanese to some extent, but this is an exception.

At Gardena High School, which I attended for two years when I was in high school, nearly 25% of the graduates at the time were Japanese American. However, although Gardena has had a Japanese American community since before the war, I think probably less than 5% of that nearly 25% of Japanese Americans had ever been to Japan. Most were Japanese Americans who were born and raised in America and had no connection to Japan.

In 1982, when I took a leave of absence from Keio Senior High School due to my father's transfer and went to Los Altos High School in California, I met a Japanese-American named Kevin Ikeda. He spoke only English and said he had no intention of speaking Japanese. He said that, in the first place, Japanese people do not see people like him as fellow Japanese. So, he asked why he should have to speak Japanese. I believe he was a third- or fourth-generation Japanese-American, but he said he would live in America as an American. He said that his name just happened to sound Japanese, but he was American. Hearing that shocked me.

This is because, as you mentioned earlier, while Koreans consider Korean-Americans as their own, and people from Taiwan think the same way, I realized for the first time then that in Japan's case, there is a tendency to view those who have left as people who have separated themselves from their community.

For example, in the figure skating event at the Albertville Olympics a long time ago, when Midori Ito and Kristi Yamaguchi were competing for the top spot, I think there were almost no Japanese people who cheered for Kristi Yamaguchi as a fellow Japanese person. So, I strongly felt that Japanese people are actually quite cold. In other words, I felt there was a strong consciousness that only those within their own 'seken' (social circle) in the island nation are comrades, and those who are not are outsiders. I felt that drawing a border between one's own circle and the outside world is a great loss for Japan.

Mr. Fukushima, I believe you previously mentioned that there are four types of patterns among Japanese-Americans.

From my experience, there are at least four types of Japanese-Americans.

The first type: at U.S. military bases in Japan, there were quite a few people whose fathers were Japanese-Americans working for the U.S. military and whose mothers were Japanese-Americans or Japanese. Even if these people learned English at school, their living environment was Japan, so they could speak Japanese to some extent. They have a certain level of familiarity with Japan. Many of the Japanese-Americans I associated with when I was young were of this type.

However, like the majority at Gardena High School in Los Angeles, there are Japanese-Americans who have never been to Japan, have no contact with Japan, and cannot speak Japanese. People like Kevin Ikeda, who have an identity as Americans, are the second type.

The third type: when I went to Stanford University, I first began associating with Japanese-Americans from Hawaii. At that time, in the undergraduate program at Stanford, there were quite a few Japanese-Americans who had graduated from prestigious private high schools in Hawaii like Iolani or Punahou. Their identity is quite close to Japan. They have watched Japanese TV programs since they were small, and live with grandfathers or grandmothers from Japan. they use the Hawaiian word "Kotonk" (empty head) for Japanese-Americans from the mainland. This is a derogatory term for mainland Japanese-Americans.

They belong to a different social circle, then.

That's right. They mock the fact that mainlanders have become too Caucasian. In Hawaii, there are quite a few people with the consciousness that they are maintaining Japanese culture and traditions.

The fourth type are Japanese-Americans who grew up on the East Coast, like Francis Fukuyama and Kenneth Oye, whom I associated with when I went to Harvard. They have almost no association with other Japanese-Americans. They primarily associate with white people, especially Jewish-Americans. They have no connection to the Japanese-American community or to Japan. I believe there are at least these four types of Japanese-Americans.

In this way, it is very difficult to generalize about Japanese-Americans. In particular, how they think about Japan varies truly from individual to individual. Among Japanese-Americans, there are those who have no interest in Japan at all, or even dislike Japan. On the opposite end, there are those who say they love Japan. I want everyone in Japan to understand that there is this diversity.

Mr. Fukushima, do you feel that you are currently accepted as a peer by the Japanese community living in Japan?

I think that depends on the person. There are those who consider me completely American, and those who think that although I am American, I can speak Japanese and understand Japan to some extent. It depends on the definition of "peer," but I think about 50% to 60% of Japanese people actively accept me, while about 10% to 20% show some resistance or wariness—I don't know the real reason, but it's a fact that some people keep their distance.

Even in Japanese newspapers, for example, when a person born in Japan who moved abroad wins a Nobel Prize, they use the term "brain drain" and do not view it positively. Also, they immediately use the term "All Japan," and I still feel this conflict between the two social circles: the desire to think in terms of Japan as a unit rather than connecting with the world.

I believe that as Keio University becomes more internationalized in the future, it will be very important to consider how to connect with people around the world and with the Japanese-American community.

As I mentioned earlier, the relationship between Japanese-Americans and Japan is quite different from the relationship between immigrants from other parts of Asia and their home countries. I think there are two reasons for this.

First, from the perspective of Japanese-Americans, about 120,000 people were forcibly interned during World War II. Because of this, I have third-generation friends who were told by their second-generation parents that associating with Japan would not do them any good. I think there were quite a few second-generation Japanese-Americans who saw living as an American as the wisest thing to do and felt it was better not to have a relationship with Japan.

I have three cousins in the Sacramento area. They all married white people, have never been to Japan, and have no interest in Japan at all. So, among Japanese-Americans, at least up to the third generation, there were quite a few people who did not want to have much of a relationship with Japan.

Second, on the Japanese side, since the Meiji Restoration, priority has been given to associating with America and Europe rather than Asia. And there is a strong sense that associating with the West means associating with white men.

After returning to the U.S., I became the Stanford University chair of the Keio-Stanford Program. In past documents, there was a letter from a representative of the Institute of International Relations (IIR) at Keio, which said, "Every year, 12 students come from Stanford to Keio in the summer, but recently there are too many Japanese-Americans. We do not see Japanese-Americans as real Americans. So, please send us blonde-haired white people, real Americans."

Also, at that time, Japan was enthusiastic about English education, and there were many part-time jobs for English teachers. However, since the perception then was that white, blonde-haired people were the real Americans, schools would sometimes not hire Japanese-Americans, which became a topic of discussion among Japanese-Americans for a while. It was likely a mistaken sense that a white person with blonde hair and blue eyes must be able to speak proper English, even if they were not highly educated, compared to a Japanese-American who was highly educated, graduated from a prestigious American university, and had high SAT English scores.

I also remember a party at the Japanese Embassy in Washington a month after I joined the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. A high-ranking Japanese government official told me, "You are the least suitable person to be a representative for the American side. This is because Japanese people do not think of you as an American." When he said that, all the Americans around us were shocked.

Mr. Fukushima, you published a book titled "In 2001, Japan Will Surely Revive." Twenty-three years have passed since its publication; what are your thoughts now?

When I wrote the book in 1999, I expected that Japan would recover economically. Looking back at these past twenty-odd years, it hasn't revived as much as I had hoped.

One reason for this, from my perspective, is Japan's inward-looking tendency. In 1997, there were more than 47,000 students from Japan studying in the U.S., and at that time, Japan had more students studying at American universities for at least one year than any other country. That fell to 8th place in 2012, and now it is 11th. Currently, there are fewer than 12,000 Japanese students studying in the U.S. China has about 350,000. India, Taiwan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam also have many. Recently, Japan was overtaken by Nigeria. South Korea's population is less than half of Japan's, but the number of its students studying in the U.S. is more than three times higher.

In a sense, Japan is very comfortable. I once had dinner at an Italian restaurant in London with a Japanese friend who works at a bank. He invited three high-ranking Japanese government officials from the Japanese Embassy to join us. When I mentioned that the number of Japanese students studying abroad had plummeted and that this might not be good for Japan's future, one person said, "We have built a perfect society in Japan. Japan is safe and secure. Trains run on time. It's clean. Tokyo has more Michelin three-star restaurants than any other city. It's very comfortable. Going abroad is dangerous, dirty, and there are diseases. You have to speak a foreign language. There is racial prejudice. So, there is no reason for Japanese youth to go abroad."

I think that is based on the assumption that Japan's population is nearly 100 million and they can get by within that market alone. There are countries like South Korea, Sweden, and the Netherlands that have no choice but to compete in the global market given their domestic population size. Perhaps only Japan and Germany still barely operate on the assumption that they can get by on their own domestic markets.

But even that is difficult in the midst of advancing globalization. Things cannot be resolved within one's own market alone. Semiconductors and food all come from the outside, and things also go out from Japan. From the perspective of the world market, we have to operate globally.

So you believe the main cause of Japan's shrinking is inward-looking thinking, and one aspect of that is education. I believe it was from that perspective that you donated 1 million dollars to establish the "Fulbright-Glen S. Fukushima Fund."

I am indeed concerned that the number of students studying abroad from Japan has decreased so drastically. Drew Faust, the President of Harvard, said this during her visit to Japan in 2010: "Looking at the top 10 countries of origin for students studying at Harvard, nine countries had more students in 2009 than in 1999. Only one country saw a decrease, and that was Japan." She said the number and presence of Japanese students have declined significantly.

In 1982–83, after graduating from Harvard University, I had the opportunity to study at the University of Tokyo for one year on a Fulbright scholarship. The Fulbright scholarship celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2022 and has supported students and researchers from the U.S. to Japan and from Japan to the U.S. since the war, and six of them have won Nobel Prizes. By donating to that fund, although the scale is small and can only support a few people, I hope to assist students in studying abroad.

Even if you say it is small, it is the largest scale within Fulbright. I think it is truly wonderful.

Finally, I would like to ask about your expectations for Keio University and the direction of internationalization that Keio should take. If education is one important factor in Japan's "lost 20 or 30 years," I also reflect on the fact that there might have been more that Keio University could have done. What are your thoughts on the path of internationalization that Keio University should follow?

That is a very large theme. I am not an expert in pedagogy, but Keio was my first experience studying abroad and I have many friends from Keio, so personally, I have high expectations for Keio. Of course, as a research institution, I expect it to cultivate excellent researchers and for the results of those researchers to be at the global cutting edge.

From the perspective of American universities, I believe that a university is basically an institution that cultivates leaders. Especially at places like Stanford and Harvard, they want people who can become future leaders, people with that potential, to come and be cultivated.

Therefore, I hope that Japan, and Keio in particular, will become a university that cultivates students who can contribute to and lead society in the future, even more than before. To that end, internationalization and globalization are very large challenges. Not only in education, but also in business, politics, and technology—no matter which field you look at—cooperation and collaboration with other countries are extremely important.

Basically, I don't think Japan can survive alone. This is true for any country, but I would like Keio University to cultivate people who can take leadership, including in international coordination and cooperation.

In the case of Keio University, we have everything from elementary school to graduate school. Encompassing this large Keio University, there is a phrase in Yukichi Fukuzawa's The Mission of Keio University: "to be a constant source of honorable character and a fountain of intellect and virtue for the betterment of the entire community." A leader is someone who guides society. So, as you just said, while enhancing research, it is an important purpose of Keio University to cultivate leaders who have the spirit to contribute to creating a good society.

As you just mentioned, in order to live in a global society, internationalization and direct contact with the world are more important than anything else. Probably all Japanese people say so, but for the past 20 or 30 years, they have thought they could get by without progressing that much themselves. There is the English phrase "not in my back yard." I feel there is a way of thinking that others should do it, but I won't do it here.

In terms of timing, do you feel that Japan should finally get serious about promoting internationalization? I feel that educational institutions might be the ones that say internationalization is important and need it most, yet are struggling to achieve it.

I think it's a fact that more people believe we must change fundamentally. However, I returned to the U.S. from Japan 10 years ago. From my experience working in Japan for 22 years from 1990 to 2012, Japanese society places great importance on stability, continuity, predictability, and precedent. That is fine in its own way, but America is the exact opposite and tends to disregard those things, and I think both are extremes. I prefer something more in the middle.

I heard that Mr. Yanai of Uniqlo started a program a few years ago to provide full scholarships for high school students who have been accepted to universities in the U.S. and the U.K. Also, I hear that starting this year, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation has a similar program providing full scholarships for Japanese high school students accepted to a limited number of universities in the U.S. and the U.K. I feel that parents who are not necessarily satisfied with Japanese universities and are prepared to send their children to so-called selective universities in the U.S. or the U.K. are gradually emerging. In that sense, if Japanese universities do not globalize in earnest, I think excellent Japanese high school students will leave through such programs.

President Ito, you have experience studying in the U.S. during high school. You also experienced a very high-level graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley. I hope you will utilize such study abroad experiences to lead Keio's future globalization.

Thank you. You said that both America and Japan are extreme. The more an American knows about Japan, the more they say the middle ground between the two is best. You are one such person. I think people who know various countries think deeply about where to integrate the good points of each country's methods.

Also, like yourself, distinguished Japanese-Americans such as Professor Emeritus Dan Okimoto of Stanford University speak very accurate and beautiful English. In contrast to those who speak American-style, seemingly cool and energetic English, there are many Japanese-Americans who speak accurate English in a logical and orderly manner. In that sense, I have recently felt especially that we have much to learn from that "just right" middle ground.

There are not many people who have contributed as much as you have to bridging America and Japan. It is very gratifying to have someone like you guide Japan and Keio University on how far we should go, and I hope to continue learning from you in various ways.

I have high expectations as well, so please do your best. Actually, although my wife Sakie is not a graduate of Keio, she served as an external evaluation committee member. As someone who has been involved with Keio University, I would be happy to be of help.

I believe that cultivating global citizens will be the most important goal for Keio University from now on. Various challenges in Japan are becoming apparent. While the number of children is decreasing due to the declining birthrate, people aged 60 and over account for nearly one-third of the population. If the proportion of elderly people in the population continues to increase like this, policies will inevitably center on them.

I am not saying that is wrong, but as someone in charge of an educational institution, I feel the primary responsibility for the future of young people. How can we increase the number of young people in Japan? Should we have people come from around the world to increase the numbers? How can young people feel, in 20, 30, or 50 years, that they were glad to have been active in this country and the world, and how can we create such a country and planet? That is our important task. I feel we must think about this in a situation that cannot wait.

The number of problems that must be solved on a global level, such as environmental issues, is increasing. Considering that we must participate in solving them, global citizenship becomes very important.

There are also problems unique to Japan. For example, the wages of workers are not rising. While it is easy to live here, everyone is enduring a lot. We must solve the situation where there are also quite a few people in poverty.

Positioning Japan within the world, strengthening Japan as a sovereign state, and having that Japan contribute to the development of the world. We must create Keio University as an educational institution where each individual can become a person who can be active as a global citizen, whether they stay in Japan, live anywhere in the world, or marry someone other than a Japanese person.

Since assuming the office of President, I have felt this as a responsibility. While discussing these matters with my colleagues at Keio University, doing what we can one by one might already be too late, so I want to take on a major challenge.

Thank you very much for today.