Yoichi Funabashi
Yoichi Funabashi
Dr. Yoichi Funabashi is an award-winning Japanese journalist, columnist and author. He is currently Co-founder and Chairman of Asia Pacific Initiative (API). He has written extensively on foreign affairs, the US-Japan Alliance, geoeconomics and historical issues in the Asia Pacific. He served as a correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun in Beijing (1980–81) and Washington (1984-87), as US General Bureau Chief (1993-97) and later as Editor-in-Chief (2007–10). He was the first Japanese laureate of Stanford University’s prestigious Shorenstein Journalism Award (2016). He established Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation (RJIF), an independent Tokyo-based think tank, in September 2011, which expanded to become Asia Pacific Initiative in 2017. His awards include: Oya Soichi Nonfiction Award for his book Countdown to Meltdown on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident (2013); Japan Press Award known as Japan’s “Pulitzer Prize” (1994); Ishibashi Tanzan Prize for articles in Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy (1992); Vaughn-Ueda Prize for his reporting on international affairs (1985). His English books include: Meltdown: Inside the Fukushima Nuclear Crisis (The Brookings Institution, 2021); The Crisis of Liberal Internationalism, ed. (co-edited with G. John Ikenberry, 2020); The Peninsula Question (2007); Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific, ed. (2003); Alliance Tomorrow, ed. (2001); Alliance Adrift (1998, winner of the Shincho Arts and Sciences Award); Asia-Pacific Fusion: Japan’s Role in APEC (1995, winner of the Mainichi Shimbun Asia Pacific Grand Prix Award); and Managing the Dollar: From the Plaza to the Louvre (1988 winner of the Yoshino Sakuzo Prize). As Co-founder and Chairman of the RJIF he oversaw the “Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident” (2014) that ranked in the top 24 think tank policy reports in the ‘2012 Global Go-to Think Tank Ranking.’ API has published several influential reports on key policy challenges facing Japan and the Asia-Pacific. These include: Reinventing Japan (2018); Japan’s Population Implosion: The 50 Million Shock (2018); Examining Japan’s Lost Decades (2015); The Decline of Postwar Moderate Conservatism in Japan (2015); Anatomy of Yoshida Testimony (2015); Quiet Deterrence: Building Japan’s New National Security Strategy (2014); Japan in Peril? 9 Crisis Scenarios (2014); DPJ Administration: Challenges and Failures (2013). He received his B.A. from the University of Tokyo in 1968 and his Ph.D. from Keio University in 1992. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University (1975–76), a visiting Fellow at the Institute for International Economics (1987), a Donald Keene Fellow at Columbia University (2003), a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo Public Policy Institute (2005–2006), a distinguished guest scholar at the Brookings Institution (2005–2006), and a distinguished guest professor at Keio University (2011–2014). He previously served on the board of The International Crisis Group, and is a member of the Trilateral Commission. He is a current member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Advisory Council.
