Yoichi Funabashi Keynote Speaker

Yoichi Funabashi is Chairman of the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation (RJIF), a Tokyo based think tank. With over 40 years’ experience as a global correspondent on foreign affairs, he is a leading commentator on relations between Japan, China and the US.

Dr. Funabashi joined Asahi Shimbun – one of Japan’s oldest and largest national newspapers, with a daily circulation of over eight million – in 1968. After holding numerous positions, including correspondent in Beijing (1980–81), Washington DC (1984-87), and American General Bureau Chief (1993-98), he became Editor-in-Chief in 2007 and held that position until December 2010.

Dr. Funabashi is the author of several prize-winning books, including “Alliance Adrift” (1998); “Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific” (2003); and “The Peninsula Question: A Chronicle of the Second Korean Nuclear Crisis” (2007). He is also the author of “Asia-Pacific Fusion: Japan’s Role in APEC” (1995), which was awarded the Asia-Pacific Grand Prix Award. He won The Oya Soichi Nonfiction Award in 2013 for his book “Countdown to Meltdown”, on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.

He was awarded the 1985 Vaughn-Ueda Prize – often called Japan’s Pulitzer Prize – for his coverage of US-Japan trade frictions and was granted the Sakuzo Yoshino award for the Japanese version of “Managing the Dollar: From the Plaza to the Louvre” (1988).

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), and a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo Public Policy Institute (2005-06).