Akihiko Tanaka
Akihiko Tanaka is a Japanese academic specializing in theories of international systems, contemporary international relations in East Asia, Japan-US relations, and Japan-China relations. He is also an author, policy adviser, a media-commentator, and an administrator. Currently, he is the President of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.
Before assuming the current position, he was a Professor of International Politics at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo, and the President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency from April 2012 to September 2015. Tanaka served in various advisory panels commissioned by the Government of Japan.
Early life and academic career
Tanaka was born in Shikishi, Saitama, in August 1954. He obtained his bachelor's degree in International Relations at the University of Tokyo in 1977 and Ph.D. in Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981.Soon after his graduation, he joined the as
a researcher, and in 1983 he started lecturing at the University of Tokyo.
Tanaka's academic research has been inter-disciplinary, composed of theoretical essays, historical description, and computer based programs designed to analyze and predict developments in international politics.
During his MA and PhD training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tanaka was influenced by professors Lucian Pye and Hayward Alker. Combining China studies and computer programs, he produced research about the negotiating process of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China, and a computer program named CHINA_WATCHER. Underlying the program was a decision-making model which assumed that both the pre-existing world view of the decision-makers and the precedent found out in response to the current situation constitute the basis of the current decision-making. Tanaka wrote his PhD dissertation incorporating findings derived from this program, titling it “Chinese International Conflict Behavior, 1949-1978.”
Having returned to Japan in 1981, Tanaka joined the Research Institute for Peace and Security, where he was mainly in charge of editing an annual report entitled “Asian Security”. Influenced by the work of Professors Inoki Masamichi and Kosaka Masataka, then two of Japan's most prominent scholars on International Politics, Tanaka - who had been mostly occupied with theoretical work and computer programming until then - came to acknowledge that the analysis of current affairs was an “important area of work for scholars of international politics.” In the summer of 1982, as the Textbook Problem came to strain the relations between Japan and China, Tanaka wrote a paper examining the reasons behind China's vocal objection to Japanese textbooks.
Around the same time, Tanaka had collaborated with Professor Kumon Shumpei in researching the world system as a unit of analysis. In their joint work, they argued that during the 19th and 20th century, three “social games” emerged, developed and declined in the following order: power game, wealth game, and knowledge game. Later, Tanaka developed this paper into a book entitled “The World System”; the book was published in Japanese by the University of Tokyo Press.
In 1994, Tanaka received and spent a year in St. Anthony College, Oxford, where he dedicated most of the time writing the manuscript of a book speculating the direction of the contemporary world system, “The New Middle Ages”. In this book, Tanaka draws on Hedley Bull’s new medievalism, and on Robert Keohane’s and Joseph Nye’s complex interdependence, and classifies the world order into three spheres. He argues that while all parts of the world system move toward the first sphere of “new medievalism”, all three spheres would characterize the world system for the foreseeable future.
Among Tanaka's other publications are numerous books and articles on world politics and security issues in Japanese and English including “Japan-China Relations 1945-2000”, “Security”, “Japan in Asia”, An East Asian Community and the United States, and “The Yasukuni Issue and Japan’s International Relations”.
Since 1994, Tanaka has been developing the database , which currently stores nearly 10,000 historical documents dealing with Japan's domestic and international politics in the 20th and 21st centuries. An average number of about 150,000 hits per month has been registered in the database's website.
Administrative, professional, and advisory career
Tanaka served in various administrative roles at the University of Tokyo: as the Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, as the Executive Vice President, and as Vice President. In the latter position, he was in charge of its international affairs; under his term, the University joined the G-30 program and established degree programs in English catered to both Japanese and international students, including the in Komaba Campus.In April 2012, Tanaka became the president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency, after succeeding Sadako Ogata. Upon the Cabinet's approval of Tanaka's appointment to the role, Japan's Foreign Minister Koichiro Genba described Tanaka as, "a prominent scholar in international politics who is highly acclaimed in the world as well as in Japan. His works and activities encompass a wide ranging fields including diplomacy, security, politics and economics, and he has been involved in making various proposals to the government."
Among the many projects that the agency oversaw around the world, Tanaka was involved in the comprehensive peace agreement signed in March 2014 between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The agreement ended a two-decade long negotiation process between the parties, and soon after JICA began implementing several “quick impact” projects in the area in order to improve the prospects of a lasting peace in the region.
In addition to his administrative and professional capacities, Tanaka has served in various advisory roles, such as the “East Asia Vision Group”, an advisory panel for the ASEAN+3 summit, as well as several government and semi-governmental advisory panels including the Council of Defense-Strategic Studies, the Advisory Group on International Cooperation for Peace, and the Council on Security and Defense Capability. More recently, he was involved in drafting policy recommendations such as “Japan's New Security Strategy: Multilayered and Cooperative Security Strategy”, and the “Toward a Greater Alliance: A Policy Proposal of the Mt. Fuji Dialogue Special Task Force”. In addition to advisory roles in Japan, Tanaka has advised for international organizations such as the United Nations Development Program.