On June 27 and 28, 2011, Professor Takeo Hoshi of the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego, visited the Tokyo Foundation. Professor Hoshi is the chairman of UCSD's Sylff steering committee.

He met with Tokyo Foundation Senior Fellow Shigeki Morinobu—an expert on tax and financial policies and local finance—and Senior Fellow Yutaka Hara, who is a specialist on the Japanese economy and financial policy. They exchanged views on Japan's economic outlook following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, approaches to reconstruction, American views of how Japan has dealt with the disaster. Continue reading →

University of California, San Diego, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary this year, and its School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), a recipient of a Sylff endowment, will soon be marking its twenty-fifth year. To mark these milestones, a "Tribute to Friends" event was held on May 26 at the UCSD Faculty Club to honor three early founding donors for IR/PS, including Sylff.

The event, held on a sunny, balmy day typical of Southern California, attracted some 100 donors, faculty members, and students who have received fellowships, including Program Officers Mari Suzuki and Tomoko Yamada from the Tokyo Foundation. Participating Sylff fellows noted that the fellowship they received at IR/PS was instrumental in enabling them to pursue their studies and has made a valuable contribution to their careers.

Dean Peter Cowhey opened the event with a warm welcome message, which was followed by performances by two student groups.

The first was a pop group calling themselves AggaPOPs, comprising students from Japan, China, and Thailand. They sang songs in English, in addition to their respective native languages. The second group was La Buena Vista del Destino Manifesto, whose members sported stylish Panama hats and performed up-tempo Latin numbers.

The two groups exemplified the international nature of the IR/PS's student body.

Dean Cowhey noted that IR/PS students were characterized not only by academic excellence but also by their many talents and deep awareness of social issues. For instance, they helped raise 20,000 dollars in donations for the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan.

A video presentation was made of the IR/PS's three early founding donors, recognizing the contributions they made to research into the Asia-Pacific at a time when the region's importance to the global economy and America's international relations was growing.

In the video, Takeo Hoshi, the Pacific Economic Cooperation Professor in international economic relations who has been involved with Sylff since the beginning of the program at IR/PS, noted that the Sylff goal of developing future world leaders matches the IR/PS aim of nurturing future leaders for the Pacific Rim. Sylff was also recognized as enabling IR/PS to attract the best students: One fellow noted that the Sylff focus on leadership and public service was a major factor in her decision to study at IR/PS.

The Tokyo Foundation's Mari Suzuki then offered congratulatory remarks on behalf of President Hideki Kato and also gratefully noted the many warm messages of support, generous donations, and other assistance provided by the United States in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami.

Inasmuch as the Tokyo Foundation is a think tank dedicated to policy research as well as leadership development through programs like Sylff, she touched upon the possibility of closer contact between researchers at IR/PS and the Foundation.

The IR/PS offered a crystal globe inscribed with the names of The Nippon Foundation and Tokyo Foundation as a token of gratitude. The gift has now crossed the Pacific and graces the office of the Tokyo Foundation.

The donor event concluded with a beautiful song full of hope for the future performed by Kay-Marie Moreno, assistant to Dean Cowhey.

Click below for: Information on IR/PS Sylff fellows More photos of the donor event

Today we announce the transformation of “Sylff Connect”--the social networking service for Sylff fellows--into a version that utilizes Facebook. We have been witnessing the increasing prevalence of Facebook, both in the private and public life of individuals. We believe that there is great potential in Facebook to facilitate communication and networking within the Sylff community. Based on this notion we created the Sylff Group page in Facebook.

The Sylff Group page is an exclusive membership site aiming to facilitate multiple interactions among all members of the Sylff community. In order to use the Group page, you are kindly requested to become a member by clicking “Ask to Join Group” button of this Group page; we will verify your status as a member of Sylff community (Sylff fellow or Sylff administrator) and register you as a member of the Group. Once you become a member you can view the Wall, and share and tag “like” on the Wall. Continue reading →

On April 12, 2011, the Howard University Graduate School celebrated 20 years of endowment from the Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (Sylff), donated by The Nippon Foundation and administered by the Tokyo Foundation. SYLFF fellows and alumni, as well as faculty and staff from across the Howard campus, participated in the event.

Anita Nahal, acting director of the International Affairs Program and director of the Sylff program at the Howard University Graduate School, delivered a welcome address, noting the significance of the event and emphasizing the evolution of the program, both internationally at the Tokyo Foundation and locally at Howard University. In this past year, 11 fellowships were awarded, an unusually high number due to the availability of additional funds. Also, over the last nine years, the Sylff program at Howard has held an Annual Sylff Fellows Research Seminar and published an online newsletter, Frontline (www.gs.howard.edu/financial/Sasakawa/news.htm), to increase the visibility of the fellowship on Howard’s campus. The university has awarded 65 Sylff fellowships since the inception of the program in 1991.

The welcome was followed by remarks from Charles L. Betsey, interim dean of the Howard University Graduate School. Betsey began his remarks by calling for a moment of silence for the victims and survivors of the tsunami tragedy in Japan. His remarks touched upon the importance of leadership in the world. He elaborated on the importance of the Sylff program, especially in a world where leadership is critical in diverse areas. He noted that in 1991, Howard received $1 million to fund student fellowships that would develop global leaders and solve emerging problems around the world.

Betsey stated that the Sylff fellows at Howard come from different departments, including African studies, communication and culture, economics, history, international studies, and sociology and anthropology. He noted that Sylff fellows and alumni are continuing the battle for freedom in many parts of the world, similar to those fought during the civil rights era in the United States. Thus, the Sylff fellowship remains a critical component in finding needed solutions to issues of global concern.

Following Dean Betsey’s remarks, six current Sylff fellows gave presentations, after which there was a short Q & A session. The fellows and their research topics are:

Melvin Barrolle, Department of African Studies and Research “(Re) Writing Africa into History: Thomas Narven Lewis and the Origins of the Bassa Language” Yohannes Haile, Department of African Studies and Research “Current Situation in the Horn of Africa in General and Somalia in Particular”

Marcia Headley, Department of History “Haiti and Public Opinion in the British West Indies”

Ronald Noel, Department of History “African Initiatory Rites and Secret Societies: A Statement on a Wider Triangular Study”

Lonzen Rugira, Department of African Studies and Research “The Cultural Geography of Insecurity in the African Great Lakes Region: Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo”

Chandi Sithole, Department of African Studies and Research “An Evaluation of Development in Zimbabwe (1979-2009) from the Perspective of Peace-building in Post-Conflict Societies”

One common theme that emerged from all the presentations was the identification and positioning of people across the world.

In another component of the day’s program, a special panel of Howard Sylff alumni discussed the topic, “What Is Leadership: Sylff and Us.” The panelists were Nubia Kai Al-Nura Salaam (Sylff fellow, African Studies, 2000-2002), Kari Miller (Sylff fellow, African Studies, 2008-2009), and Ada Vilageliu-Diaz (Sylff fellow, English, 2006-2008). Salaam is a poet, playwright, essayist, and novelist, and is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at Howard University. Miller is currently assistant director of the Sub-Saharan Africa region for the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), which administers the Fulbright Scholars Program for the US State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Diaz is currently working on a novel and a book on Toni Cade Bambara.

Marcia Headley, current Sylff fellow and student editor of Frontline, moderated the panel discussion. Headley noted that the Howard Sylff alumni were responding to four questions, previously distributed to them. The questions revolved around the Sylff program’s emphasis on leadership. The questions were:

1. How have you epitomized leadership in your professional and personal lives? To what extent do the leadership skills that you practice result from your Sylff experience?

2. As a global citizen, which areas of contemporary global concern are you most impassioned about? How do you share your views about those issues in a positive manner with those younger than you in order to create a productive mentorship?

3. The Sylff program in Tokyo has undergone changes over time keeping in tune with changing needs of the Sylff fellows and institutions. What are your recommendations to the Tokyo Foundation on how to enable the Sylff network to infuse more interactive connections/collaborations between Sylff fellows—past, current, and future?

4. What would be your “elevator pitch” for current Sylff fellows? Any words of wisdom?

Headley read the comments of some of the alumni who were not able to be present at the occasion. For example, Ingar Johnson (Sylff fellow, Sociology, 2006-2008) stated, “As a global citizen, I am most impassioned about the contemporary global concern of cultural disconnectedness. As the global landscape changes, so do our ideas and ways of doing things. Whereas change may be good, it may also have unintended consequences. It is very important to understand the interconnectedness of our actions globally. When I speak with younger people, I ask them their concerns and in what ways might their concerns affect people in other parts of the world, as well as how they see themselves working with others to positively change the landscape at home and abroad.” Or for example, Randy Short (Sylff fellow, History, 2005-2006) stated that he tells young people to “Avail (themselves) of every opportunity to advance and learn about other people. And network always, and continually travel.”

Headley then asked the panelists to respond to any one or two of the questions.

In responding to the questions, Miller pointed to the importance of teamwork and team spirit. She noted that as a leader, seeing the strength in every team member is important. She highlighted the need to determine what is ethically and morally right and the courage it takes to do what is right rather than what one is told. She indicated that as a leader, one needs to know when to lead and when to follow, and as no man is an island, an effective leader must live together with others. She credited Sylff for pushing her to do research outside her area of specialization. Lastly, she noted that there are still other opportunities that are available to Sylff fellows and alumni and that the Sylff programs can assist in many ways in locating those opportunities.

Nubia Salaam highlighted such leadership skills as compassion and effective empowerment. In addition, she expressed the importance of traveling overseas and using the experience positively. She indicated a deep concern for the human condition, human desire, and human spirit.

Ada Vilageliu-Diaz noted that her leadership role has been to encourage youths to focus on attaining higher education. She believes that as a woman of Latino heritage with a doctorate, she is a role model for young Latinos who wish to attain higher education. She noted that the Sylff program has helped bring together women of color in shared experiences through research and travel. Fellows also stated that the Sylff celebration was an event that provided them an opportunity to present their understanding of the world through research before a community of peers and faculty and to receive scholarly advice. The evening ended with a small reception.

The Tokyo Foundation is very grateful for the warm words of sympathy and support that have been conveyed to us from our friends and colleagues around the world in the wake of the devastating earthquake and tsunami of March 11. They have given us the strength and courage to carry on with our activities.

Aftershocks have largely subsided in Tokyo, where our office is located, and the transportation network has returned to normal. But the situation in the Tohoku region near the quake's epicenter remains grave; nearly 25,000 people have lost their lives or are missing, and over 115,000 people whose homes were destroyed have been forced to move into temporary shelters, often far from home.

The crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant is still ongoing, and radiation levels continue to be a cause of concern for area residents. It has also caused a severe power shortage in eastern Japan, and people in the Tokyo metropolitan area are doing everything they can to save energy. The recovery and reconstruction effort is likely to become a very long process owing to the vast geographical scale and severity of the damage. Continue reading →

From November 2 through 5, 2010, the Sylff Administrators Meeting was convened at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) in Beppu, Oita, on the southern island of Kyushu. APU, the newest member of the Sylff community, hosted this gathering, which was attended by some 100 administrators and faculty members representing 62 (out of 69) Sylff-endowed institutions in 40 countries, as well as 11 Sylff fellows from 8 countries.

The proceedings includes the minutes or summaries of all sessions in Beppu—plus photos—and the dialogue with cabinet ministers during the Tokyo field trip. The Appendix contains a List of Participants, and there is also a group photo taken in Beppu at the end of the file. Please click on the name of the session to view the file.

Administrators Meeting, November2-5,2010, Beppu, Japan

Two Oregon Sylff fellows were selected for a Sylff Leadership Initiatives award in fiscal 2010. Linda Richards is a Sylff fellow studying the history of science, and co-project leader Shangrila Wynn, also a Sylff fellow, is researching environmental sciences, studies, and policy.

Their project involves organizing a forum entitled “Environmental Justice in Arizona and Beyond” in April 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona. It will address environmental justice for the Navajos, whose habitats have been contaminated by uranium mining practices. In October 2011 Richards and Wynn will organize similar forums on the campuses of Oregon Sylff institutions, including Portland State University, University of Oregon, and Southern Oregon University.

The following is an essay on environmental justice by Richards, who shares her plans for the forthcoming forum and reflects on her visit to Hiroshima. This essay is a very timely one in the light of the current nuclear crisis in Japan.

On September 13, 2007, Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, called on civil society to act to make the promise of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples a reality. Currently, the impact of climate change on subsistence communities endangers their survivability. Misunderstandings of subsistence communities’ values and reliance on material resources that are unique to place have increased the difficulty of problem solving within the larger society.

Current indigenous regions particularly affected by contamination from past deleterious uranium mining practices, for example, include the Navajo Nation in the American Southwest, the Lakota of South Dakota, the First Serpent People of Canada, the Bihar in Jadugoda, India, and the aboriginal people of Australia. Currently, China and Russia are developing large areas in Africa for mining that are predominantly occupied by indigenous communities. These cases, while specific to uranium mining, are just a few of the many environmental justice issues that impact traditional subsistence cultures.

As the current nuclear crisis continues to unfold in Japan, the centrality of nuclear history to our lives has been reiterated as well as our connection to one another around the world. Two years ago I was with my environmental history students at the Oregon State University Atomic Energy and Nuclear History Collections when the archivist, Cliff Mead, asked if I had ever been to Hiroshima. When I said no, he said that I should not be teaching a class on nuclear history without going there myself.

This past August I used part of the international fellowship I received from Sylff to attend American University’s 2010 Japan Nuclear Studies Course. As part of the course, students learn by listening to the testimony of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings. Students also visit peace parks and museums and attend the official commemorations on August 6 in Hiroshima and August 9 in Nagasaki. After the course, I stayed in Japan to interview survivors (hibakusha) and then I flew from Hiroshima to the Navajo Nation, where 20% of America’s uranium was mined since 1944.

Before I even left, my trip became an accidental public history project. Oregon residents folded a thousand origami peace cranes for me to take to Japan as a symbol of condolence and hope. The paper cranes led to invitations to discuss nuclear history at city council meetings, nonprofits, churches, and on campus. I represented two Oregon cities, Ashland and Corvallis, at the official ceremonies and to the mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba. Mayor Akiba is president of the Mayors for Peace, an organization that has 4,301 member cities. Half the world’s people now live in a city that has a Mayor for Peace, and three-fourths of the world’s landmass is a nuclear-weapons-free zone. The Mayors for Peace and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon endorsed at the commemorations an international convention to ban nuclear weapons.

The guest lecturer for the nuclear studies course was Koko Kondo, the daughter of Reverend Tanimoto, whose experiences are told in John Hersey’s Hiroshima. Koko retraced for us the events recorded in the book. We also went to the former Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC; now the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, or RERF), where Koko was examined regularly as she grew up.

The environmental history of the bombings continues to be contested. Black rain, for example, is the dark-colored precipitation that fell in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombing. At RERF scientists presented data that black rain contained only slightly radioactive ash and that some health effects attributed to radioactivity, such as hair loss and nausea, were caused by starvation and stress. However, some survivors, including Dr. Shoji Sawada, dispute this. Not only was the rain radioactive but the Hiroshima bomb cloud may have been twice as large as official US government estimates claim. Dr. Sawada's research suggests the internal dose from residual radiation was disregarded by ABCC/RERF and the actual effects of the bomb may have been underestimated by a 200 to 1 ratio.

Health and environmental effects caused by uranium mining are also disputed on the Navajo Nation. Estimates are that 80% of the mining, milling, production, testing, and storage of nuclear materials occur on remaining indigenous communities worldwide, creating disproportionate exposure. This history of resource extraction and environmental justice on the Navajo Nation will be the focus of a forum, “Environmental Justice in Arizona and Beyond” at the American Society for Environmental History annual meeting on Friday, April 15 from 8:30 to noon in Room 6 of the Wyndham Hotel, 50 East Adams Street, Phoenix, Arizona. The workshop was made possible by the generous support of a Sylff Leadership Initiatives grant. At the workshop we will view the film The Return of Navajo Boy about the Navajo experience and then discuss these issues with the filmmaker, traditional and environmental justice scholars, and Navajo Nation elders (refer to http://navajoboy.com/webisodes/).

Like the experience in Japan, hearing firsthand accounts of the Navajo (Diné in their language) will provide the opportunity to learn experientially. Addressing environmental justice also provides an opportunity to educate about traditional cultures and sustainability. The forum will share indigenous values and experiences while building relationships between academics and tribal members for cooperation and exchange across existing cultural and socioeconomic barriers.

Excerpts of the forum in Phoenix will be posted online so Sylff fellows can follow our progress, and information will be shared on how Sylff members can copy and adjust the model to create similar workshops (updates will be available at http://navajoboy.com/). In October 2011 the forum will travel to four Oregon universities. It is my hope that by reaching out to people who often do not have a voice, we can understand more of the full spectrum of the issues raised by environmental justice and broaden the discourse in climate change and energy policy decisions to act on the promises of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Dear Members of the Sylff community and NF-JLEP community,

Please find the following call from the Nippon Foundation to collect donations to help victims of the tsunami/earthquake disaster in Japan. I would greatly appreciate your kindly sharing this with your colleagues and friends.

Thank you very much in advance for your cooperation!

Takashi Suzuki Director for Leadership Development The Tokyo Foundation =======================================================================

The Nippon Foundation is at the forefront of assistance activities in support of those affected by the earthquake/tsunami of 11 March 2011 that hit the northern part of Japan.

We are now accepting donations to establish a fund for the emergency relief/reconstruction projects. The donations can be made online by credit card on our following website below:

(English) http://members.canpan.info/kikin/products/detail.php?product_id=1080

(Chinese) http://members.canpan.info/kikin/products/detail.php?product_id=1082

It would be highly appreciated if the above information should be circulated among your colleagues and friends as widely as possible.

With many thanks and best regards,

The Nippon Foundation =======================================================================

We have received many emails from our friends and colleagues at institutions around the world offering condolences in the wake of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on Friday.

We are very grateful for the warm messages of sympathy and support. Although the heaviest damage has been in northern Japan, we in Tokyo have also been affected. Train and subway networks have been disrupted, a rolling blackout is being implemented in the greater Tokyo area, and there are areas within commuting distance of the city that are without running water.

Although transport and other infrastructure limitations have forced us to cancel a number of events over this week and next, the situation in Tokyo is very orderly, and our operations are continuing as usual.

Japan is now in grief; it may take years or even decades until the most seriously affected areas fully recover, but the nation is united in spirit and poised to overcome this unprecedented disaster. We at the Tokyo Foundation will be actively involved in offering relief and assisting with the recovery as part of our efforts to create a better society.

We hope to continue working with all of our overseas partners in the months and years ahead.

Hideki Kato
President, Tokyo Foundation