COVER STORY • The World Trade System with the Covid-19 • 2Interview with Dr. Paul Sheard, Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani
Center for Business and GovernmentThe Pandemic Will Transformthe Global Economy &International Relations

By Japan SPOTLIGHT
At this moment, in May 2020, it is difficult to predict the future of the global economy after thecoronavirus. Whether the first wave of the pandemic will fade away soon is not quite certain. If a second
and third wave come, how seriously they would affect the world are also questions that nobody cananswer. How soon we can develop a medicine for treatment and vaccines to deal with the virus is anotherquestion that needs to be answered before we can have an objective outlook for the global economy.
But even at this current chaotic stage it is important to look ahead and consider what will most likely
happen and how we can prepare for it. In particular, we need to understand properly what has happened
and try to be analytical in thinking about a future strategy to cope with the crisis.
Dr. Paul Sheard, a well-known economist and former board member of the Research Institute of
Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI), gives us his analysis of the current situation and his views on the
future in the following interview.
(Interviewed on May 5, 2020; some data updated)

Macroeconomic Prospects for
the Global Economy

2019 level, the pre-Covid level. So what the
IMF forecast is saying, taken together, is thatthe net effect of the coronavirus and the
JS: Regarding the recently
recovery over a two-year period is going to
published IMF Outlook, we are
be a net positive, almost 3% global growth.
curious about your view of its
That looks terribly optimistic, given what webase-case scenario.
know is happening to economic activity now.
I don’t think anybody can have confidence inSheard: I think it looks quite optimistic. I
particular numbers; we don’t have all the April
don’t think any forecaster at the moment has
data or the second-quarter GDP data because
a lot of confidence about their forecasts. So
it hasn’t finished yet, but the most compellingmuch is potentially changing and so muchpiece of data at the moment is the US initial
could happen. The situation is not getting any
claims data. We now have 11 weeks of data
better, so most people look at their forecasts
since the shutdown began. The job losses ina week, two weeks, a month ago and they arethat period – or the cumulative initial claims –looking optimistic. The IMF forecasts weretotal almost 43 million people, and have been
prepared about a month ago for the Spring
running between 2 million and 6 million per
Dr. Paul Sheard
Meetings. The IMF is a big organization andweek.
when they put together a forecast there is quite a lag in preparing all
The numbers are unprecedentedly bad. The unemployment rate
the information. A 3% fall this year and a bounce-back next year
went from 3.5% in February to 14.7% in April. We have never seen
looks quite optimistic, and I think it is optimistic on two counts.
such an incredible spike in unemployment in the United States; it isOne, the fall in global growth this year will probably be bigger thanunprecedented. In the Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession
3%; it depends on how far the economy falls and then how long it
the unemployment rate in the US went from 6.1% in August 2008,
stays in a depressed state. All the indications are that, even if
just before the “Lehman Shock”, to a peak of 10.0% in Octobereconomies are opened up, they will take some time to get back to
2009. That was the worst recession in the US since the Great
anywhere near pre-Covid levels. For next year, the IMF has a bounceDepression. The unemployment rate went up by 3.9 percentage
back of about 5.8%, which seems optimistic as well. That would
points and it took 14 months for it to hit a peak. Compare that withleave the global economy at the end of 2021 about 2.6% above its
this current situation where the unemployment rate spiked to nearly
8 Japan SPOTLIGHT • July / August 2020

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15% in just two months. But it is much worse than that. The labor
force has declined by 3.8% of its February level and theadministration has said that the Paycheck Protection Program helped
more than 50 million workers. Add up all the numbers and a roughcalculation suggests that the real underlying unemployment rate
could be as high as 40%.
That just gives you an indication. Japan is suffering, Europe issuffering, the US is suffering, China is suffering. Pretty much the
major part of the global economy is experiencing that kind ofnegative shock to aggregate demand. Against that backdrop, these
IMF numbers look very optimistic.
JS: What will be the key points in looking at the future

economy? All countries are now engaged in somestimulative macro policy and that might be a key
point in thinking about how economic growth will
come back. The second factor might be financial
stability, in particular in Latin American countries, forexample.

Sheard: The first point to recognize about this event is that its
impact on the economy is unprecedented. Worse than the Great
Depression in terms of the hit to aggregate demand in some ways isthat it is driven by a virus, a biological phenomenon. What is hitting
the economy is the response of governments to that virus, which is
to shut down much of the economy.
This is a totally different paradigm from anything seen before.
Central banks and governments have pulled out all the stops. They
have come out all guns blazing. They are acting as if they all believe
in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Central banks are doing
enormous liquidity operations and governments are transferring
huge amounts of income to corporations and households, with theresult that budget deficits will go through the roof.
If you look at this from a traditional perspective, it looks like anincredible macroeconomic stimulus. But it is not really a stimulus.
Central banks and governments are not really trying to do with thosemeasures what they normally try to do in a recession or a depression– which is to try to restore aggregate demand as quickly as possible.
With the one hand they are shutting the economy down, and with theother hand they are easing monetary and fiscal policy, but they are
not trying to get people to come out of their houses and go torestaurants or sports events or to go on holidays – or to go shoppingin Ginza. They are not trying to do that, therefore this is a very
different type of policy response. I think they are trying to do twothings.
One is to minimize the second-round effects; a certain amount of
reduction in aggregate demand is necessary, but they don’t want thatto go into a downward spiral, a tailspin that drags everything down.
So they are trying to keep the fall in aggregate demand to theabsolute minimum. It is still a big fall but they are trying to cushionit.
The second thing is to keep the economy almost in suspended
animation – that is, to provide a kind of lifeline to the economy tokeep it intact, so that as it starts to open up it is ready to go again.
This is a true exogenous shock to the economy, and if the virus goes
away, in theory there is no reason why economic activity shouldn’t
go back to roughly what was happening before, so policymakers aretrying to keep the economy intact. So that is the liquidity support, theincome support. In the US you have the Paycheck Protection
Program. The macro policies are very important but everything isgoing to be driven by what happens to this virus.
To the second point, I would not focus so much on financial
stability in emerging economies because at the moment the biggest
shock is to the US and Europe, in terms of the impact on economic
activity of the virus. About 48% of deaths have been in Europe, andabout 28% in the US. Only 1.2% of reported deaths have been in
China, and Japan just 0.2% as of today. Financial stability is aconcern, but it is really more of a concern about developed markets
in terms of the global economy and that is why central banks andtreasuries are taking such dramatic action.
Besides the pandemic, the next big question mark, if the virus
does subside and through the second and third quarters it goes
away, will concern how quickly does consumer spending andcorporate investment come back. There are two possibilities. On the
one hand you would think there would be a lot of pent-up demandfor holidays and concerts and shopping and so on. I think that is astrong argument, but on the other hand, to what extent willconsumer behavior have been changed by all of this? To what extent
has business behavior changed? It may be that for a while
consumers will be quite cautious, and also the opposite of pent-up
demand or a kind of variation on pent-up demand is that maybe
some people will have gotten used to a more modest way of living.
People may have spent two months or more living largely in a virtual
online world and there may be some change in mindset about thisostentatious consumer-oriented society. This is a once-in-a-century
or maybe longer shock to the global economy and global society andjust to the way the world operates. There will be all kinds oframifications from this that will play out over time. Some of them
may not manifest for five to 10 years, and at this point in time wecan only hypothesize what they might be, but when people arelooking back at the way in which the world has developed, it will
become clear that the genesis of that event or change can be traced
back to this moment in time, simply because it is such an
unprecedented and unusual event that will have ramifications that
may be quite deep. For example, there has been a trend in theWestern world over the last 20 years or so towards people living incrowded urban areas. More and more people have been coming intoand living in densely-populated city centers. Will that trend be
Japan SPOTLIGHT • July / August 2020

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reversed? Will people return to rural and suburban areas?
The estimate for the number of people who died from influenza in
the US this season is 24,000-62,000. The number of Covid-19related deaths is already well above the upper end of that estimatedrange. The worldwide number for Covid-19 deaths is about 380,000
at the moment. Globally, the flu usually kills up to half a million or
600,000 people. The mortality rate for Covid-19 – I don’t know
exactly what the technical term is – but people estimate it to be in the
0.1-2% range. But it is not 10% or 20% or 50%. So one question I
think people will have is, is this a once-in-a-century event? We have
had Ebola, H1N1, SARS, MERS in the last 20 years – is this going tobecome the new normal? Are we going to get this kind of pandemic
next year or in five years time? That is really important to the way
consumers, businesses, governments, everybody reacts to this. Is it
just a once-in-a-century earthquake or are we living in the Japanesearchipelago where you expect earthquakes at any time? The answer
has implications for the way all these entities behave.

Prospects for Macro Policies
JS: All countries are now engaged in stimulative

macro policies, which could cause some concern
about inflation. What do you think about suchconcern?

Sheard: I don’t think it is warranted at all. We had the same debateback in 2008-2010 about quantitative easing. The reason we are
getting the monetary and fiscal stimulus is, of course, because
aggregate demand is collapsing and unemployment is shooting up.
That is really a deflationary environment. If these policies are
successful they will stop deflation from happening or keep it shortlived. Throughout the whole developed world since the financial
crisis, inflation has been missing. Japan was just coming out of
deflation after 20 years. I don’t see inflation as a risk at all at the
moment; inflation happens, as you know, when there is too muchmoney chasing too few goods. When the economy is pushingagainst its speed limit, it is at full employment and there is too muchdemand, too much purchasing power and it is starting to force pricesup.
But there is a second thing that you need, and that is the central
banks and governments not reacting to the threat of inflation. To get
inflation you need inflationary pressures and then central banks inparticular not sufficiently fighting those inflationary pressures. At the
moment, central banks are fighting the threat of deflation and highunemployment. If at some point the central banks start to see
inflation coming back, there are two things to note. One is, that will
be associated with a return to normal – the demand will be comingback and hitting the supply constraints of the economy. Secondly,
central banks know how to deal with inflation. It is much more
10 Japan SPOTLIGHT • July / August 2020

difficult to deal with deflation. So for all those reasons I am notworried about that. In the future, central banks and governments will
have to change their policy settings. I mentioned MMT before. I think
there will be a lot of interesting implications for macroeconomic
policies and frameworks, but I don’t worry about inflation.
JS: As you know, Japan already has a tremendous

amount of fiscal debt. This debt will obviously
increase more drastically, and in light of this how canJapan be better prepared for an aging society?

Sheard: It is a complicated issue. There is a lot of misunderstanding
about budget deficits and government debt. Japan runs a current
account surplus and is the biggest net creditor to the rest of theworld. So the budget deficit is a deficit of the government sector. The
private sector in Japan has a big net surplus of savings overinvestment. This big net surplus more than offsets the government
deficit and leaves over a surplus of net savings that Japan can
provide to the rest of the world, which is the current accountsurplus.
In terms of the aging issue, future generations will inherit the
JGBs, which are a debt of the government but an asset for the people
who hold them. In terms of the financial liability for Japan, those twothings largely cancel out because most JGBs are held by Japanese.
There is no real net burden from the debt. What is going todetermine how prosperous Japan as an aging society will be is not
how much government debt it has, but how productive the society is.
To what extent will Japan be relying on foreign workers andimmigrants? Productivity and technological innovation will be
important. Also, changes in social behavior. Japanese are pretty
healthy, and living longer lives means they can work longer too. Thatis really what is going to determine how prosperous Japan will be as
an aging society. It will be the real economy, the real capital stock,
the intellectual capital stock and the amount of social capital, notpieces of paper called JGBs.

International Relations
JS: Moving to the international economy andgovernance, some people are saying that Chinese
influence will increase after this pandemic. China ismuch less affected by it than the US or G7 countries.
How do you view Chinese influence after the
pandemic?

Sheard: The big picture of the global political economy is that, withthe rise of China, what we have been seeing playing out over the last
5-10 years is a major turning point in the global order, andspecifically the end of Pax Americana, the end of the Bretton-Woods

COVER STORY 2

system – a turning point for the liberal international order. The
election of Donald Trump really drove this point home, that the US is
no longer willing and able to play the role of the dominant global“benign” hegemon underwriting the global order – the global
policeman underwriting security in Japan and the Korean Peninsula,in Europe through NATO, and in Australia too. It is no longer
prepared to underwrite the global international order by opening its
markets and being the consumer of first and last resort. They are justanother big country, albeit a superpower. That is really the message
from President Trump – we, the US, can no longer perform the rolethat we have hitherto performed, and which the rest of the world
expected us to perform.
The flipside to that is the rise of China. China is obviously theother superpower in the world. In nominal GDP terms, the US
accounts for 25% of global GDP, China is about 16%, Japan is next
with about 6%. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), however,China is 20%, the US is 15%, and Japan is about 4%, behind India.
A fundamental shift has taken place, but there is a real complication
there. We may move in the next two decades into a situation whereclearly the biggest and most powerful single country in the world –China – has a very different political system, a different ideologicalsystem and worldview. There is a real need for the world to come toterms with this geopolitical and geoeconomic shift. The US andChina need to reach some kind of agreement but also the rest of theworld needs to step up and start to understand that the rules of the
global game have changed. Countries like Japan, Australia, theUnited Kingdom, as well as the European Union, have to decide whatstrategy they are going to take in that world and what role they canplay in bringing about a new form of global governance.
The external environment that China will face particularly from the
US and increasingly from Europe, and probably Japan and Australia
too, is that the world is becoming increasingly skeptical of China’s
management of information, such as the virus infections in China.
When it comes to trade, you could argue that it did not matter too
much if China had a different political, ideological and legal system.
But now, there will be a move from the rest of the world to hold
China much more accountable. What do you do when you have adominant hegemonic country with a large population and hugeeconomy, and their management of information is perhaps causing
problems for the rest of the world? China is going to face a lot ofheadwinds in its relationships with the rest of the world. This iscoming on top of the trade war with the US, where the issue at stake
was the Section 301 US actions against China; essentially the US has
said that China’s intellectual property (IP) practices are unacceptable
and have to change. Japanese companies experienced this IP issue
firsthand when they transferred production facilities to China in the
1970s-1990s. Now we have further dissatisfaction or some kind of
resentment building against China, particularly in the Western world.
China may emerge relatively unscathed compared to othereconomies, but it will face a tougher global environment.
JS: To our knowledge, China’s concern at thismoment seems to be about the supply chain in Asian
countries and how it might be seriously damaged by
the pandemic. It seems to be trying to strengthen
relations with other Asian countries to sustain its
supply chain. How do you view the impact of thepandemic upon supply chains, and more globally,
what do you think would be the total impact on Asian
economies?

Sheard: These supply chains are very articulated, multi-country,
multi-stage of production, and have been a real motif of the economy
in Asia. These sophisticated supply chains have taken on the form
they have basically as a result of profit maximization decisions in themarket economy. There may be some policy variables at work, but by
and large companies look around and say, where do we want tosource our inputs, where do we want to build our iPhones andsemiconductors? So as a starting point, supply chains essentiallyrepresent the cumulative decentralized decisions of the actors in themarket economy.
Those supply chains are going to change partly as a result of thesame process. Each part of a supply chain involves two or moreparties. Virtually all companies will be looking at their supply chains
and reconsidering whether they are the right ones or not. This could
be negative for China because it will be seen as a less attractive
outsourcing destination. Not just because of rising labor costs, but
because of some of the issues we mentioned before – if you
outsource to China you might get caught in the crosshairs of the
US-China economic and political wars. There has been a lot of talk inthis country about the over-dependence of the US on China as the
public and media are discovering that a lot of medicines andpharmaceuticals and personal protective equipment (PPE) are being
made in China. So there has been a backlash already in the publicdebate.
Also, 5G and Huawei – how does all of this play into that?
Presumably it will have a big impact. On May 1, President Trumpdeclared a national emergency with response to the national power
grid in the US. It is not that uncommon for a national emergency to
be declared about specific issues, but it gives the government certain
powers, including the ability to override the market economy. This
executive order cited concerns that adversaries could potentiallyattack the power grid, and also cited concerns about the security andthe integrity of the power grid. Part of this national emergency
executive order mandates that equipment in the national power grid
infrastructure cannot be supplied by adversaries of the US. The
equipment in the grid at the moment that has been supplied byadversaries in the past will have to be switched out. China was not
Japan SPOTLIGHT • July / August 202011

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specifically mentioned, but is probably the biggest target here. So
that gives you an example of the kind of blowback China is likely to
see from the US, and maybe Europe and Australia as well, to some ofthese supply chains.
One more issue to mention on supply chains. Globalization is aprocess which follows a relentless economic logic. Economists formany years have been pushing free trade, open markets, open
financial markets. And of course we have IT as well which isglobalizing the world. A highly globalized world which rests on theunleashing of market forces and the profit motive is wonderful fromthe perspective of raising people’s welfare and economic efficiency.
But it doesn’t have built into it any redundancy, because firms areconstantly looking for ways to cut costs and optimize supply chains.
The market forces are relentlessly pushing you in one direction
where you have a highly efficient system, but one that is actuallyquite fragile and not robust. So when the dust settles, there will haveto be a reevaluation and governments will be rethinking some ofthese things and perhaps there is a case for some redundancy to bebuilt into the system, even if that comes at the cost of someinefficiency.

Globalization Versus De-globalization
JS: Turning to the issue of de-globalization, this could

happen in two contexts. First, this social distancing
policy could encourage production domesticallyrather than overseas, perhaps using 3-D printing.
Secondly, a rise in nationalism. The Trumpadministration, for example, might be fuelled bynationalism. Are you concerned by this potential
de-globalization?

Sheard: I think that the pendulum was already starting to swing backagainst globalization. A bit earlier, the pendulum had swung right tothe limit. Partly it was ideological, it was economists winning thearguments. It was partly facilitated by technology, computerization,and partly fuelled by experience – countries like Japan or the East
Asian “Tigers” that opened up to the rest of the world and became
trading nations were the ones successful at lifting living standards.
China as well, coming into the WTO and for several years people said
what a wonderful thing this was for tens of millions of Chinese
people to be lifted out of poverty. The pendulum is swinging back,but you can’t put the globalization genie back into the bottle. The
market economy tends to push in the direction of globalization
because capital seeks out higher returns and information technology
facilitates it.
Governments have been pushing back a bit as domestic politicalpressures bubble up, and this pandemic will keep the pendulum
swinging back. The pandemic is now shutting down air travel. People
12 Japan SPOTLIGHT • July / August 2020

have been given a reminder that we are living in a Westphaliansystem of nation states, where a core sovereign right and obligation
is to ensure that borders have integrity.
The interesting issue about this whole event is that governments
have suddenly done some very heavy-handed things – the shutdown,
travel restrictions, contact tracing. So suddenly we have had thislittle experience – even people who live in Western democracies like
Japan or the UK or Australia – where suddenly the government’s
intrusion into the economy and people’s lives has been very dramaticand autocratic. So, the policy response that this event has
underscored in some sense is the need for the role of thegovernment, the nation state, to be there to protect its people. I thinkthat is just something that is going to have to sink in and seepthrough the system for a while. Take the EU for example, with its key
principle of free movement of people or the overlapping SchengenArea, a collection of 26 countries that have scrapped border controls
between them. It is one thing to have free movement of people, but
nation states remain and the external borders of the EU are still
owned by member states, so there are a lot of mismatches in thesystem.
I think that the other thing with globalization is that there has been
this populist backlash against it. The more globalization you have,and particularly with instant connectivity and access to information
anywhere in the world, the more benefits it creates, but also it may
create insecurities in people’s pscyhe, whereby the more globalized
the world they live in, the more they want to have something thatthey feel they belong to – something that is theirs. Japanese may live
in a very globalized world but you still have your Japanese culture
and calendar, and having that and preserving that gives you the bestof both worlds. With this backlash against globalization, people are
not opposed to it per se but they want to have balance, they don’t
want to feel that everything is being diluted into one amorphousglobalized world.
The second aspect is that part of the backlash is because there arewinners and losers from globalization. The losers are by and large
blue collar workers, less educated workers, less skilled workers.
They may have gained as consumers but they have lost as workers
and maybe as citizens. I think that what happened with the financial
crisis in particular was a loss of confidence. The constituencies left
behind by globalization lost confidence in the social contract and in
the elites. They may have been used to viewing the elites as experts
who knew what they were doing and were acting on behalf of generalsociety. But I think that, with the financial crisis and the rise of China
and the hollowing out of industrial America, more and more people
have started to believe that the elites are in it for themselves anddon’t care about other people or worse still even look down on them.
So it is a real political backlash, and this is part of Brexit too. How
this plays out after the pandemic is yet to be seen, but potentially it
could have major effects because, who are the people who are really

COVER STORY 2

suffering in this case? When unemployment goes to 20-30% it is themost marginalized people. The stock market is down by only about
8% in the US and is doing much better relative to what the economy
is doing. I think that the kind of policy response we have seen –notably policies such as the Paycheck Protection Program – showsthat politicians are aware of this problem and are bending overbackwards to minimize the damage, but in the coming years in thepolitical realm there could be a serious backlash against the elites
and experts. Inequality may be exacerbated and that may reach somekind of political boiling point.

Digital Technology’s Impact on the Economy
JS: Looking beyond the pandemic, IT seems to be our

only hope for making a positive change to businessbehavior and consumer behavior while also
contributing to economic growth. As in the Osaka
G20 meeting last year, we will need some rules forthe flow of information, and especially for information
technology. How might we achieve this?

Sheard: One effect of this pandemic has been to give a boost to theonline economy. I suspect that many people who were dragging theirheels in moving online have been forced to adopt technologies
permanently, so it has been a positive demand shock to the IT sector.
Will it raise global growth potential? I am reluctant to say yes,because we have already had several decades of spectacular
information technology developments. Among economists there isthe concept of the “productivity puzzle”. It is a little similar now –although we have had this information revolution going on for sometime now, we have had only modest productivity growth, particularly
since the financial crisis. There is a whole debate about whether
productivity is being mis-measured, since it is measured withrespect to GDP, so if GDP is being mis-measured then so is
productivity.
I am not sure that I would draw a direct line from IT to improving
growth potential for the global economy. Imagine if we froze theexisting stock of human knowledge and technology in place today.
There is a frontier of technological knowledge which the US, Japanand parts of China are operating at. Imagine if we did not have any
more technological innovation – how much growth could you still
get in the global economy? There is still Africa, South America, theMiddle East, parts of Southeast Asia, India, even many people in
China – hundreds of millions of people who are not operating in an
economic system that has fully incorporated all of the existing
technology and knowledge in the world. We could get tremendous
increases in potential growth in much of the world just by figuring
out the economic institutions and political institutions capable ofmoving everyone to the technological frontier. This is just a cautionthat IT is not necessarily the productivity savior and may exacerbate
some inequalities also.
What seems to be going on in the world is the creation of a new
virtual economy. New business models are increasingly going online
to create a whole new virtual economy. One metric I like to look at is
the market cap of major companies like Amazon, which is now $1.23
trillion, while Apple is $1.40 trillion and Microsoft $1.39 trillion. If
you add up the market cap of the “Big 5” tech companies, it comesto $5.6 trillion dollars. A lot of these companies only came into
existence in the last 15-25 years, so I would give that as an exampleof this creative destruction that is happening. What it means is that a
lot of the existing capital stock in the world is made redundantbecause of this virtual economy that is being constructed. In otherwords, when you get this IT revolution, in the IT part of the economy
you get tremendous productivity improvement, but when you
measure it at the level of the whole economy which includes a capitalstock which is being depreciated by rapid technological innovation, it
dilutes that effect dramatically.
In terms of global IT governance, Europe has launched the General
Data Protection Regulation, and different countries are trying
different approaches on this. Harking back to the question on global
governance and US-China relations, there will be an increasing needto have some kind of global rules of the road. There is a ChineseInternet. There is a Chinese information sphere which takes place in
the Chinese language mainly, and Japan has one as well. How thatwhole system interacts and will be governed is a big issue. A very
specific issue is what trust we can have in information. How do weensure in the global economy that there is high integrity of data andthat everyone is operating on the same global platform of
information?
I mentioned the Pax Americana turning point, which has
implications for the WTO, IMF, Bretton Woods, NATO, etc. However,on top of that, we also need new global institutions to deal with theInternet and information and data, etc. Maybe this is a good chance
to get a new prototype where the US, China and other countries
come to the table and have a proper kind of discussion. We needsomething like the landmark 1944 Bretton Woods Conference again
at this point in time where we can deliberate on and devise a new setof institutions, but in today’s 24-hour news cycle and everyone
connected to the Internet, how do you get key players to cometogether for uninterrupted discussion? We need to think of some
way to give policymakers the space to go offline almost and reallywork through some of these issues and come up with somesolutions, insulated from the constant glare of the media and having
to be responsive in real time to their own electorates and politicalpressures.
Written with the coopration of Joel Challender who is a translator, interpreter,
researcher and writer specializing in Japanese disaster preparedness.

Japan SPOTLIGHT • July / August 202013