SPECIAL ONE-DAY SYMPOSIUM

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
Global Prospects for the Coming Decade
A Symposium commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of the Foundation of theDepartment of Global and Transcultural Studies, Meiji Gakuin University

SUNDAY MAY 15, 2022, MEIJI GAKUIN UNIVERSITYYOKOHAMA CAMPUS
As our department marks ten years of teaching global and transcultural studies, the world
appears to be balanced on a knife edge. Internationalism is locked with nationalism,
secularism with religious fundamentalism, democracy with authoritarianism, tolerancewith intolerance. The Corona Pandemic has ushered in a new and frightening era of
massive biohazards, while Russia’s attempted invasion of Ukraine has raised the specterof a return to Cold War type confrontation. Casting a long shadow over these massive
ideological struggles is climate change, thought by many experts to be close to a tipping
point from which will flow disastrous consequences for humanity and the naturalenvironment.
This symposium will commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Department of
Global and Transcultural Studies. It will be an opportunity to step back, take a deep breath,and survey the world and the prospects for the ten years to come. Each of our speakers
will be invited to gaze into their crystal ball and forecast how global affairs will develop
in the next ten years. We hope to examine their predictions ten years later, when thedepartment celebrates its 20th anniversary.
Keynote speaker

Muhammad Yunus (2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner)

PROGRAM
9:30am: Doors Open; Registration
9:50am: Welcome and Opening Remarks by Leo Murata (president of Meiji GakuinUniversity)
10am
Panel 1: Prospects for Japan
Chair: Prof. Tom Gill (Meiji Gakuin Dept. of Global and Transcultural Studies)Japan’s economic, social and demographic challenges for the next decade.
Alex Kerr (long-term resident of Kyoto, known for books such as Lost Japan and Dogsand Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan)
Richard Katz (economist, New York correspondent of Toyo Keizai; will join online)
Hiroko Takeda (Professor of Political Science, Nagoya University)
11:45amPanel 2: Peace and Security
Chair: Prof. Kōki Abe (Meiji Gakuin Department of International Studies)
Prospects for peace and security in East Asia in the shadow of China-US competition.
Masafumi Iida (Professor, National Institute of Defense Studies)
Kyoko Hatakeyama (Professor of International Relations, University of NiigataPrefecture)David Leheny (Professor of Political Science, Waseda University)
1:15pm: Lunch (Please bring your own lunch. Alternatively, there are two convenience
stores and one small restaurant near the campus.)
2:15pmPanel 3: Renewable Energy/Environment
Can Japan meet its ambitious carbon reduction targets for 2030, and if so, how?
Chair: Prof. Paul Midford (Meiji Gakuin Dept. of Global and Transcultural Studies)
Eric Zusman (Senior Researcher, Institute for Global Environmental Studies)
Mika Ohbayashi (Director, Renewable Energy Institute, Tokyo)
Hiroshi Ohta (Professor, Waseda University School of International Liberal Studies)1

4:00pm
Panel 4: Careers in the Coming Decade
Chair: Prof. Takayuki Sakamoto (Meiji Gakuin Dept. of Global and TransculturalStudies)
Seven of our graduates will discuss prospects for the fields in which they are working.
11KC1020 Rina Takeda, Sony Music Solutions Inc.
13KC1031 Kaji Deane, automotive distributor
13KC1045 Megumi Miura, project manager, Amazon Japan
14KC1018 Ruxin Wei, systems engineer, Intelligent Wave Inc.
15KC1025 Jinzaburo Tasaka, web designer, SoftBank
15KC1026 Yumi Tajima, fashion merchandiser
15KC1504 Vladislav Lushchikov, restaurant manager
5:45pmIntroduction of Prof. Muhammad Yunus by Prajakta Khare (Associate Professor, Meiji
Gakuin Dept. of Global and Transcultural Studies)
6:00pmKeynote Address
Professor Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, “banker to thepoor”, live by Zoom link from the Yunus Centre, Dhaka, Bangladesh“Global Economic Inequality: Now is the Time to Redesign”
Q&A moderated by Prajakta Khare
6:45pmYokohama International Study Association (YISA) – Officers of the Meiji Gakuin alumniassociation will explain the association’s activities and how to get involved in them.
7pm
Vote of thanks by Prof. Aoi Mori, Dean of the Faculty of International Studies, Meiji
Gakuin University
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MUHAMMAD YUNUS
Winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus is the father of microcredit, the father of social business,and the founder of Grameen Bank, and over fifty other companies in Bangladesh. For his constantinnovation and enterprise, the Fortune Magazine named Professor Yunus in March 2012 as “one of thetwelve greatest entrepreneurs of our time.”Yunus was born in Bangladesh in 1940, the third of nine children. In 1965, he received a Fulbright
Scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University, U.S.A., where he took his Ph.D. ineconomics in 1969. Returning to Bangladesh in 1972, he became chair of the Department ofEconomics, University of Chittagong. In 1976, Professor Yunus started to experiment with providing
collateral-free loans to the poor. This he called the Grameen Bank Project. In 1983, Grameen becamea full-fledged bank providing loans to impoverished women in rural Bangladesh. Today Grameen
Bank has over 8.4 million borrowers, 97% of them women, and disburses over $1.5 billion each year.
In 2006, Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Yunus
is also the recipient of more than 50 honorary degrees from universities across 20 countries and 112
awards from 26 countries, including state honours from 10. He is one of seven individuals to havereceived the Nobel Peace Prize, the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom and the United States
Congressional Gold Medal. He has also received the World Food Prize (1994), International Simon
Bolivar Prize (1996), Sydney Peace Prize (1998), and the Seoul Peace Prize (2006) among many others.

3Panel 1: Prospects for Japan
Japan’s economic, social and demographic challenges for the next decade.
Chair: Prof. Tom Gill (Meiji Gakuin Dept. of Global and Transcultural Studies)Alex Kerr

Richard Katz

Hiroko Takeda

Alex Kerr is an American resident of Kyoto, and has lived primarily in Japan since 1977.
He is a cultural critic and expert on traditional Japanese culture, and also a businessman,art collector and patron of the arts. His many books include Lost Japan (1993), Dogs andDemons (2002) and Another Kyoto (2016). His books display a love of traditional
Japanese culture and natural landscape, and critique how these have been treated by themodern developmental state.
Richard Katz is a professional economic journalist (https://richardkatz.substack.com/).
He is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and aSpecial Correspondent for Weekly Toyo Keizai. He is the author of Japan: The Systemthat Soured (1999), and Japanese Phoenix (2002). His new book on reviving
entrepreneurship in Japan, The Contest for Japan’s Economic Future, will be publishedby Oxford University Press early next year. His commentaries have been published inForeign Affairs, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.
Hiroko Takeda holds a doctorate from Sheffield University in the UK and is a professor
in the Graduate School of Law at Nagoya University. Her research interests include
political discourse analysis, risk discourses, gender and political economy, the family andreproduction, biopolitics and governmentality. She is the author of The Political Economy
of Reproduction: Between Nation-State and Everyday Life (2005) and co-editor of theRoutledge Handbook of Contemporary Japan (2021).
4Panel 2: Peace and Security
Chair: Prof. Kōki Abe (Meiji Gakuin Department of International Studies)
Prospects for peace and security in East Asia in the shadow of China-US competition.

Masafumi Iida

Kyoko Hatakeyama

David Leheny

Masafumi Iida holds a Master’s degree from Stanford University and is head of theAmerica, Europe, and Russia Division, in the Regional Studies Department at theNational Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS). He has been a visiting scholar at Stanfordand at the US Naval War College. His research has focused on China’s foreign andsecurity policies. He is the author of several NIDS reports on Chinese military strategy.
Kyoko Hatakeyama holds a PhD from Macquarie University in Australia and isProfessor of International Relations at the University of Niigata Prefecture. She
specializes in Japan’s foreign and security policy, international relations in Asia, and IR
theory. She is the co-author with Craig Freedman of Snow on the Pine: Japan's Quest fora Leadership Role in Asia (2010), and just last year she published Japan’s Evolving
Security Policy: Militarization within a Pacifist Tradition (2021).
David Leheny holds a PhD in Government from Cornell University and is a professor inthe Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies at Waseda University. Among his books areEmpire of Hope: The Sentimental Politics of Japanese Decline (2018) and Think Global,Fear Local: Sex, Violence, and Anxiety in Contemporary Japan (2006). In addition to hisacademic career, he has also served as a Regional Affairs Officer in the Office of theCoordinator for Counterterrorism in the US Department of State.

5Panel 3: Renewable Energy/Environment
Can Japan meet its ambitious carbon reduction targets for 2030, and if so, how?
Chair: Prof. Paul Midford (Meiji Gakuin Dept. of Global and Transcultural Studies)

Eric Zusman

Mika Ohbayashi

Hiroshi Ohta

Eric Zusman is a senior policy researcher at the Institute for Global Environmental
Strategies in Hayama. He holds a PhD in political science from UCLA, and has spent 20years conducting research on environmental issues in Asia, including water scarcity, air
pollution regulation, environmental law, multilevel governance, sustainability transitions,low carbon development and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Mika Ohbayashi has been director of the Renewable Energy Institute since 2011,
capping a career spent researching sustainable energy policies and campaigning onclimate change issues. Before joining the Institute, she worked for the International
Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and for two NGOs, the Citizen’s Nuclear
Information Center (1992-99), and the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (director,2000-2008). In 2017 she was awarded the Global Leadership Award in Advancing Solar
Energy Policy by the International Solar Energy Society.
Hiroshi Ohta holds a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University, and specializes
in international relations, environmental politics and comparative energy policy. He is theauthor of Comparative Politics of Environmental and Energy Policies of Major States:Making Choices for A Sustainable Society (in Japanese; 2016). His research focus is onclimate change, the governance and geopolitics of energy transition, along with globalfisheries governance.
6Panel 4: Careers in the Coming Decade
Prospects for the coming decade seen through the eyes of recent GTS graduates
Chair: Prof. Takayuki Sakamoto (Meiji Gakuin Dept. of Global and TransculturalStudies)This panel brings together seven young people who recently graduated from theDepartment of Global and Transcultural Studies (GTS) at Meiji Gakuin University. TheJapanese name of our department is Kokusai Kyaria Gakka, or Department ofInternational Careers, so we have asked them to tell us about their careers so far and makesome predictions for the coming decade in the sector where they are working.
From left:
Rina Takeda
Kaji Deane
Megumi Miura

Rina Takeda graduated in 2015 and works for Sony Music Solutions Inc. She is working
on delivering new forms of mass entertainment for inbound and outbound customers.
Kaji Deane graduated in 2017 and is now running his own small business as a distributorof specialist car parts, representing several European and Taiwanese brands in Japan.
Megumi Miura graduated in 2017 and is now working for Amazon Japan as a productmanager, working on automation and machine learning mechanisms.
From left:
Ruxin Wei
Jinzaburo Tasaka
Yumi Tajima
Vladislav Lushchikov

Ruxin Wei graduated in 2018 and is now a systems engineer working for Intelligent Wave
Inc., focusing on pre-launch testing and quality control.
Jinzaburo Tasaka was working for an IT company while still at GTS. Graduating in2019, he is now engaged in web directing and project managing at SoftBank.
Yumi Tajima graduated in 2019. After several years working as a designer andphotographer, she is currently establishing her own small business in Kamakura.
Vladislav Lushchikov graduated in 2019 and joined a company developing B2B auction
software in Russia, before becoming manager of a Russian/Georgian restaurant in Tokyo.
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