4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

1512 International Affairs Building 

Speaker: Kenzo Oshima Permanent Representative of Japan to the United Nations 

Commentators: 

  • Robert Immerman Senior Research Associate, Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI) 
  • Hugh Patrick Director, Center on Japanese Economy and Business

This event was a WEAI Policy Forum. It was co-sponsored by the Center on Japanese Economy and Business and the Center on International Organizations

Participant Biographies: 

Kenzo Oshima is currently Permanent Representative of Japan to the United Nations. He was previously appointed under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator in January 2001. He came to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) from Japan’s diplomatic service. Mr. Oshima previously served as executive director of the Secretariat for International Peace Cooperation Headquarters in the Office of the Prime Minister of Japan where he was responsible for Japan’s emergency humanitarian and peacekeeping assistance programs.  Before that, he was in charge of Japan’s foreign assistance program as director general of the Foreign Ministry’s Economic Cooperation Bureau and managing director of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Mr. Oshima’s career in international affairs includes postings in France, India, Australia, and in New York at the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations and as political minister at the Japanese Embassy in Washington.

Robert M. Immerman retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1990 with the rank of minister counselor. He directs the Institute's Professional Fellows program and the lunch lecture series, and he advises Institute students on summer internship programs in Japan. He is a visiting professor at Himeji Dokkyo University in Japan, where he lectures twice a year on international organizations and on East Asia in world politics. He has also organized a U.S.-Japan joint research project, "Prospects for Greater Collaboration between the United States and Japan in the UN System," which has issued policy recommendations to the governments of both nations.

Hugh Patrick is the director of the Center on Japanese Economy and Business at Columbia Business School, co-director of Columbia’s APEC Study Center, and R.D. Calkins Professor of International Business Emeritus. He joined the Columbia faculty in 1984 after some years as Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. He is a specialist on the Japanese economy and on Asia-Pacific economic relations. His major fields of published research, which include 16 books and some 60 articles and essays, are macroeconomic performance and policy, banking and financial markets, government-business relations and Japan-United States economic relations. He is a member of various professional associations and the Council on Foreign Relations. His most recent book, co-authored and co-edited with Takatoshi Ito and David Weinstein, is Reviving Japan’s Economy: Problems and Prescriptions (MIT Press, September 2005). He has been awarded Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships and the Ohira Prize, and he has been a visiting professor at Hitotsubashi University, University of Tokyo and University of Bombay. He completed his BA at Yale University in 1951, earned MA degrees in Japanese Studies (1955) and Economy (1957) and the PhD in Economics at the University of Michigan in 1960.