Join YCAPS for the next iteration of our webinar series exploring interesting and contemporary topics relevant to our base communities and beyond. Our featured guest will be Tobias Harris, author of The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan.

To join, please go to: meet.google.com/gkr-fved-tqp

As an Alliance modernizer, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo drove controversial defense legislation, legalized Japan's option to provide collective self-defense for its U.S. ally, approved Japan's first National Security Strategy and organized a National Security Council. However, his story is not one unblemished by failures. In 2007, seemingly overwhelmed, he resigned after only a year as prime minister. Then, following five years of reinvention, he masterfully regained the premiership in 2012 proceeded to dominate Japanese politics for eight years and achieve status as Japan's longest serving Prime Minister. He staked out a global leadership role for Japan in a region being rapidly transformed by the rise of China and India, while carefully preserving an ironclad relationship with the United States. In The Iconoclast, the only English-language biography of Abe, Harris tells the story of Abe's meteoric rise and stunning fall, his remarkable comeback and his emergence as a world-class statesman. During this webinar, Harris will provide an overview of Abe’s biography and take your questions.

Tobias S. Harris is a leading expert on Japanese politics, widely quoted in leading world publications and a regular guest on television and radio programs. After working on the staff of a Japanese legislator from 2006 to 2007, he ran the popular blog “Observing Japan,” contributed to the Wall Street Journal Asia and Far Eastern Economic Review, and conducted graduate research at MIT and the University of Tokyo. Since 2013, he has been the Japan analyst at Teneo Intelligence, the political risk division of Teneo, a leading CEO advisory firm. He was Economy, Trade, and Business Fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, a Washington, DC-based think tank focused on U.S.-Japan relations, from 2014 to 2020. He was born in Chicago and currently lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife, their two sons and their two cats. He has an M.Phil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge and a BA in Politics and History from Brandeis University.

Webinar price: Free
Co-sponsors: Japan-US Military Program (JUMP), Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS).
Moderator: Caitlin Doornbos
Please register by RSVP to info@ycaps.org. RSVP not required, but helpful for organizers.