Seminar 1. Ezra Vogel: “Cooperation between Japan and China after World War II”

The first seminar was conducted on Friday, April 10, 2020, by the patriarch of East Asian studies, Professor Ezra Vogel from Harvard University.

Ezra F. Vogel is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard. Professor Vogel succeeded John Fairbank to become the second Director (1972-1977) of Harvard's East Asian Research Center and Chairman of the Council for East Asian Studies (1977-1980). He was Director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at the Center for International Affairs (1980-1987) and, since 1987, Honorary Director. He was Director of the Fairbank Center (1995-1999) and the first Director of the Asia Center (1997-1999). He taught courses on communist Chinese society, Japanese society, and industrial East Asia. The Japanese edition of Professor Vogel's book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979) remains the all-time best-seller in Japan of non-fiction by a Western author. He officially retired in 2000 but takes part in researches and East Asia related activities. His more recent influential books include Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2011) and China and Japan: Facing History (2019).

In his lecture, Professor Ezra Vogel described the main periods of cooperation between Japan and China after the end of World War II, and made a forecast regarding the further development of relations between the countries in the next decade.