[L to R: Susan Pharr, Subodhana Wijeyeratne ('14-'15), Amy Catalinac ('06-'07), Koji Akiyama (Chairman, Akiyama Life Science Foundation), Sakura Christmas ('10-'11), and Hannah Shepherd ('13-'14)]
Since 1996, the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations has annually awarded a summer research grant to a Harvard doctoral student who conducts social science research on contemporary Japan. Made possible by a generous grant from Akiyama Aiseikan (a pharmaceutical firm based in Hokkaido) and the Akiyama Life Science Foundation, the Akiyama Award commemorates the life of Akiyama Aiseikan’s past president, Mrs. Akiyama Kiyo. Listed below are the recipients of the Akiyama Award, their research, and current affiliations.
2021-22: Jeremy Woolsey
Research topic: After the New Left: Mass Media Critique in 1970s Japan
Current affiliation: Ph.D. candidate, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
2020-21: Catherine Tsai
Research topic: Borders, Migration, and Citizenship in the Development of the Yaeyama Islands and Taiwan, 1920s-1970s
Current affiliation: Ph.D. candidate, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
2019-20: Bohao Wu
Research topic: Regionalization Imagined: The Pursuit of Asian Econmoic Bloc after the Bandung Moment, 1955-1957
Current affiliation: Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, Harvard University
2018-19: Susan Taylor
Research topic: Used Books and a Market for History: An Ethnography of Jimbocho, Tokyo
Current affiliation: Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
2017-18: Rui Hua
Research topic: Sino-Russo-Japanese Collaboration and the (Un-)Making of the Frontier Cultures of Legality in Manchuria, 1900-1957
Current affiliation: Assistant Professor of History, Boston University
2016-17: John Kanbayashi (né Hayashi)
Research topic: Water Management in Colonial Taiwan
Current affiliation: Assistant Professor, Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania
2015-16: Andrew Littlejohn
Research topic: After the Flood - The Politics of Reconstruction in Post-3.11 Tohoku
Current affiliation: Assistant Professor, Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden University
2014-15: Subodhana Wijeyeratne
Research topic: Big Science, Big Government, and Japanese Space Program, 1924-2003
Current affiliation: Assistant Professor of History, Purdue University
2013-14: Hannah Shepherd
Research topic: Colonial Modernities, Imperial Urbanisms: Fukuoka and Busan in the Japanese Empire, 1905-1945
Current affiliation: Assistant Professor of History, Yale University
2012-13: Chika Ogawa
Research topic: How Political Parties Manipulate State Structures and Why They Do It: The Politics of Empowering and Constraining Subnational Governments in Japan and England
Current affiliation: Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government
2011-12: Shi-lin Loh
Research topic: Building Communal Knowledge: Nuclear Science and Nuclear Villages
Current affiliation: Editor and Translator
2010-11: Sakura Christmas
Research topic: The Japanese Collecting Expeditions to the Manchurian and Mongolian Borderlands (1930-1945)
Current affiliation: Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies, Bowdoin College
2009-10: Eunmi Mun
Research topic: The Organizational Reproduction of Gender Inequality: Women’s Employment in Recessionary Japan
Current affiliation: Associate Professor of Labor and Employment Relations, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2008-09: Chiaki Nishijima
Research topic: Commodified Bodies and Objectifying Subjectivities: Sex Trafficking and Enjo Kosai in Japan
Current affiliation: Senior Lecturer of Japan Studies, University of Oslo
2007-08: Jeremy Yellen
Research topic: In the Service of Empire: Japanese Wartime Internationalism and the Greater East Asia Conference of 1943
Published books: The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War (Cornell University Press, 2019)
Current affiliation: Associate Professor, Department of Japanese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
2006-07: Amy Catalinac
Research topic: Explaining the Decline of Anti-Militarism in Japan: Electoral Incentives, Domestic Politics, and National Identity
Published books: Electoral Reform and National Security in Japan: From Pork to Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
Current affiliation: Associate Professor of Politics, New York University
2005-06: Phillip Lipscy
Research topic: Japan’s Attempts to Change the Status Quo in International Organizations
Published books: Renegotiating the World Order: Institutional Change in International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
Current affiliation: Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto; Chair, Japanese Politics & Global Affairs, University of Toronto; Director, Centre for the Study of Global Japan, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto; Professor of Law, University of Tokyo
2004-05: Fumitaka Wakamatsu
Research topic: Making of Scientific Whaling in Japan: Ecology, Science, and Cultural Nationalism
Current affiliation: Research Administrator, Kyoto University
2003-04: Jiyeoun Song
Research topic: Distinctive Features of East Asian Welfare Regimes
Published books: Inequality in the Workplace: Labor Market Reform in Japan and Korea (Cornell University Press, 2014)
Current affiliation: Professor of Political Economy, Seoul National University
2002-03: Yarrow Dunham
Research topic: The Cognitive Effects of Structural Differences Between the Japanese and English Languages
Current affiliation: Associate Professor of Psychology, Yale University
2001-02: Kasumi Yamashita
Research topic: Attitudes toward Japan of Emigrants to Brazil
Dissertation title: “Exhibiting Diaspora: Japanese Migration Museums at Home and Abroad”
Current affiliation: Instructor, Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), Stanford University
2000-2001: Christian Brunelli
Research topic: Historical Development and Cross-National Variation in Policing
Dissertation title: “State Agents into Public Servants: The Development of Community Policing in Japan”
Current affiliation: Independent scholar
1999-2000: Daniel Aldrich
Research topic: Effects of the “Big Bang” Reforms in the Financial Sector
Published books: Black Wave: How Networks and Governance Shaped Japan's 3/11 Disasters (University of Chicago Press, 2019); Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery (University of Chicago Press, 2012); Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West (Cornell University Press, 2008)
Current affiliation: Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and Urban Affairs; Director, Masters Program in Security and Resilience, Northeastern University; Co-Director, Global Resilience Institute, Northeastern University
1998-99: Robert Pekkanen
Research topic: The Quality of Civic Life in Japan
Published books: Japan’s Dual Civil Society: Members Without Advocates (Stanford University Press, 2006); The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP: Party Organizations as Historical Institutions (co-author, Cornell University Press, 2010)
Current affiliation: Professor, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies; Adjunct Professor of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle; Adjunct Professor of Sociology, University of Washington, Seattle
1997-98: Kim Reimann
Research topic: International Relations and the Rise of Non-Governmental Organizations in Japan
Published book: Rise of Japanese NGOs: Activism from Above (Routledge, 2009)
Current affiliation: Associate Professor of Political Science, Georgia State University
1996-97: Paul Talcott
Research topic: Healthcare Policy in Japan
Dissertation title: “Why the Weak Can Win: Healthcare Politics in Postwar Japan”
Current affiliation: Assistant Professor, Institute of Human Rights, Emory University
1995-96: Christina L. Davis
Research topic: Japan and International Relations
Published books: Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International Organizations (Princeton University Press, 2023); Food Fights over Free Trade: How International Institutions Promote Agricultural Trade Liberalization (Princeton University Press, 2003); Why Adjudicate? Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO (Princeton University Press, 2012)
Current affiliation: Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations; Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, Department of Government, Harvard University