Reporting Asia: Japan

Please join us for a lecture with:
Bill Emmott, former editor-in-chief, The Economist
Tomoko Kubota, Independent Journalist and Oral historian

Moderated by:
Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History, Columbia University

About the Speakers:
Bill Emmott
Bill Emmott is a writer and consultant best known for his 13 years as editor in chief of The Economist in 1993-2006, a publication he first joined in 1980 and served in Brussels, Tokyo and London. During his time as editor the publication’s weekly circulation more than doubled from 500,000 to over 1 million, enjoying worldwide growth to become the leading current affairs and business magazine worldwide.

Since stepping down at the age of 49, Bill has combined deep research into political and economic trends in Europe, Asia and at a global level for his series of well received books with bespoke consulting and advisory work for major firms and institutions. He served as an adviser to Swiss Re from 2006-2019 and also currently assists a London-based hedge fund with its thinking on Italy and the wider euro area. A member of Tokyo University’s Global Advisory Board he is also on the Senior Advisory Panel for Critical Resource, a consultancy.

In 2017-18 he was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, is an honorary fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and is currently a Fellow of Tokyo College, a new research institute at Tokyo University. He is now chairman of the board of Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub for Arts & Humanities, chairman of the Japan Society of the UK, and chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. He is a regular contributor to La Stampa, Nikkei Business, Mainichi Shimbun and Project Syndicate, as well as an occasional writer of op-eds for the Financial Times. In 2016 the Japanese government awarded him the “Order of the Rising Sun: Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon” for services to UK-Japan relations.

Bill is the author of 14 books variously on Japan, Asia, the 20th century and Italy. The latest English work, “The Fate of the West – the battle to save the world’s most successful political idea”, was published in 2017; the latest Japanese work, “Japan’s Far More Female Future”, was published by Nikkei Publishing in June 2019. He was presenter and co-author of a documentary about Italy, “Girlfriend in a Coma” (2013) and executive producer of “The Great European Disaster Movie” (2015), both shown on the BBC. With the director of those films, Annalisa Piras, he co-founded an educational charity, The Wake Up Foundation, which uses film, art and journalism to foster a better understanding of the challenges facing western societies. In May 2019, the foundation held a “Wake Up Europe Festival” for social impact documentary films in Turin, Italy.

Tomoko Kubota
Ms. Kubota joined Tokyo Broadcasting (TBS) in 2000 where she became an announcer and worked on various programs, including Dobutsu kisotengai! [Amazing Animals!], Tetsuya Chikushi News 23, and Hodo Tokushu [Special News]. From 2013, she held appointments across the news bureau and served as a correspondent with the New York Bureau, as well as a political reporter at TBS. In 2017 she became a freelancer and in 2019 she obtained an MA in oral history from Columbia University. She is currently in a doctoral program at the University of Tokyo where she further pursues her research on oral history.