BookTalk

Edwin O. Reischauer and the American Discovery of Japan

June 2, 2010 / Philadelphia

George R. Packard

In this biography of scholar and diplomat Edwin O. Reischauer, Packard explores Reischauer's critical role in the history of U.S.-Japanese relations, a role that began during World War II in analyzing intelligence on Japan and training American code- breakers in Japanese; then, after the war, he helped steer Japan toward democracy, and as Ambassador to Japan in the early 1960s helped "reset" U.S.-Japanese relations. He was also one of the nation's foremost scholars of Japan and East Asia, and, in that capacity, helped explain Japan to Americans.

Dr. George R. Packard is president of the United States-Japan Foundation and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, where he is chairman of the Advisory Board of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. He was dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (1979-1993), where he founded John Hopkins's Foreign Policy Institute, the SAIS Review, the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, and the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in China. Earlier in his career, Dr. Packard was an intelligence officer and later a special assistant to US Ambassador Edwin O. Reischauer in Tokyo. He has also worked extensively in journalism, first as a diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek, and then as White House correspondent and then executive editor of the Philadelphia Evening and Sunday Bulletin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs and elsewhere. For information about the book, visit cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14354-7/edwin-o-reischauer-and-the- american-discovery-of-japan.

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