JASC Presents: Boston Report

(JASC Presents: Boston panelists ready to begin discussion)

JASC Presents finally arrived in the United States!!

"Internationalism in a New Age: Reflecting on 150 years of Japan-U.S. Relations"


The America's first JASC Presents took place at Harvard University on January 31st.

The venue is the place where we,the 61st JASC ECs, were elected as ECs. So, we felt like coming back to our birth place.

The event began with the keynote speech by Dr. Trent Maxey, Postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. He spoke of the language used to describe US-Japan relations through the past 150 years, citing many films and books as examples.
Especially for me, it is interesting to hear about how Samurai culture has been viewed as Japan's whole identity despite of the fact that Samurais accounted for only few percent of the total population at that time.

(Keynote speech by Dr. Maxey)

After the Q&A session for the speech, we moved to the panel discussion.

I'll introduce the panelists(shown in the picture above) from the left.
*Samantha Scully Senior at Bowdoin College, 60th American Executive Committee Chair
* Colin Moreshead Sophomore at Wesleyan University, 61st American Executive Committee Chair
* Yoshihiro Kanemitsu Junior at the University of Tokyo, 61st American Executive Committee(This is me!!)
* Jason Knudson Administrative Assistant at the Office of the Executive Director at ‘Facing History and Ourselves,’ 58th JASC delegate

Each panelist first gave a speech on a topic within 7 minutes.
Jason spoke on the bilateral relations of Japan-U.S. security issues, and the 6 Party Talks, Yoshi spoke on the environment and the future of green technology, Colin spoke of the lessons learned from the Japanese bubble economy of the 90s and how it could be applied to the current global economic crisis, and Sam spoke on the evolution of the modern women, and how during wartime, they had to give up their rights for the country’s priorities. This was followed by a 30 minute Q&A session, which both the audience members and the panelists thoroughly enjoyed. They received many questions and comments and replied to them enthusiastically. The most thought provoking question was “out of all the speech topics discussed, how would you rank their importance?” Each panelist gave his/her own opinion.

(an audience member asks a question enthusiastically)

After the event, JASCers and the audience members mingled, where they discussed further on the various issues raised. The interesting thing was that the audience members also mingled amongst themselves, and we saw them exchange email addresses. Many became interested in JASC and said that they would apply this year.

We were pleased to welcome around 40 people attending the event, including a 31st JASCer, a 57th JASCer and two 58th JASCers.
We once again got reminded of the strong tie between JASC alumni.


Overall, we conclude this event as great success, and look forward to future JASC Presents events. Thank you everyone for your support – this could've not been done without you!


(After the event, JASCers had a small reunion party. The treasure of JASC is the long-lasting friendship between JASCers.)