Jessie Kong: Every year, SJEC puts on a week-long, entirely student-run, exchange program for 20-25 visiting Japanese students from Keio, Doshisha, and Kyoto Universities. Through this programming, we strive to provide authentic insights into Stanford academics, extracurriculars, and lifestyle by having the Japanese students join our lives and develop bonding experiences. 

As one of the co-presidents of SJEC this year, my work has centered around coordinating the entire team of Stanford officers, delegating tasks between teams, communicating with and preparing the Japanese students, and facilitating activities during the conference.

Through leading SJEC this year, I have realized the importance of dedication and commitment when planning these activities. My previous years in SJEC leading the social team has also shown me how to plan events from start to finish in an efficient way that leverages the capabilities of everyone on the team while focusing on the experience for the Japanese students. I think being able to put the group's interest above my own was also a good skill I learned while in the co-president position.

Socially, I have been able to build connections both for myself and other Stanford students with the Japanese student community. Starting with SJEC, I was able to meet and take care of visiting Japanese students at Stanford, and this effort was reciprocated when I went to study abroad through the BOSP Kyoto program. Being able to feel the reciprocity of my efforts in SJEC only makes me more motivated to continue working in SJEC to create a good experience for more Japanese students who visit in the future.
 

Yifei Cheng: The main event from our organization this year is the FACES annual summit that took place in January 2025. We invited 40 college students from Chinese and American universities to engage in dialogue about US-China relations on Stanford campus. As the president of FACES, I was involved in candidate selection and planning the summit schedule. I also took the initiative to organize the summit field trip at the Angel Island Immigration Facility. 

Through the lecture of Professor Gordon H. Chang on the persecution of Chinese scientists during the McCarthy Era, I learned about the repeated interlocks between politics and academia in the US, which has significant contemporary repercussions with the current administration's restrictions of student visas and immigration process. 

The FACES summit also enhanced my understanding of diplomacy on a personal level. This experience taught me that cultural exchange isn’t about reaching agreement—it’s about creating a shared space where different truths can coexist. I learned to listen across differences, become comfortable with discomfort, and see the value in ambiguity. These lessons have reshaped how I engage in conversations not only about geopolitics, but also about identity, equity, and belonging more broadly.

I gained concrete organizational skills with managing timelines, delegating tasks, and staying calm when things went wrong—like when the hotel rooming list gets wrong and messy. I also learned that leadership is less about control and more about creating the conditions for others to grow. I facilitated the daily reflection session during the summit. As the discussion facilitator, I found it rewarding to moderate discussions where sometimes disagreements arise. I think this is a valuable skill for my academic and professional development. 
 

Aimen Ejaz and Luv Jawahrani: This year, in its inaugural term, the Stanford Indo-Pak Dosti Forum (SIPDF)achieved what many said was impossible: bringing together Indians and Pakistanis in the same room – voluntarily – twice a week.

In the fall, we launched INTNL REL 47SI: Bridging the Divide, a student-initiated course focused on the political and economic dimensions of India-Pakistan relations. The class brought together prominent individuals concerned about peace-building, ranging from former Indian and Pakistani ambassadors who’d been involved in negotiating peace to professors from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), to research fellows at the Hoover Institute and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and veteran journalists who have covered the subcontinent for decades.

In spring, we co-taught GLOBAL 47SI: Building Bridges—a course that spotlights cross-border entrepreneurship as a tool for soft diplomacy. We invited legendary South Asian entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from both sides of the border: Mamoon Hamid (Managing Director at Kleiner Perkins), Samir Kaul (Managing Director at Khosla Ventures), Amit Patel (Managing Director at Owl Ventures), Bilal Zuberi (Partner at Lux Capital), and Anand Swaminathan (Senior Partner at McKinsey), among others. The goal? To explore how venture-building, innovation, and chai-fueled resilience can outpace political gridlock.

Academically, co-leading our student-led initiative taught us more than any textbook ever could, mostly because we had to build the syllabus ourselves. And we didn’t just co-lead — we co-dreamed and co-hustled, getting the syllabi approved by multiple departments and cold-emailing, even chasing down, speakers from across the U.S.

In designing INTNL REL 47SI: Bridging the Divide, we dove headfirst into the complexities of India-Pakistan political and economic relations. But we didn’t stop at reading IR theory. We debated it with the very diplomats and policymakers who once shaped those theories in real time. Every week became a crash course in postcolonial statecraft, regional security, and the surprisingly human side of high diplomacy.

Then came GLOBAL 47SI: Building Bridges, where we shifted from conflict to collaboration, exploring how entrepreneurship can serve as a tool of soft power. Through case studies, guest lectures, and our own classroom debates, we began asking whether a startup pitch can accomplish  what politicians can't. What happens when innovation moves faster than diplomacy? And what does it mean when the biggest South Asian venture capitalist in the world funds a startup founded by someone from the "other" side?

More than anything, we learned how to turn theory into action. Whether it was teaching concepts like diaspora diplomacy or moderating discussions between venture capitalists and undergrads, we were constantly translating complex ideas into real-world conversations. We didn’t just learn. We taught, we built, and we questioned everything along the way.

Culturally and socially, our student-led initiative felt less like organizing a class and more like hosting weekly peace talks, with chai and biryani. We came in thinking we were building a curriculum; we ended up navigating generations of silence, suspicion, and identity.

We learned that Partition isn’t just a historical event–it’s a living memory passed down through stories and subconscious hesitation. It’s in the way some students avoid eye contact when the topic turns political, or how others lower their voices when mentioning where their family is really from. But we also learned that these barriers can soften when people feel safe enough to speak, and laugh, together.

We watched students from India and Pakistan, often meeting for the first time, begin to open up. Conversations that started stiffly turned into long debates, jokes, shared Desi Spotify playlists, and sometimes even plans to visit each other’s cities, if our countries ever allow it. We learned that vulnerability—especially in a region taught to fear it—is a radical act. And that our generation is more ready than we think to rewrite the script we inherited.

There were moments when we questioned whether this initiative was worth it. When we received backlash online for platforming certain voices. When a class discussion got tense and uncomfortable. When friends warned us that this was “too political,” “too idealistic,” “too risky.” And we didn’t always have the perfect response.

But leadership, we realized, isn’t about always being right. It’s about being rooted in a vision that peace isn’t naïve — it’s necessary. That bridging divides isn’t weakness—it’s the only strength that can outlast hate. And when things fell apart — when a high-profile speaker pulled out at the last minute, or a student pushed back hard in class — we didn’t pivot away from our mission. We dug deeper. We turned cancellations into teachable moments. We turned criticism into conversation. Most importantly, we learned to trust ourselves and to trust that our generation doesn’t have to inherit the silence, the suspicion, and the separation.

Transformative Mentorship

Powell McCormick said that Rice was the mentor who had the most impact on her life. She and her husband have six daughters, and during COVID, they began to realize the critical need for purposeful mentorship across society.

“It went way past high school graduations and proms that they didn't get to attend,” said Powell McCormick of her daughters’ experience during the pandemic. “It was those first seminal years of having a professor that believed in you, of having a boss that helped you and gave you tough love. And so, we started talking to the girls about the fact that Dave and I wouldn't be where we are today without people who really believed in us and invested in us.”

She started asking people she admired to pinpoint one or two people who had invested in them and contributed to who they are. Her husband recounted a high school experience where his football coach had made a difference in his life by naming him co-captain on the team.

“Dave had never thought of himself as a leader. And that single act is the reason my husband got into West Point – through that coach and being on that football team,” Powell McCormick said.

Advocating for Freedom, Democracy

Sandberg noted that Powell McCormick came to America at age 5 from Egypt and spoke no English. She asked her, “How did mentors contribute to your success?”

Powell McCormick mentioned Kay Bailey Hutchinson, a senator from Texas, “the only woman I'd ever seen in a senior role, to be honest, in Texas at that time.”  Hutchinson took an interest in the career growth of a young Powell McCormick.

“She would mentor me and as I was graduating and heading to law school, she said, ‘I think you should come intern for me for a year in Washington.’”

She never forgot what the senator told her: “If you don’t take a risk on yourself, no one else ever will.” Eventually, Powell McCormick worked on the Hill and then in the White House where she met Rice, then Secretary of State. They were both there on 9/11, and Rice asked her to expand her responsibilities. “It changed everything.”

During that time, Powell McCormick recalled an inspirational moment with Rice on a visit to a Middle Eastern country where Rice was asked by a foreign leader about whether she was going to “preach freedom and democracy” to that country’s leadership.

Rice replied, “Your highness, how can I come and preach to you when not that long ago my own country counted my ancestors as three-fifths of a man. Today, you are looking at the first black Secretary of State of the United States of America, and the difference between my country and yours is that we will always be stronger because we hear the will of our people.”
 

In that moment, Powell McCormick said, Rice had taught her so much – “fierceness, grace, and humility.”

In their book, the couple interviewed successful leaders across industries who benefited from their mentors and shares their real-world stories of how their career trajectories were impacted. The book outlines four key elements of transformative mentorship – trust, shared values, meaningful commitment, and instilling confidence.

Powell McCormick said, “Being an entrepreneur, you’re on an island all by yourself. It’s really scary, and particularly we learned this is true for female entrepreneurs outside of the United States.”

She recalled working with a female entrepreneur in Egypt at the American University in Cairo who had an abusive husband and who had secretly started a taxi business (and hid this from her husband).

Powell McCormick told her, “This is incredible. You’ve got to buy another car. You’ve got to do all of this. And so, we helped her with capital, we helped her with education. When she finally told her husband, she thought he was going to freak out and divorce her.”

But then the woman showed him how much money she was making. “Today he is her CFO (chief financial officer) and reports to her,” Powell McCormick said.

‘She Could Do It’

In addition to Rice, the book features stories from some of the most influential leaders across industries, including Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, Tory Burch, the founder of the women’s fashion empire, Hollywood producer Brian Grazer, as well as political leaders such as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.

Powell McCormick spoke about an Afghanistan businesswoman, Rangina Hamidi, who sold rugs, jewelry, and handicrafts, and then returned the proceeds every month to aspiring female entrepreneurs. Once, a young woman who she was helping told her that her husband had never respected her. But since she had started making money, he began supporting education for females – and especially for their five daughters.

“That woman who will never leave her home, who is illiterate, changed the course of a generation of her family by being a little bit economically independent – because someone told her she could do it,” Powell McCormick said.

What policy options does the Japanese public prefer, and what might shift its attitudes? These are some questions the Stanford Japan Barometer (SJB) sets out to answer. SJB is a large-scale public opinion survey on political, economic, and social issues in Japan. Co-developed and led by Stanford sociologist Kiyoteru Tsutsui, the deputy director of APARC and director of the Center’s Japan Program, and Dartmouth College political scientist Charles Crabtree, a former visiting assistant professor with the Japan Program, SJB has so far published the results from its first two waves.

Wave 1 focused on issues related to gender and sexuality in Japanese politics, while Wave 2 focused on issues related to foreign policy and national defense. SJB findings fielded in these two waves indicate that most Japanese support recognizing same-sex unions, legalizing a dual-surname option for married couples, promoting women’s leadership in society, and that, in a Taiwan contingency, ​​Japanese people would be hesitant to fight China but would respond to a request from the U.S. military for logistical support.

Jointly with the Japan Program, GLOBE+, an international news outlet operated by the esteemed Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, is publishing a series highlighting SJB findings. Here, we provide an English translation of the first three pieces in this series. Additional articles in the series will be published sequentially.

PART I

How Question Framing Changes the Results of Public Opinion Polls: Japan Barometer's Attempt to Get at the "True Feelings” of Survey Respondents

View the original article at Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+ >

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+ sat down with Tsutsui to learn more about the findings of SJB, its goals, and how it differs from other public opinion polls.

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+: Why did you come up with the idea to start the Stanford Japan Barometer?

Area studies have been in decline within the social sciences. Although China research is developing, there has been a significant shift away from Japan studies. In 2019, the Asia Society of North America held a session titled “The Death of Japanese Studies.” It made me think that conducting large-scale research experiments with Japan as the theme could spark new developments in the field. The idea was that this effort would draw attention to Japanese studies and foster young researchers interested in Japan.

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+: What makes SJB different from other public opinion polls?

First, we routinely administer the SJB to an extensive national sample comprising 8,000 Japanese residents. Another unique point is our focus on the type of questions asked to “sway” people's opinions. That is why we call it an experiment. Thus, one of the characteristics of SJB is that we create questions with different preconditions for a given problem and then compare the answers and see how these preconditions affect respondents’ attitudes.

For example, in the first wave of the survey, the theme was gender and sexuality in Japanese politics, and we asked respondents about the pros and cons of same-sex marriage, looking into what kind of influence the preconditions of the survey questions would have on the responses. We created eight types of such preconditions and randomly assigned them to respondents.

We presented some respondents with prompts about tradition and history, such as “In Japanese society, it is a tradition that marriage is between people of the opposite sex” and “Japanese society has tolerated romantic relationships between people of the same sex since the Middle Ages and the Warring States period.” We presented other respondents with preconditions about the fairness of same-sex marriages from the point of view of constitutional rights and human rights principles. We found that respondents tend to become more supportive of same-sex marriage when presented with an argument that not allowing same-sex marriage is unfair from the point of view of human rights and gender equality.

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+: Generally, in public opinion polls, we take care to ask neutral questions, but you are intentionally doing the opposite.

That's right. By doing so, we can understand what kind of efforts are effective in moving people’s attitudes. As a sociologist, my research focuses on social movements, and I am very interested in the slow pace of change in Japanese society. Therefore, I want to understand why it hasn't changed much and how we can affect change.

In addition to opinions about same-sex marriage, we asked about respondents’ views of desirable attributes of a candidate for the House of Representatives in categories such as gender, age, and occupation. We also examined how the responses changed depending on a candidate’s political party and other factors.

By asking about desirable attributes of a candidate from multiple perspectives, you can elicit answers closer to the respondents’ true feelings. In the future, we plan to continue conducting experiments to see how the results change depending on these preconditions and the characteristics of the respondents.

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+: What research themes do you have in mind for the future?

I want to research various fields and have already completed research on Japan’s defense spending tax increase and the Taiwan contingency situation. I also want to investigate topics like AI and immigration. In the future, I would like to open a public call for research themes to investigate with SJB.

Part 2
Do Japanese People Envision the Ideal Political Leaders as Females in Their 30s or 40s? Stanford Japan Barometer Finds Out

A recurring issue in Japanese public discussions on gender equality pertains to the underrepresentation of women in leadership roles, particularly in politics and business. To better understand the Japanese public attitudes toward this gender gap, SJB conducted conjoint experiments exploring the preferences of the Japanese public regarding candidates for a Diet seat. In this article, Tsutsui explains the method and results of this survey.

View the original article at Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+ >

This survey asked respondents about the following six attributes regarding candidates they would like to see in the next Diet:

• Age (from 32 years old to 82 years old in 10-year increments)
• Sex
• Marriage
• Number of children
• Academic background
• Occupation (11 options, including finance, business, foreign affairs bureaucrats, corporate managers and officers, governors, local legislators, homemakers, and others)

When asking the question, we created two “candidate images'' by randomly combining six attributes and asked respondents to choose them in a multiple-choice format. We then aggregated and analyzed the respondents’ answers. This complex method statistically allows us to get closer to the respondents’ “true feelings.”

As a result of the analysis, the combinations of attributes that received the most responses, or in other words, the “ideal candidate image'' that respondents thought of, were as follows:

Gender: Female
Age: 32 and 42 years old
Occupation: Governor and corporate manager/officer

These findings indicate that Japanese people wish to see more female leaders in their 30s and 40s become politicians. Additionally, 75% of respondents agreed that “there should be more efforts to increase the number of female members in Japan's Diet.'' Nearly all respondents, regardless of gender, age group, party support, or the strength of their support for the Kishida administration, favored having a female politician over a male one, and even among those who rated Japan as already diverse, many said they would prefer female candidates.

Based on these findings, we assert that a notable portion of the Japanese population sincerely backs women leaders. Furthermore, if a female candidate is nominated, she will likely get elected.

Conversely, the combinations of attributes with weak public support were as follows:
Gender: Male
Age: 72 and 82
Occupation: TV commentator, parliamentary secretary, financial bureaucrat

These results indicate that Japanese public opinion neither favors older male politicians nor desires people in occupations close to national politics.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has, in fact, actively supported women in elections in urban areas, including the Tokyo 8th Ward of the House of Representatives, which includes Suginami Ward. The reason is that "experience has shown that women are in demand," according to LDP officials. Interestingly, this sentiment coincides with the image of politicians desired by public opinion (women in their 30s and 40s, not older men), as highlighted by the Stanford Japan Barometer.

There may be an election for the Lower House of Representatives in 2024, and it will be interesting to see how many women will get elected after the supplementary and unified elections.

Part 3
The Liberal Democratic Party's Bold Strategy of Fielding Female Candidates: A "Survival Instinct" Consistent with Voters’ Desires

View the original article at Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+ >

The results of the first wave of the Stanford Japan Barometer match the LDP's policy of supporting women. The LDP, which has approved a string of candidates for the upcoming general election to dissolve the House of Representatives, has been fielding women mainly in urban areas. A typical example is Tokyo's 8th Ward (a large part of Suginami Ward). For a long time, the LDP's Nobuaki Ishihara dominated this seat. Yet he lost the 2021 Lower House election to Harumi Yoshida, a female newcomer to the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. Ishihara was also unable to regain his seat proportionally.

In 2022, female newcomer Satoko Kishimoto won the Suginami Ward mayor election against the incumbent male candidate. Kishimoto supported mainly women in the 2023 Ward Assembly election, resulting in a female majority. The LDP responded by supporting a 42-year-old woman from the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry in Tokyo's 8th Ward.

In Tokyo's 18th Ward (Musashino, Fuchu, and Koganei), the home district of former Prime Minister Naoto Kan (Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan), who recently announced his retirement, the Tokyo Metropolitan Federation of Trade Unions also held an open recruitment campaign for women only. In addition, there has been a string of female candidates in Tokyo, including Tamayo Marukawa, who switched from the House of Councillors to the upper house of the Diet. That is because LDP officials have learned from experience that "women and young people, especially in urban areas, are the most likely to win now,” according to a senior LDP official.

In the supplementary elections for the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors, women won in the Chiba 5th district of the House of Representatives, the Wakayama 1st District of the House of Representatives, and the Oita Constituency of the House of Councillors. Men previously held all these positions, and the races were considered hotly contested.

Does the LDP have a philosophy that "diversity is important in politics, so let's increase the number of women"? No, not necessarily. When the LDP debated the Candidate Gender Equality Act (enacted in 2018), which calls for political parties to have an equal number of male and female candidates as much as possible, some LDP members protested, saying that forcing an increase in the number of women would lower the quality of politicians, that it was reverse discrimination against men, and that it would also not be a fair assessment of women.

LDP lawmakers were quick to say they were not against increasing the number of women, but it also seemed as if men were afraid of having their status threatened. The LDP's recent nomination of a string of women likely indicates a “survival strategy.”

If the voters prefer women, they will support women. Of course, the LDP is not basing its decision to field women on the results of the Stanford Japan Barometer. Still, the fact that the LDP is fielding candidates who closely match the preferred candidate image yielded in the SJB survey shows how strong the LDP's survival instinct is.

The LDP once even formed a coalition with the Socialist Party, which it continued to oppose as an opposition party. The LDP is tenacious and determined.

On January 11, 2024, IDJ will host its inaugural event, titled Multiracial Democracy and its Future in the United States, with Harvard University professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Levitsky and Ziblatt are the New York Times best-selling authors of How Democracies Die and will discuss their newest book, Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (Crown, 2023). In a moderated conversation with Professors Hakeem Jefferson and Jake Grumbach (UC Berkeley) and an audience Q&A, Levitsky and Ziblatt will offer a framework for understanding the current crisis in America's democracy. You can learn more about the event and register to attend here.

In the following Q&A, Hakeem Jefferson, an assistant professor of political science in the School of Humanities and Sciences, shares more about the motivations and objectives of the new IDJ program and the transformative potential of identity-focused research.

What motivated the establishment of the Program on Identity, Democracy, and Justice (IDJ) at CDDRL, and what specific gaps or challenges in existing research does it aim to address?

As a scholar of race and politics, it has always been clear to me that we cannot understand threats to democracy or the promise of democracy without engaging issues of race and identity more broadly. I am excited to launch this program at CDDRL because I think we have a real opportunity to bring together scholars, practitioners, and community members concerned with creating a society of political and social equals. At IDJ, we hope to expand people’s understanding of what it means to care about democracy and what the study of democracy looks like. For us, these questions necessitate a focus on difference, a focus on inequality, and a concern with democracy beyond the ballot box. To be sure, we will engage questions related to elections and the health of electoral democracy, but we also want to make the strong case in the research we platform and in the conversations and workshops we convene that being concerned with democracy means thinking quite carefully about how societies are stratified, how power is distributed, and how justice is achieved.

What are some of the program's key goals and objectives?

I want to invite folks who study the program themes to be in community with one another. The hope is that these interactions will lead to more thoughtful scholarship and initiatives. We want people to share early-stage ideas, make connections with like-minded collaborators, sharpen later-stage research, and broaden their aims and interests through consuming the work hosted by the program. We want to keep researchers aware of practitioners, especially at the local level, who are working to promote democratic principles and, in parallel, keep those organizations abreast of findings relevant to our shared interest in a healthier democracy.

How does the IDJ program approach the study of identity-related issues, and what makes it distinctive compared to existing research programs?

IDJ is ideas first. Different backgrounds, training, and scholarly dispositions mean that we think about identity-related questions in different ways. IDJ seeks to bring our attention to how we are engaging the same objective — equitable democracies — whether we are concerned with different identities, different contexts, or different sorts of evidence. By pursuing common insights, IDJ aims to produce work that is interesting to a broad audience.

As the IDJ program unfolds, how do you envision its role in shaping public discourse and influencing policies related to identity, democracy, and justice, both locally and globally?

Throughout my career — and since I was a young boy in South Carolina — I have engaged in public conversations about issues of justice. In recent years, I have written extensively for public audiences about topics ranging from the January 6 insurrection and whiteness to the crisis facing multiracial democracy in the United States. As I launch the IDJ program, this commitment to public engagement remains at the heart of what we plan to do. From writing Op-Eds to engaging directly with those working on the ground to safeguard democracy, we hope to be a public-facing program whose stakeholders include those far beyond our Stanford community.

Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is pleased to unveil the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), an interdisciplinary initiative committed to producing evidence-based, actionable policy research to facilitate structural reform and propel Asia toward a future defined by growth, maturity, and innovation. Based at APARC and led by sociologist Gi-Wook Shin, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, SNAPL seeks to tackle pressing social, cultural, economic, and political challenges facing Asian countries, including aging populations, escalating inequality, brain drain, environmental threats, and institutional deficiencies in areas like the rule of law and cultural intolerance.

"SNAPL represents a significant milestone in our commitment to building research networks that engage academics, policymakers, business leaders, and civil society organizations interested in regional and global perspectives on contemporary Asia," said Shin, who is also the director of APARC and the Korea Program within APARC. “Through an interdisciplinary, solution-oriented, and comparative lens, we aim to set a research and policy agenda to help Asian nations create their unique roadmaps to becoming and remaining innovation-driven economics at the center of 21st-century dynamism and growth. At the same time, we believe that research on Asia could uncover important implications and lessons for the United States and European countries as they grapple with their own social, cultural, economic, and political challenges.”

Combining theoretical and field studies, SNAPL researchers will initially examine issues such as the prospects for reform of educational institutions, immigration policy, and cultural attitudes in Asia; paths to combating recent democratic declines; and U.S.-Asia relations. In addition to Shin, the lab director and principal investigator, the SNAPL inaugural research team includes Research Scholar Xinru Ma, Postdoctoral Fellows Gidong Kim and Junki Nakahara, Research Associates Haley Gordon and Irene Kyoung, and a cohort of Stanford undergraduate and graduate students serving as research assistants. The lab plans to continue offering fellowship and training opportunities to scholars and students.

“SNAPL’s education mission is to nurture the next generation of researchers, including students and visiting scholars, and we firmly believe that the laboratory model, proven successful in the sciences — with its mentorship and hands-on engagement — holds immense potential for nurturing talent in the social sciences,” notes Shin. “I look forward to our team’s contributions to U.S.-Asia dialogue and Asia’s security and prosperity, and I am grateful to our supporters for providing foundational funding for the lab.”

On August 29-30, 2023, SNAPL will co-host its inaugural event, the Sustainable Democracy Roundtable, jointly with the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies and APARC's Korea Program. The two-day event will convene scholars and students from the United States and South Korea to present solutions that address global democratic backsliding, promote social progress, and advance long-term development.

For more information about SNAPL, visit the lab’s website at aparc.stanford.edu/snapl.

What's next for Korean democracy? How can Korea advance to the next stage of its development? APARC and Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin addresses these and other questions in his new book, The Adventure of Democracy: How to Cross the Era of Conflict and Division. According to Shin, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, a professor of Sociology, and the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea, democracy develops through steady adventures. He considers its evolution in Korea, reflects on Korean politics of division and confrontation and their sources, and seeks alternatives.

The book, which has been released in Korea, is a compilation of Shin's recent series of essays, “Shin's Reflections on Korea,” published by Sindonga (New East Asia), Korea’s oldest monthly magazine. In these essays, Shin explores “Next Korea”— Korea’s vision for the future — and outlines a roadmap for achieving it across the realms of politics, economics, society, culture, and foreign policy. He offers an outside perspective that allows him to see the “forest” of Korea’s path toward the future.

By any measure, Korea has made remarkable achievements in a short time, Shin writes. “It has overcome war, division, and authoritarian rule to become a country with the 10th largest economy in the world in only seven decades. Its soft power is sweeping across the globe, and Korea has world-class talent in every field. This is truly a miracle, and Koreans have every reason to be proud.”

Korea, however, stands at a critical crossroads, according to Shin. Populism and polarization pose challenges to the country’s democracy at a time of leadership crisis, Korean society is remarkably divided, and its aging population presents formidable obstacles to economic growth. Inter-Korean relations are in dire straits, and Seoul confronts a delicate regional balancing act amid intensified Sino-U.S. tensions. Will it settle for the status quo or progress to become a global leader?

Selected coverage of Shin's book in Korean media:

The Korea Times
The Korea Daily
Yonhap News
Busan Ilbo
Chosun
TV Chosun News
Donga Ilbo
Hankook Ilbo
Kookmin Ilbo
Kyosu Shinmun
Kyunghyang Shinmun
Metro Seoul
Munhwa Ilbo
SBS News
Shindonga Magazine (interview) 
Shindona Magazine (book review)

View a Japanese version of this announcement.

The Japanese public supports women’s advancement in society, finds the Stanford Japan Barometer, a survey platform launched by the Japan Program at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). This result is somewhat surprising, considering Japan’s poor showing in global gender equality rankings.

Led by Professor of Sociology Kiyoteru Tsutsui, the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and director of the Japan Program at APARC, and Charles Crabtree, an assistant professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College and a former visiting assistant professor with the Japan Program, the Stanford Japan Barometer (SJB) is a periodic public opinion survey on political, economic, and social issues concerning contemporary Japan with three main parts: (1) questions about respondents’ demographic background; (2) a stable set of questions about support for policy issues, political parties, public institutions, and international entities; and (3) a thematically focused set of questions and experimental studies on topics of great relevance at the time of the survey. The survey is conducted with a national, quota-based sample of 8,000 Japanese residents.

In the first installation of the survey, conducted in late November 2022, the SJB examined issues concerning gender and sexuality in Japan. It found, among other results, that most Japanese are in favor of recognizing same-sex unions and support a legal change to allow married couples to keep separate surnames. The SJB also examined questions related to women’s advancement in Japanese society, the focus of the following report.

One prominent gender equality issue that often recurs in Japanese public discourse is women’s under-representation in prominent positions, especially in politics and business. According to the latest Global Gender Gap Report released by the World Economic Forum, Japan ranks 116th out of 146 countries in terms of gender equality. Japan fares well in the categories of Education and Health, but in Politics and Economy, it ranks 139th and 121st respectively. In another ranking on women’s role and influence in the workforce, the Glass-Ceiling Index compiled by The Economist, Japan ranks second-worst among the 29 developed countries surveyed. Japan barely avoided the lowest ranking (a dubious distinction taken by South Korea), but indeed ranks lowest in terms of the proportion of women in national parliaments (single or Lower House) among OECD countries, with only 10% of Lower House members being female.

To better understand this striking gender disparity, Tsutsui and Crabtree had respondents complete conjoint experiments that examined what types of candidates the Japanese public is more likely to support for a Diet seat and an external corporate board member. The results show, perhaps surprisingly, that Japanese people prefer women for these positions (52% to 48% for the Diet and 51% to 49% for corporate board). Women support female candidates more than men, but men also prefer female candidates over male ones, averaging across all other candidate characteristics such as education and occupational background. These differences are fairly stable across different ages, educational and family backgrounds, and political party support. Contrary to what gender representation in politics and corporate leadership would indicate, the SJB results suggest that there is robust support for women’s representation in those powerful positions across different spectrums of the Japanese public.

Tsutsui and Crabtree also asked a series of questions about views on gender roles and women’s advancement in Japanese society. Respondents were particularly supportive of more men taking parental leave and helping with childcare, registering 6.3 on a scale of 0-10 (5 being neutral and a number larger than 5 indicating support for the statement). They were not supportive of the statements about traditional gender roles, such as “Men should work outside the home and women should stay home” (3.8), or “Boys should be raised to be manly and girls should be raised to be womanly” (4.3). Interestingly, for all these questions, there is a statistically significant difference between male and female respondents, with men showing greater support for traditional gender roles, although the general trend is a shift away from traditional gender roles even among men.

On questions concerning women’s advancement in Japanese society, the Japanese public demonstrated strong support for the argument that more efforts should be made to increase the number of female politicians (5.8), executives (5.9), and board members (5.8). There is no substantial difference between men and women for these questions, indicating that the support for women’s advancement in politics and business is broadly shared across genders.

When it comes to using a quota to ensure women’s seats in the national Diet, management positions, and board rooms, the opinions are divided across the gender line, with women being significantly more supportive (5.1, 5.2, 5.2) than men (4.8, 4.7, 4.7). This likely indicates that men are threatened by the idea of quota as it would reduce the likelihood of their advancement toward these powerful positions.

Men’s resistance to quotas notwithstanding, overall, the Japanese public supports women’s advancement in society, perhaps recognizing the need for Japan to change in light of the embarrassing showing in global rankings of women’s empowerment. These results suggest that the slow pace of change in women’s advancement in Japan might be attributable to the behavior of gatekeepers, who are mostly older men who come from different socioeconomic backgrounds than the SJB’s average survey respondent, rather than to a lack of public support.

For media inquiries about the survey, please reach out to:
Noa Ronkin
APARC Associate Director for Communications and External Relations
noa.ronkin@stanford.edu