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CGP Grant Program Intellectual Exchange 2012

Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.    
Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies (Year 1)    
Project Director: Martin Indyk, Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy
$22,704    
This project aims to bring qualified scholars to the institution for high-level intellectual exchange between the U.S., Japan, and other countries in Asia. The individuals are mid-to-senior career professionals who spend several months at Brookings researching and writing on a topic of relevance to their work in Japan. They also interact with other Visiting Fellows from Asia and with the broader think tank and policy community in Washington.    

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
, Washington, D.C.    
Senior Research Associate on Japan (Year 1)    
Project Director: Douglas H. Paal, Vice President of Studies
$100,000    
The aim of this project is to support a new position in Carnegie’s growing Asia Program to focus research on political, economic, and social issue in Japan and affecting the U.S.-Japan relationship. This scholar will engage in activities and produce publications that will inform the American and international audience, particularly U.S. policymakers and leaders in Asia, so they can make decisions based on deeper analysis and better-informed recommendations.    

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY    
Tripartite Research Network for Low-Carbon Building Sector in the US, Japan, and China in Post-Kyoto Era: Integration of Approaches of Innovative Business Models (bottom-up) and Effective Policy Framework (top-down) (Year 2)    
Project Director: Ying Hua, Assistant Professor
$21,591
This project examines the role of the private sector in addressing global climate mitigation and adaptation in the building sectors in the U.S., Japan, and China, as an important complement to the existing research on building policies for emissions reductions. The team will be researching how bottom-up approaches can be integrated with top-down efforts for a greater, faster, and more sustainable emissions reduction process. Events will include a Delphi study and a series of three symposia. Some of the project outcomes include a tripartite research and business network as well as a consortium to serve as a long-term collaborative platform for continuous research and sustainable projects of investment, technology transfer and knowledge sharing.    

Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C.
Japan’s Political Transition and the US-Japan Alliance (Year 1)
Project Director: Sheila Smith, Senior Fellow for Japan Studies
$55,805
This project will analyze the political transition in Japan as it pertains to the management of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Case studies of specific alliance policies adopted by the new DPJ government will be compared with previous LDP governments to ascertain the extent of policy difference between the two parties.

Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, Oakland, CA
U.S.-Japan-Taiwan Joint Investigation on Transferable Disaster Recovery Lessons (Year 1)
Project Director: Marjorie Greene, Special Projects Manager
$99,990
This two-year project aims to gain and promote a clearer international understanding of how societies can equip communities to become more resilient to disasters through adaptation in the face of risks and uncertainty both before and after major disasters. A series of study tours in Japan, the United States, and Taiwan will address pre and post-disaster resilience planning challenges at the community and societal levels.

East-West Center Washington, D.C., Washington, D.C.
Japan Studies Fellowship Program (Year 2)    
Project Director: Satu Limaye, Director, East-West Center, Washington, D.C.
$93,858    
This program will provide short-term fellowships for young and rising scholars and analysts from the United States and Japan to conduct research on issues of key relevance to the US-Japan partnership in the years to come. The following is required of each fellow: 1. residence at East-West Center, DC generally from 3-6 months including fieldwork in Japan; 2. a scholar/policy-relevant mentor to help guide work; 3. publish at least one article in an EWC publication, and 4. give a public presentation on their research at the EWC.

iLEAP: The Center for Critical Service, Seattle, WA
US-Japan Social Innovation Forum (Year 1)
Project Director: Britt Yamamoto
$98,378
This two-year project includes three aims:1. capacity building and global leadership training for the next generation of Japanese social leaders and entrepreneurs; 2. a platform for Americans to learn from and build practical partnerships of mutual support with Japanese civil society institutions and social businesses; and 3. seed and cultivate new global collaborations within civil society in the Asia-Pacific region in order to best solve key global issues.

Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA
Fiscal Consolidation in Industrialized Economies (Year 1)
Project Director: Gene Park, Assistant Professor
$40,790
This project seeks to improve our understanding of fiscal consolidation – the process of attempting to restore fiscal balance to government finances.  The goal is to generate a better understanding of the fiscal consolidation experiences across a range of countries in order to derive concrete policy implications that will help guide policymarkers in Japan and beyond.

Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA
Disability Policy in Japan and the United States
Project Director: Michael Waterstone, J. Howard Ziemann Fellow and Professor of Law
The goal of this project is to increase knowledge sharing between Japanese and American academics and policymakers about disability law and policy in their respective countries.  In particular, American disability policy notions of reasonable accomodation and translating law into action could be useful in Japanese policymaking, and Japanese law features of social support services could be of use to American policymakers. 

Migration Dialogue, Davis, CA
Migration and Competitiveness: Japan and the U.S. (Year 2)
Project Director: Philip Martin, Professor
$53,397
This project seeks to examine how foreign workers affect competitiveness in key economic sectors in Japan and the US. The goal of this project is to understand how immigration affects local workers as well as the competitiveness of key sectors that hire migrant workers by analyzing the interaction of migrants and labor cost trends, rates of innovation and productivity growth, and training, recruitment and retention systems.

Northeastern Illinois University
, Chicago, IL
Building a Human Security Network between the US and Japan (Year 2)
Project Director: Sangmin Bae, Associate Professor
$35,519
The aim of this project is twofold: to offer opportunities to revisit, evaluate, and disseminate Japan’s human security role and to encourage academic and public discussion of human security in the United States.  The project intends to achieve these goals by hosting public symposiums on human security in Chicago and Tokyo, organizing a conference panel at the International Studies Association, creating a collaborative website, and publishing an edited volume on the human security network between the US and Japan.  

Peace Winds America, Seattle, WA
Japan-US Civil-Military Disaster Preparedness Initiative (Year 2)
Project Director: Charles Aanenson
$28,671
The goal of this initiative is to strengthen the US-Japan alliance, while promoting new partnerships with Indonesia and South Korea in the realm of disaster preparedness and response.  The proposed project seeks to improve the disaster management capacities, collaboration, and coordination efforts of Japan, the US, and South Korea.  Fulfilling the shared responsibility of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, better disaster planning will reduce the devastating impact of natural disasters, while greater cooperation and collaboration will enhance dialogue, and improve bilateral and trilateral relations.

Stanford University, Stanford Alto, CA
Improving Nuclear Safety and Security after Disasters (Year 1) 
Project Director, Scott Sagan, Professor and Senior Fellow
$76,182
This two-year project aims to conduct research on nuclear safety and security lessons that can be culled from the recent tragedy in Japan. Through workshops, conferences, and public events at Stanford and in Tokyo along with an international symposium in Hiroshima, researchers will be reviewing lessons of history and identify best practices. Researchers will then communicate their research findings to policy-makers overseeing the current international system, developing countries committed to nuclear energy programs, and members of the general public. The outcome will be an edited volume based on the research papers.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL
David Goodman Memorial Performing Arts Network (Year 3)
Project Director: Elizabeth Oyler, Professor
$75,101
The goals of this project are to: Build on the expertise of Illinois Japan studies faculty to develop interactive program in pre-modern, modern, and contemporary Japanese music, dance, and theater using digital new-media technologies; Participate in the expanding number of global performing arts networks worldwide; Integrate performing arts exchanges and collaborations with Japan into the curricular and research programs of East Asian Studies, Music, Theater, Computer Science, Art and Design, and other departments at the University of Illinois; Disseminate interactive performing arts programming via the internet and television to sites around the world; assess continuously the impact of the results of these efforts; institutionalize the Japanese performing arts as an integral part of research and teaching at the University of Illinois and other institutions in our worldwide network.

University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
Japanese Global Scholars Program (Year 3)
Project Director: Carl Falsgraf, Director, Center for Applied Second Language Studies
$119,078
The Japanese Global Scholars Program pairs academic with linguistic training and follows the successful Chinese Flagship Program model, which CASLS and its partners have developed and administered for the past four years.  The University of Oregon will work closely with K-12 programs, particularly immersion and heritage programs, to recruit students with Intermediate Japanese language skills.  Once accepted to the University and enrolled in the Japanese Scholars Program, students will live in an immersive environment in a Japanese dorm; enroll in regular content courses taught in Japanese; major in an academic field of their choice; enroll in regular content classes at Meiji University their junior year; and complete a senior capstone project written in Japanese.

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
The Economic Impact of the Great Tohoku-Northern Kanto Earthquake (Year 1)
Project Director: Robert Dekle, Professor
$22,657
This two-year project will bring together economic experts in the US and Japan commission and discuss papers analyzing the economic impact of Japan’s March 2011 earthquake. Workshops will be held in both the US and Japan, results of these papers will be disseminated to government officials and academics.

University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
Integrating Japan into Comparative and Global Health Studies (Year 3)
Project Director: Janet Theiss, Professor, Department of History
$98,233
This project seeks to establish undergraduate and graduate curriculum and research infrastructure for the study of Japanese health issues within our existing social science and Asian Studies programs by creating a new position in Japanese health-related studies.  The logic for establishing an emphasis in Japanese health care issues in global and comparative perspective is both scholarly and institutional.  From a scholarly and policy development standpoint, health care challenges and the reform and development of health care systems have become critical issues worldwide both in developed and developing countries.  In this context, Japan provides both a model of a relatively successful system and a harbinger of challenges to come, especially those posed by aging populations.