Kenji E. Kushida 

Takahashi Research Associate in Japanese Studies at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.

Affiliated researcher at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE). 
PhD in Political Science, University of California Berkeley.
Bachelors and Masters Degrees from Stanford University in Economics and East Asian Studies. 

Academic Research

My ongoing research interests are focused on the interactions between politics, institutions, and market dynamics.  

I have four streams of research

1.    Political economy of Information Technology. For example,  

2.     How Foreign Direct Investment influences institutional change in advanced industrial countries.                  

3.    Japan's Political Economy
  • Japan Under the DPJ (co-edited volume, 2013)
  • Japan's Political Economy Since the 1990s (forthcoming)
4.     Understanding the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
 
 

Books on Biculturalism, International Schools in Japan

I also wrote two general audience books in Japanese. I was raised in Tokyo, and attended the American School in Japan until entering college. With a Japanese father and American mother, I have long been interested in issues of biculturalism and international education in Japan. Building bridges between various aspects of Japan and US has been one of the driving motivations behind everything I do. This led to my first two books in Japanese.

The first, "Biculturalism and the Japanese: Beyond English Linguistic Capabilities" (Japanese) was published in 2006. It advocates thinking of bilingual as separate from bicultural, and contends that double-insider-outsider worldviews can be useful in the journey towards biculturalism. Some of the main points were picked up in the ASIJ Ambassador (alumni magazine) and in a letter to the editor in the Financial Times.

The second, "International Schools, an Introduction" (Japanese, 2008) fills a glaring information gap in Japan; despite intense interest in international schools, very little substantial or useful information is available to the Japanese public. I offer a typology of different types of international schools operating in Japan. I illuminate critical structures, aspects of their educational systems, and explore sociocultural issues. To combat questionable fly-by-night international schools which exploit the lack of information generally available, I offer a set of parameters for parents to use in evaluating international schools.
Revised edition published in 2013 as Amazon Kindle book.