Japan’s Development Assistance, a Conversation with Mr Hiroshi Kato

“Japan’s Development Assistance”, a Conversation with Mr Hiroshi Kato, Vice-President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Once the world’s largest development assistance provider, Japan seems less in the forefront now. However, the recently published volume Japan’s Development Assistance: Foreign Aid and the Post-2015 Agenda, edited by Mr Kato and others, demonstrates that Japan, with its own unique aid philosophy and models of aid, has ample lessons to offer to the international community as it pursues new paradigms of development cooperation. The volume is an up-to-date account of Japan’s development assistance — offering its readers a comprehensive understanding of one of Japan’s major instruments of its post-World War II foreign policy — and is thus ripe for discussion.

Vice-President Kato joins UNU Rector David M. Malone for a conversation looking into the origins, major characteristics and historical changes of Japan’s development cooperation, while also investigating its interactions with major Asian neighbours and international organisations.

About the Speaker
Hiroshi Kato is Vice-President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Since joining JICA in 1978, he has served in various positions, including the General Affairs Department, the Planning Department, and the Southeast Asia Department. He also has experience working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (in Tokyo and in Côte D’Ivoire).

He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1978 majoring in Asian history. He later earned his master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University in 1988. He has served as Visiting Lecturer and Professor at Kobe University Graduate School of International Studies at various times since 2003. He has been on the board of directors of the Japan Society for International Development since 2002.

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