In a message to an audience comprised of Japanese Consulate representatives, Stanford faculty and staff, and Bay Area community members, Executive Director Minami Tsubouchi noted that Tokyo-based BEYOND Tomorrow was established to support the young victims who, despite facing great adversity from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, did not lose hope and continue to embrace a dream to give back to society in the future. Tsubouchi was followed by two small-group presentations by 12 high school and college student delegates from BEYOND Tomorrow.

One of the delegates, Masahide Chiba, Ofunato City, Iwate Prefecture, spoke about losing his mother and grandmother yet expressed his dreams for helping to rebuild Ofunato and other cities in the Tohoku region of Japan. Chiba is one of two students who are featured in a documentary, After the Darkness, being produced by Naomi Funahashi, Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) Manager and Instructor, SPICE, and award-winning filmmaker, Risa Morimoto, Edgewood Pictures, of New York City.

Dr. Michael H. Armacost, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, noted, “Programs such as BEYOND Tomorrow are invaluable to Japan’s post-3/11 recovery. They provide a platform for both future generation leaders to develop a deeper understanding of U.S.–Japan relations on a grassroots level. The students’ stories sharing their grief and their hope were truly inspiring.”

This trans-Pacific gathering took place at SPICE’s annual Japan Day, which this year was scheduled to coincide with the delegates’ trip to the United States. During Japan Day, SPICE also recognized top high school scholars of the RSP, an online course on Japan. The BEYOND Tomorrow delegates mingled with other attendees, including RSP honorees David Chao and Kaylyn Cheape, RSP alumni, and distinguished RSP advisory committee members Ambassador Michael Armacost (Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow, Shorenstein APARC); Professor Emeritus Daniel I. Okimoto and Professor Phillip Lipscy, both of Stanford; and Professor Emeritus Nisuke Ando, Doshisha University and Kyoto University. Ando made the trip from Kyoto to Stanford for Japan Day.

Following the event, RSP and Stanford alumnus, Sekhar Paladugu, guided the delegates on a campus tour. Reflecting on the day, Gary Mukai, SPICE Director, commented, “The RSP and BEYOND Tomorrow both share the objective of cultivating future leaders. It has long been Naomi’s and my hope to bring youth together from both sides of the Pacific with hopes that an international community of students will be formed amongst them. Today was one of the highlights of my 25 years at Stanford University.”

Photo credit: Tomoyuki Sowa

After their stay in the Bay Area, the delegates flew to New York to give additional presentations and simply to experience life on the East Coast. There they attended a barbeque in Sleepy Hollow with David Janes, Director of Foundation Grants and Assistant to the President, United States-Japan Foundation, one of the supporting organizations of BEYOND Tomorrow and the original funding organization of the RSP. It was a chance to provide an opportunity for the students to interact with a diverse group of Americans and Japanese in a relaxed atmosphere and to see a historic part of the Hudson River Valley. Janes commented, “I was deeply inspired by the courage of the students to share their stories with us and moved by their embrace of life despite the tragedies they have each experienced.”

The Center for Global Partnership, the Japan Foundation, is the current primary funding organization of the RSP.

David Chao

The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) honored three of the top students of the 2013 Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) and celebrated the tenth anniversary of the RSP at a Japan Day event at Stanford University on August 9, 2013. The three 2013 RSP Japan Day honorees—David Chao, Kaylyn Cheape, and Brittany Schulte—offered research presentations on a variety of Japan-related topics. The event also included inspiring presentations by 12 Japanese high school and college students from BEYOND Tomorrow, a nonprofit organization for students from the Tohoku region of Japan who are overcoming the adversities of the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Japan Day featured welcoming comments by Gary Mukai, SPICE Director, and opening remarks on youth and the future of Japan and U.S.–Japan relations by Acting Consul General Nobuhiro Watanabe, Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco. Acting Consul General Watanabe noted, “I am impressed by the students’ keen insight on Japan and Japan–U.S. relations. They are the ones to shoulder this relationship in the coming years and months, and we are very much looking forward to the day when these students will engage in furthering our two countries’ strong ties.”

Naomi Funahashi, the RSP Manager and Instructor, gave an overview of the RSP to the Japan Day audience of over 50 people. Named in honor of former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer, a leading educator and noted scholar of Japanese history and culture, the RSP is an online course on Japan and U.S.–Japan relations that is offered annually to 25–30 high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors across the United States.

David Chao (junior, The Thacher School; Ojai, CA), Kaylyn Cheape (senior, Leilehua High School; Wahiawa, HI) and Brittany Schulte (junior, Pinewood School; Los Altos, CA) were recognized for their coursework and exceptional research essays. They presented their research which focused on the following topics, respectively: the role of mass media in shaping public opinion in China and Japan, the dual crises of Japan’s aging population and shifting priorities of the Japanese healthcare system, and how the uniquely Japanese concern with mastery and perfection has played a role in guiding Japan’s economic success.

Kaylyn Cheape	Brittany Schulte

SPICE was honored to also welcome four RSP alumni to the Japan Day event: Joey Burnett (RSP 2006), Sekhar Paladugu (RSP 2007), Amy Ishiguro (RSP 2011), and Aryo Sorayya (RSP 2012). Their presence offered a reminder of the significant and lasting impact of the RSP on its students.

Commemorating a decade of developing future leaders, the RSP presents a creative and innovative approach to teaching high school students about Japan and U.S–Japan relations. The program provides American students with unique opportunities to interact with diplomats and top scholars affiliated with Stanford University, the University of Tokyo, the University of Hawaii, and other institutions through online lectures and discussions, and introduces both American and Japanese perspectives on many historical and contemporary issues. The RSP honorees, the RSP alumni, and the visiting students from Japan enjoyed several opportunities throughout the day to engage in meaningful exchanges about their respective countries and the U.S.–Japan relationship. Both the RSP and BEYOND Tomorrow aim to cultivate future leaders, and Japan Day afforded a unique opportunity for dialog and possible collaboration between American and Japanese youth. Importantly, SPICE also presented a plaque to Professor Emeritus Daniel I. Okimoto, Stanford University, in honor of his support of the RSP since before its inception in 2003.

The distinguished RSP advisory committee members (Professor Emeritus Nisuke Ando, Doshisha University; Ambassador Michael H. Armacost, Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, Stanford University; Professor Phillip Lipscy, Stanford University, Professor Emeritus Daniel I. Okimoto, Stanford University) were all in attendance.

The RSP is currently funded by a generous three-year grant from the Center for Global Partnership, the Japan Foundation, and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

The RSP will be accepting applications for the 2014 program in September and October 2013. For more information about the RSP, visit www.reischauerscholars.org or contact Naomi Funahashi RSP Manager and Instructor, at nfunahashi@stanford.edu.

By Sangsoo Im, Correspondent, Yonhap News, San Francisco
Translated by Annie Lim, coordinator and instructor, Sejong Korean Scholars Program, SPICE.

Stanford University, one of the most prestigious American universities on the West Coast, has launched an unprecedented online lecture series on Korea for American high school students. 

This is the first time a Korean Studies program has been made available to high school students.

Created as part of the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), this one-semester program offers courses on Korean history, culture, religion, art, and politics, consisting of lectures, online discussions, and assignments.

The name for this program is the Sejong Korean Scholars Program (SKSP).

The program, which launched last month, is managed under the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) under the leadership of Director Gi-Wook Shin and is funded by the Korea Foundation. 

Alongside Gi-Wook Shin, David Straub (former U.S. Department of State’s senior foreign service officer specializing in Korean affairs), Charles K. Armstrong (director of Center for Korean Research at Columbia University), and Michael Robinson (professor at Indiana University) are some of the top scholars involved in the program.

The program is free, and the instruction is in English. Approximately 60 students applied, and 27 were selected on the basis of their grade point averages, essays, and letters of recommendation.

SKSP’s coordinator and instructor Annie Lim says, “The students who applied are interested in a variety of topics ranging from Korean history to Korean pop culture.”

Upon completion of the courses, the students will receive credits through Stanford Continuing Studies.

A similar program on Japan has been in progress at Stanford University for 10 years.

Stanford University is the first among American universities to create textbooks and curriculum on Korean studies for high school students and has begun to reach out to the 50,000 high schools in the United States.

APARC’s director and one of the founding members of SKSP, Gi-Wook Shin points out, “Along with Yoko’s Story and so on, American junior high and senior high schools’ distorted history textbooks containing Korean history have received a lot of criticism, but there has not been much effort to rectify it. Through SKSP, we hope that American high school students can acquire a broader perspective and expand their range of knowledge and understanding about Korea.”

SPICE has been transformed from a small local high school program begun by Professor Victor Hao Li (formerly of Stanford Law School), a number of Stanford students, a visionary group of nearby teachers and educators, and me in 1973 into a major national project. SPICE began as a modest start-up focused on Asia and has evolved into an extraordinary asset contributing to broad global education. It is an honor to have been in on the beginning of such a noble effort.

—John Lewis, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics (Emeritus);        Center for International Security and Cooperation faculty member

Today, the efforts of the Stanford Program on International and Cross Cultural Education (SPICE) to internationalize the K–12 classroom span a broad range of topics—security, the arts, the environment, global health, and international relations. With the dawn of 2013, SPICE looks back to its roots and celebrates 40 years of promoting the study of China. The roots of the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) date back to the Bay Area China Education Project (BAYCEP), which commenced operation in 1973. John Lewis was instrumental in the founding of BAYCEP, and several other scholars of Chinese studies, including Albert Dien, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures (Emeritus), were actively involved in BAYCEP’s early years and still remain involved with SPICE today.

The first director of BAYCEP was Dr. David Grossman, SPICE’s founding director. He noted the following about the creation of BAYCEP:

“The original impetus was the Nixon visit to China in 1972, and the realization that the general public and students were not prepared for this radical shift in geopolitics. The problem was how to bridge this profound knowledge gap.” 

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A BAYCEP publication from the 1980s

The purpose of BAYCEP was to serve as a bridge between Stanford experts on China and K–12 schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. This was accomplished in two ways—China-focused curriculum development and teacher professional development. By 1976, other projects on Japan, Africa, and Latin America were established, and they along with BAYCEP came to form the nucleus of SPICE.

Continuing the 40-year tradition of teacher professional development on China, SPICE staff members Jonas Edman, Naomi Funahashi, Rylan Sekiguchi, and Johanna Wee recently collaborated with Dr. Clayton Dube, Executive Director, U.S.–China Institute, University of Southern California, to lead a series of China-centered sessions at the annual European Council of International Schools November Conference. The sessions were held in Nice, France, from November 22 through 25, 2012, and included an intensive daylong institute called “China in the Humanities.” The institute comprised four theme-specific mini-sessions—Dynasties, Cultural Revolution, Rural and Urban China, and China in the World—each of which involved both a lecture and a pedagogically-focused curriculum demonstration. The featured SPICE-developed curriculum units (with primary Stanford academic advisors listed) were Chinese Dynasties Parts One and Two (Albert Dien, Professor Emeritus); China's Cultural Revolution (Andrew Walder, Professor, Sociology); China in Transition: Economic Development, Migration, and Education (Scott Rozelle, Director, Rural Education Action Project); 10,000 Shovels (Karen Seto, former Assistant Professor, School of Earth Sciences); and Divided Memories (Gi-Wook Shin, Professor, Sociology, and Director, Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, and Daniel Sneider, Associate Director, Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center).

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Authored by Rylan Sekiguchi, Curriculum Specialist, and HyoJung Jang, Curriculum Writer

As SPICE moves into its fifth decade, the staff will continue its China-focused curriculum development and teacher professional development seminars. SPICE recently began developing a curriculum unit on sustainable development in China in consultation with Len Ortolano, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering. Also, from January 2013, SPICE will begin its twelfth year of offering two 30-hour seminars on East Asia—one for middle school teachers and one for high school teachers. The seminars feature lectures by FSI and Center for East Asian Studies faculty and curriculum demonstrations by SPICE staff that focus on China, and other northeast Asian nations.

In addition, SPICE plans to create of a high school student-focused national distance-learning course on China that is parallel to SPICE’s current distance-learning course offerings, which include the Reischauer Scholars Program on Japan and the Sejong Korean Scholars Program.

With Stanford President John Hennessy’s announcement of the K–12 initiative in 2006, Stanford renewed its long-time commitment to improving public education in the United States. SPICE will continue to make FSI scholarship in the areas of security, the arts, the environment, global health, and international relations accessible to young students. FSI believes it has the opportunity and the obligation to utilize its resources to help address issues facing our schools.

The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) honored three top students of the 2012 Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP)—Brooke Nowakowski (San Antonio, TX), Seunghwa Madeleine Han (San Ramon, CA), and Emily Waltman (Tenafly, NJ)—at the RSP Japan Day event at Stanford University on August 10, 2012. The RSP, an online course on Japan and U.S.–Japan relations that is offered to high school students across the United States, recognized the students based on their coursework and exceptional research essays.

The event featured remarks by Consul General Hiroshi Inomata, Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco; Renay Loper, Associate Program Officer, Center for Global Partnership (CGP), Japan Foundation, New York; Naomi Funahashi, RSP Manager and Instructor; and Gary Mukai, SPICE Director. Professor Emeritus Daniel I. Okimoto, Stanford University, gave a compelling talk on Japan’s energy options since the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northern Japan. SPICE also presented a plaque to Consul Midori Yamamitsu, Director of the Japan Information Center, Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco, in honor of her longtime support of the RSP.

The program was highlighted by presentations by student honorees Nowakowski, Han, and Waltman, who wrote research essays on the modern consequences of cultural change in Okinawa, the rise of feminism in Japanese politics, and the role of propaganda in fueling racism and public support for Japanese-American internment, respectively. Many individuals and organizations from the San Francisco Bay Area’s Japan and U.S.–Japan community and Stanford University were in attendance. Funahashi noted the following about her three student honorees: “The poise and intellect of these young scholars is truly impressive. It is an honor to work with such bright, inquisitive, and engaging students who share a genuine interest in learning about Japan and fostering U.S.–Japan relations.”

Brooke Nowakowski	Seunghwa Madeleine Han

Entering its tenth year in 2013, the RSP presents a creative and innovative approach to teaching high school students about Japan and U.S–Japan relations. The program provides American students with unique opportunities to interact with top scholars and diplomats, and introduces both American and Japanese perspectives on many historical and contemporary issues. 

Named in honor of former Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer, a leading educator and noted scholar of Japanese history and culture, the RSP annually selects 25–30 exceptional high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors from throughout the United States. Since 2003, the RSP has cultivated a model for reaching a diverse population of students by utilizing technology to share high-quality course material across large distances. Using online lectures and discussions, the program provides students with a broad overview of Japanese history, literature, religion, art, politics, economics, education, and contemporary society, with a focus on the U.S.–Japan relationship. Prominent scholars affiliated with Stanford University, the University of Tokyo, the University of Hawaii, and other institutions provide lectures and engage students in online dialogue. The RSP received initial funding for the program (2004–2006) from the United States–Japan Foundation. The program is currently funded by a generous grant from CGP, Japan Foundation, and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

The RSP will begin accepting applications for the 2013 program in September 2012. For more information about the RSP, visit www.reischauerscholars.org or contact Naomi Funahashi, RSP Manager and Instructor, at nfunahashi@stanford.edu.