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IR Office will be closed from  2021 Aug 7 to 2021 Aug-16.

Thank you so much for your understanding.

During Summer Break（Aug.2-Sept.24）,office will be opened as follows

Weekdays ： 1：00pm - 5：00pm　(Offiec will be closed at 28th)

On July 3, the College of International Relations held on Kinugasa Campus the "Global Simulation Gaming (GSG)" event in a hybrid format combining in-person and online participation, taken by second and 3rd-year students* as a regular course.

 

GSG is a course in which students take on the role of International Organizations, States, NGOs, Corporations and experience international relations through policymaking, international conferences, and negotiations.

 

(*) Basically, the course is for 2nd-year students. However, GSG was closed in AY 2020 due to the spread of the COVID-19; it is why this academic year, the course was exceptionally offered jointly for second and 3rd-year students.

 

This year, the theme was [International Poverty Provision and Sustainability Development].

 

From April to June, each team of students planned their strategies and prepared for the GSG event day. In addition to the "Security Council" and the "UN General Assembly” simulation, poverty-related project meetings and NGO outreach have been held. Students learned about international relations through the agreements and negotiations process.

 

According to the student's surveys, there were comments such as,

“As an actor, I was able to achieve not only the tourism-related plans and goals I had set in advance, but also other aspects such as education, environment, study abroad programs, and human rights.”

“By studying together with GS and IR majors, I feel that I was able to improve my negotiation skills in a language that is not my mother tongue. Also, the presence of people of different nationalities brought diversity to the way of thinking, and it was nice to have a sense of realism as if it were an actual international negotiation.”

 

The College of International Relations will continue to enhance its educational programs and promote interaction among students while paying close attention to infection control.

This lecture provides an analysis of the crucial period in the lead-up to the Korean War based on archives in Russian and English. It analyzes the superpower rivalry and how it shaped the post-World War II Japan and greater East Asia. By scrutinizing the competing visions for the new order based on primary sources, the lecture provides insights into the upheavals in which postwar Japanese nation-state and society were forged. The lecture also uses the guest speaker’s own research as a case study to shed light on the origins and course of the Cold War confrontation and its impact on the postwar Japanese society.

The students were heavily engaged, and we had so many comments and questions we easily filled the allotted time. The contents made the students think about the Korean War and Earl Postwar period in North East Asia in new and innovative ways. This proved an excellent introduction to the topic of the seminar this time: ‘the international history of the Korean War’

On 2020 December 18th, the College of IR hosted guest lecture by Prof. Ra Mason (Sasakawa Lecturer in International Relations and Japanese Foreign Policy University of East Anglia) in US Politics and Foreign Policy(Taught by Professor Thomas French).

The lecture examines Okinawa as a key site in regional relations, located at the intersection of current Sino-Western rivalries. It thereby adopts a multilayered, eclectic approach to Japan’s national security and regional relations more broadly from an Okinawan perspective. The session therein examines multiple layers of security on Okinawa from the perspectives of the state, market and society. This allows students to take part in a multifaceted reexamination of the US-Japan Alliance, Sino-Japanese and Sino-American dyads, and elucidates the key role that actors on Okinawa have to play in all these relationships.
The session is presented as a multi-part asynchronous lecture, followed by synchronous Q&A.

The content is research-led, feeding from research currently being undertaken for an ongoing collaborative project being conducted by the speaker and colleagues at Ritsumeikan University, led by Professor Keiji Nakatsuji, and forms part of a growing institutional research and teaching exchange relationship between Ritsumeikan University and the University of East Anglia.

The students were actively engaged and the time allotted for questions and answers was filled easily. Professor Mason answered many questions on a range of issues connected to Okinawa and its position within US and Japanese security, including on security, economic, cultural, linguistic and political issues. The students gained valuable insights from a specialist on this subject and professor Mason was very impressed with the quality of their questions and comments.