Michael Cucek

ICAS Adjunct Fellow, Adjunct Professor at Waseda University and at Temple University Japan Campus (starting Spring 2016)

Michael Cucek is an analyst and author who had spent half a lifetime looking at Japan and the Japanese. An alumnus of Stanford University with graduate studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Columbia University, he has lived in Tokyo since 1994. An employee of a boutique research institute for 15 years, he now serves the diplomatic and financial communities as an independent consultant on Japanese politics and government policy. He is Adjunct Professor of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Waseda University, teaching political science and international relations. He was Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Sophia University in Spring 2015, teaching courses in globalization and political leadership. In Spring 2016 he will be teaching Japan and a Changing World Order at Temple University Japan Campus and Introduction to International Politics in Fall 2016. He is the author of the blog Shisaku: Marginalia on Japanese Politics and Society (http://shisaku.blogspot.jp/  )  and has been a contributor to Foreign Policy, the East Asia Forum, Al-Jazeera and The New York Times‘ Latitude blog. An Honorary Member of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan he is keenly interested East Asian cultural history, the economic development of pre-modern societies, the politics of personality, lineage and land management, the preservation of local customs and the Japanese sense of humor.