In this Salon, they are joined by Yoko Iwama, Professor of National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) and director of Security and Strategy Program (SSP) at GRIPS. Discussion will focus on Prime Minister Kishida’s state visit to the US in April, the first such visit by a Japanese leader since Shinzo Abe in 2015. The visit comes ahead of talks in Washington, in which the two leaders are expected to agree on the review of the long-standing security arrangements between the two countries.

Yoko Iwama is Professor of National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS). She is also the director of Security and Strategy Program (SSP) at GRIPS. She graduated from Kyoto University in 1986 and earned her PhD in Law at the University. Having served as Research Assistant of Kyoto University (1994–97), Special Assistant of the Japanese Embassy in Germany (1998–2000), and Associate Professor at GRIPS (2000), she was appointed Professor at GRIPS in 2009. She was a student at the Free University of Berlin between 1989-1991, during which period she encountered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the two Germanies. Her specialty is international security and European diplomatic history centering on NATO, Germany, and nuclear strategy. She has served on numerous government committees including the Advisory panel on the Reconstruction of a Legal Basis for Security (2006-7, 2013-14).

Her publications include John Baylis and Yoko Iwama (eds.) Joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty: Deterrence, Non-Proliferation and the American Alliance, (Routledge 2018); Pascal Lottaz and Yoko Iwama(eds.) Neutral Europe and the Creation of the Nonproliferation Regime 1958-1968 (Routledge, 2024); Yoko Iwama (ed.) The Realities of Nuclear Sharing: NATO’s Experience and Japan (Shinzansha, 2023 in Japanese：核共有の現実―NATOの経験と日本). She is currently working on a co-authored book on the Neutrals and the NPT (in English). She received the 2022 Inoki Masamichi Prize of Japan Society for Security Studies for her book, The 1968 Global Nuclear Order and West Germany (Yuhikaku, 2021 in Japanese: 核の一九六八年体制と西ドイツ).