API workshop held in Osaka
Masahiro Nakayasu
The Nippon Foundation
The Nippon Foundation
Called to serve as the “Tekijuku” of Asia
Indepth Articles
[Jan. 04, 2010]
Commemorative photograph of participants
A workshop of the Nippon Foundation Fellowships for Asian Public Intellectuals (API Fellowships Program) was held this past November in Osaka. The program which is enters its 10th year in 2010, is intended to develop intellectual leaders who can address issues facing Asian countries. In the opening ceremony, Foundation Chairman Yohei Sasakawa likened the API Fellowships Program to Koan Ogata’s Tekijuku, a Meiji-era school that trained many national leaders, and noted, “Taking action with conviction, is the most important first step toward reforming society. I hope the API Fellowships Program, and the API Community, will become the Tekijuku of today’s Asia.”
Chairman Sasakawa greets attendees during the opening ceremony
The API program is conducted in five countries: Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. This workshop, the eighth in the program, welcomed both current and past API fellows, as well as representatives of partner research institutes in each country. Twenty-five fellows from the eighth term of the program presented their results on the theme of consensus building and related issues toward development of the Asian community in the 21st century. One of these researchers, Mr. Aji from Indonesia, studied the lively urban agriculture movement in the Philippines, reporting, “Enlivening urban agriculture in Indonesia as well could be a solution to some of the problems of food supply and poverty.”
Mr. Aji presents his research results
The workshop also featured lively discussions of subjects such as research topics common to all fields participants engage in and future activity policies. In his keynote lecture, Professor Emeritus Yoneo Ishii of Kyoto University encouraged participants by noting that “one of the important missions of all API fellows is to acquire an in-depth understanding of other cultures, in an effort to build an even better Asia.”
In 2010, the API Fellowships Program will mark its 10th anniversary with the addition of three new participant countries: Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. At the meeting of the international screening committee held prior to the workshop, 27 applicants from eight countries were chosen as fellows for the 2010 program. Also to commemorate the 10th anniversary, a lecture and related activities are planned for May at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines.