Hisahiko Okazaki

Hisahiko Okazaki (岡崎 久彦, Okazaki Hisahiko) (April 8, 1930 – October 26, 2014) was a Japanese diplomat, political commentator, and director of the Okazaki Institute in Tokyo.

Education

Okazaki was born in Dalian, China.

After passing the diplomat examination in 1952, he withdrew from the University of Tokyo (Faculty of Law) and began his career as a diplomat. He received a B.A and M.A. in Economics from the University of Cambridge in 1955. His grandfather is Okazaki Kunisuke.

Diplomatic career

Between 1978 and 1981 he served as director general for foreign relations at the Japan Defense Agency. From 1981 to 1984 he served as minister at the Japanese Embassy in Washington D.C. In 1984-1988 he served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and in 1988-1992 as ambassador to Thailand. In 1992 he retired from the diplomatic service, and worked as senior adviser to Hakuhodo Inc. until 1995. From 1995 onward, he was the director of the Okazaki Institute and a personal adviser to several Prime Ministers of Japan.

Political creed

A member of Nippon Kaigi, an openly revisionist lobby advocating the restoration of militarism, Okazaki denied the Nanking massacre, and viewed Japanese traditional pacifism as a naive view. He supported an increase in the national defense budget above the traditional 1 percent of the GDP, and Shinzo Abe's collective self-defense plans.

Okazaki was a supporter of strong ties with the United States. He joined the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, and deleted the anti-American passages from the textbook.

Regarding the China-Taiwan dispute, Okazaki was of the opinion that a unification between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan would be detrimental to human rights in Taiwan.

Works (partial list)

• From Uraga to San Francisco: A Century of Japanese Diplomacy 1853-1952 (Tokyo: Japan Echo, inc., 2007)

External links

• Brief biography of Hisahiko Okazaki (at the Okazaki Institute) [1]
• Hisahiko Okazaki Oral History Interview, 1995