What have China and Japan learned from each other? How has this long interaction shaped the images the two countries have of each other since imperial times to the present? Tracing the different phases of learning between China and Japan from the Tang, Meiji, and post 1972, Ezra Vogel will make suggestions about how the two countries might deal with history issues.

Ezra Vogel is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard. After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan in 1950, he studied sociology in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, receiving his Ph.D. in 1958. He then went to Japan for two years to study the Japanese language and conduct research interviews with middle-class families. From 1961-1964, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, studying Chinese language and history. He was director of Harvard’s Fairbank Center and the Asia Center. He remained at Harvard, becoming lecturer in 1964 and, in 1967, professor. Professor Vogel retired from teaching on June 30, 2000.

Drawing on his original fieldwork in Japan, he wrote Japan's New Middle Class (1963). A book based on several years of interviewing and reading materials from China, Canton Under Communism (1969), won the Harvard University Press faculty book of the year award. The Japanese edition of his book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979) is the all-time best-seller in Japan of non-fiction by a Western author. His study of Guangdong is published as One Step Ahead: Guangdong Under Reform (1989). His book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2011) became a best seller in China. He lectures frequently in Asia, both in Chinese and Japanese. He has visited East Asia every summer since 1958 and has spent a total of over six years in Asia.

Edited by: Zhang Jiang
Source: Stanford Center
http://scpku.fsi.stanford.edu/events/china-japan-relations-long-history