A Canadian Correspondent's Half-Century in Tokyo: Reporting Across Asia in War and Peace
Presented by SFU David Lam Centre
Japan-Canada research and policy speaker and network series
Join us for a hybrid talk with Andrew Horvat as he discusses a wide range of topics, from US-Japan and Canada-Japan relations to the crisis in democracy triggered by the collapse of the legacy news media. Horvat was the longest-serving full-time foreign correspondent for a Canadian news agency in Japan, the now-defunct Southam News of Canada. As one of the few Japanese-speaking news correspondents, he engaged with a broad cross-section of Japanese society, from politicians to policemen. Horvat attended the funeral of Emperor Hirohito and became the first foreign correspondent to ask a question from his son, Emperor Akihito. But most of the time, Horvat spoke with ordinary people like the family in the mountain town of Tsubame, whose knife and fork business faced bankruptcy in 1986 due to the sudden rise in the yen's value, the result of US pressure. Today, Horvat finds a disturbing similarity between the US-Japan trade tensions of the 1980s and President Donald Trump鈥檚 tariff threats and harsh language levelled at Canada.
This talk is part of a new pilot project initiated by Dr. Scott Harrison, a research fellow at SFU's David Lam Centre for Asian Research, designed to create informal spaces for Japan-Canada dialogue and networking. This event offers a unique opportunity to engage in a grassroots initiative focused on enhancing Japan-Canada relations through diverse perspectives and informal exchanges. Supported by The Japan Foundation, this series will run from late March to May 2025.
Speaker Bio
Andrew Horvat, Senior Fellow, Centre for Japanese Research, University of British Columbia
Journalist turned academic, Horvat covered the Asia Pacific region from the 1970s to the 1990s as Tokyo-based correspondent for the Associated Press, Southam News of Canada, the Los Angeles Times, the London Independent and American Public Radio. From 1999 to 2005, as Japan representative of the Asia Foundation, Horvat organized public policy programs on immigration, minority issues and the role of historical reconciliation in regional integration in Europe and Asia. From 2008 to 2013, he served as director of Stanford University鈥檚 overseas studies program in Kyoto, where he taught courses in modern Japanese history and translation, which he continued to do until March 2022 as a visiting professor at Josai International University. Horvat has been a visiting fellow at the David Lam Centre for International Communication (1990), Stanford University鈥檚 Center for East Asian Studies (1994-96) and the National Foreign Language Center in Washington DC (1997). His research at Stanford, on the increasing popularity of Japanese language study by non-native speakers was funded by an Abe Fellowship. Horvat has advised the Japan Foundation on Japanese language policy and the Sasakawa Peace Foundation on exchanges with Central European countries. He is the author of several popular books on language learning and has translated works by Japanese novelist Abe Kobo. A past president of the Foreign Correspondents鈥� Club of Japan, he is at present working on a collection of papers on the news media in Japan. Horvat received his B.A. and M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia.