Shotaro Oshima

US-Japan relations; trade; foreign policy

Shotaro Oshima was a member of the Japanese Foreign Service between 1968 and 2008. During those 40 years, he had the honor of serving in various positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo as well as in various capitals such as Bangkok, Washington (twice), Tel Aviv, Moscow, Riyadh, and Seoul. When stationed in Geneva at another point in his career, Oshima dealt with the World Trade Organization (WTO) as well as the United Nations and its agencies there.

Between 2008 and 2012, Oshima was a member of the Appellate Body of the WTO. He returned to serve the government from 2012 to 2013, working on the Trans-Pacific Partnership before the Government of Japan entered the negotiations. During this period, and for some years afterward, he taught at the Graduate School of Public Policy at Todai and the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo, as a practitioner of foreign policy and trade negotiations.

From 2013 to 2020, Oshima worked at the Tokyo-based International Institute for Economic Studies, a research institute founded by the Toyota Motor Corporation.

For roughly 10 years, Oshima has been researching the history of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Japan in the 1850s and 1860s. He is currently at Columbia University to learn more about America's diplomacy toward Japan during this period.

PUBLICATIONS IN ENGLISH

"Why the 1920s U.S. Ban on Japanese Immigrants Matters Today," the Huffington Post, December 22, 2015

"Wrapping the July (2004) Package" in Robert Kanitz (ed.), Managing Multilateral Trade Negotiations: The Role of the WTO Chairman (London: Cameron May, 2011)