Yoichi Funabashi (born 1944) is a Japanese journalist and international affairs commentator whose reporting has focused on diplomacy, security, international economics, and policy-making in Japan. Born in Beijing, he graduated from the University of Tokyo and joined The Asahi Shimbun in 1968. He served as a correspondent in Beijing and Washington, US general bureau chief, and columnist before becoming the newspaper’s editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2010. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and a visiting fellow at the Institute for International Economics, and earned a doctorate in law at Keio University in 1992. In “Tsuka Retsuretsu,” interviews with political leaders and monetary officials illuminated the negotiations and decisions behind international currency politics; the book received the Yoshino Sakuzo Prize. In 2011, Funabashi founded the independent Rebuild Japan Initiative and established a private investigation into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. Drawing on that inquiry and further reporting, “Countdown to Meltdown” reconstructed responses at the accident site and decisions by the government and Tokyo Electric Power Company, examining failures of crisis management and governance. It won the Oya Soichi Nonfiction Award in 2013. Rebuild Japan Initiative became Asia Pacific Initiative in 2017 and merged with the International House of Japan in 2022, where Funabashi is chairman of the Global Council. In the edited volume “Ishibashi Tanzan tono Taiwa,” he and specialists revisited Ishibashi’s arguments about diplomacy, economics, the media, and democracy, considering how the challenges of the era spanning the two world wars illuminate contemporary international order and Japan’s choices.
