BIO

Former Special Advisor to the Cabinet of
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

TANIGUCHI, Tomohiko is a Specially Appointed Professor at the University of Tsukuba and a special advisor to the Fujitsu Future Studies Center.

He served as a Special Advisor to ABE, Shinzo’s Cabinet from April 2013 until Mr. Abe stepped down as Prime Minister on September 16, 2020. Between February 2013 and March 2014, he was a Councillor, Cabinet Secretariat.

After working for the Japanese business weekly magazine Nikkei Business for about 20 years, he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2005 and became Deputy Press Secretary and Deputy Secretary-General for Public Diplomacy. He also drafted numerous foreign policy speeches for then-Foreign Minister ASO, Taro and then-Prime Minister Abe until he left the ministry three years later.

From 1997 to 2000, while working for Nikkei Business magazine, he lived in London as the magazine’s sole correspondent covering European business and economies, and in 1999 Foreign Press Association in London elected him President, first from “the East of Suez.” He has also spent sabbaticals during his journalistic career, first at the then Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University as a Fulbright visiting fellow, at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies as a visiting fellow, and also at the Brookings Institution as a CNAPS Fellow.

From August 2008 to January 2013, he served as a full-time Executive Advisor to Central Japan Railway Company (JR Tokai), working for then-Chairman KASAI, Yoshiyuki (who has since passed away), while also serving as a special guest professor at Keio University’s Graduate School of System Design and Management (SDM) and as a visiting professor at Meiji University’s School of Global Japanese Studies. He earned a tenure position as a full-time professor at Keio SDM, April 2014, while continuing to serve Prime Minister Abe as his primary foreign policy speech writer. He terminated his tenure, having reached the mandatory retirement age, March 2023. In addition to the positions mentioned at the outset, he is currently a Visiting Professor at Takushoku University’s Institute of World Studies and a Senior Fellow at the GRIPS Alliance of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.

He holds an LL.B. in Law from the University of Tokyo, a Ph.D. in National Security from Takushoku University, and has authored or co-authored more than 10 books on international affairs. One of his most recent books is “Prime Minister Abe’s Speeches,” and he has appeared live numerous times on the BBC, Al Jazeera English, CNN, CNA, TRT, and the like.