Hideshi Tokuchi joined Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA (Sasakawa USA) in September 2016 following a 36-year career of service to the government of Japan, most recently as the nation’s first vice-minister of defense for international affairs. During most of his service, Tokuchi focused on Japan-U.S. defense cooperation, security-related legislation, defense buildup programs, and operations of the Japanese Defense Forces. He participated in the review work of Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation twice (in 1997 and 2015), and in the establishment of National Defense Program Guidelines twice (in 2004 and 2013), and also in security-related legislation, including Peace-Keeping Operations Law, a set of legislation to deal with contingency, Counter-Piracy Law, and most recently the new security legislation to put the new interpretation of the Japanese Constitution into practice. He was a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) of the U.S. National Defense University (NDU). He taught a course on Japan’s national security policy at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo for 14 years from 2002 to 2015 as a visiting professor, and has been teaching Japan’s defense policy at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo since 2006 as a part-time instructor.
He holds several positions in other academic and research institutions: senior fellow at GRIPS, visiting fellow at the Institute of International Relations of Sophia University, senior research advisor at the Institute for International Policy Studies (IIPS); research committee member at Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS); and non-resident fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University. Tokuchi received his bachelor of laws degree from the University of Tokyo in 1979, and received a master of arts in law and diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1986.
