Takakazu Kuriyama
Takakazu Kuriyama LL.D. '93, who attended Lawrence University in the mid-1950s and went on to become Japan's ambassador to the United States, served as Stephen Edward Scarff Memorial Visiting Professor during the first five weeks of the Fall Term in 2000, team-teaching, with Franklin M. Doeringer, the Nathan M. Pusey Professor of East Asian Studies and professor of history, a course titled The Postwar Japanese-American Relationship.
Ambassador Kuriyama attended Lawrence during the 1954-55 academic year as a special student in an overseas study program sponsored by the Japanese Foreign Ministry. In addition to his year at Lawrence, during which he was elected to the honorary society Mace, Kuriyama also attended Amherst College under the same program. He is a graduate of the University of Tokyo.
Son of a former justice of Japan's Supreme Court, Kuriyama began a distinguished diplomatic career in 1954. Prior to his 1992 appointment as ambassador to the United States, a position he held until 1996, Kuriyama served as vice-minister for foreign affairs, ambassador to Malaysia, director general of the North American Affairs Bureau, and counselor to the Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C. Since leaving public service, he has taught courses on international relations at Tokyo's Waseda University.
In 1993, he returned to Lawrence to receive the honorary degree Doctor of Laws at a special convocation, in which he spoke about the importance of removing "barriers of ignorance" to improve U.S.-Japan relations. In 2006, he delivered the keynote address, “Japan and the United States: The Alliance in Evolution,” at a “Japan in Transition” conference at Lawrence.
In the photograph above, Ambassador and Mrs. Kuriyama are pictured with Nancy V. Scarff (right), a member of the Lawrence University Board of Trustees and a trustee of the Stephen Edward Scarff Memorial Foundation.
