1960-1966

In 1958, I chanced to meet representatives from Rikkyo University, in Tokyo, Japan, who were seeking an American political scientist to teach in the newly-founded College of Law and Politics of that well-established "Big Six" university. After receiving my PhD from The American University in Washington, DC, in June 1959, I attended the Yale Institute of Far Eastern Languages, in New Haven, studying Japanese language and culture, and moved to Tokyo in August 1960. My family lived on the campus of Rikkyo University in the Ikebukuro section of Tokyo. My three children (one of whom was born in Tokyo) all attended Japanese kindergarten and elementary school. We all lived as fully a "Japanese" life as possible.

As an Assistant Professor in an all-Japanese environment, I lectured in the Japanese language as best I could, teaching courses in American politics and research methods. I was a member of the Japanese Political Science Association, and attended many workshops and conferences of the Association throughout Japan. I also served as founding advisor for the Political Science Club of Rikkyo University, and as an advisor for the English Speaking Society and the English-language student newspaper, Rikkyo Echo.

I also taught, in English, for the Foreign Training Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and for the Far Eastern Division of the University of Maryland.

In the summer of 1963, all members of my family, and myself, returned briefly to the United States while I attended the Survey Research Institute of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In the summer of 1965, I alone attended the second NSF-sponsored Institute on Mathematical Applications in Political Science, held at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. I was invited by the organizer of that workshop to return to the United States to teach at Virginia Polytechnic Institute where he was going as chair of the newly-created Department of Political Science.

My major research projects in Japan were:

Attitudes of Japanese Supreme Court and High Court Judges, funded by the Rikkyo University Research Fund ("Life history and attitudes of Japanese High Court judges," Western Political Quarterly, June 1967)

A public opinion based study (N=980) of the religious and political attitudes and behavior of Tokyo citizens, funded by the American Council of Learned Societies ("The 'Protestant Ethic' in Japan," Journal of Developing Areas, October 1966)

The political activities of the Komeito (the political party of the Soka Gakkai, a Nichiren Buddhist organization), and a comparison of the Japanese and American members of the Soka Gakkai, also partially funded by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Rikkyo University Research Fund ("The Soka-Gakkai: A socio-political interpretation," Contemporary Religions in Japan, September 1965)

Ethical and methodological problems in political science ("Methodological problems in political science," Rikkyo Hogaku, 1962, and The Ethics of Democracy [Hyogensha, 1963], both in Japanese.