Mr. Fumio Matsuo

  Fumio Matsuo was born in Tokyo on August 12th, 1933, and graduated from Gakushuin University with a major in Political Science.

   After joining Kyodo News in 1956, Mr. Matsuo was assigned as a foreign correspondent to New York and Washington from 1964 to 1969 to cover the escalation of the Indochina War, the resulting antiwar movement and political and social upheavals under the Johnson administration and the emergence of Richard Nixon into the Presidency in 1968.

   In 1971, three months prior to Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to China, Mr. Matsuo wrote an article titled “Nixon’s America: Its Skillful Approach to China” in anticipation of the historic reconciliation between the U.S. and China.  When his predictions proved correct, Mr. Matsuo became renowned for his keen insight into the American political arena.  He published the book Nixon’s America in 1972 and translated The Memoirs of Richard Nixon into Japanese in 1980.

   Mr. Matsuo served as Kyodo’s Bangkok Bureau Chief from 1972 to 1975 to cover Southeast Asia, including the final phase of the Indochina War, reporting from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

   From 1981 to 1984, Mr. Matsuo returned to the U.S. as Kyodo’s Washington Bureau Chief, covering the first term of the Reagan Administration.  During the 1980s and 90s he managed K.K. Kyodo News, the business arm of Kyodo News, promoting international financial information services as a joint venture with Dow Jones and The Associated Press.

In 2002, Mr. Matsuo revived his career in journalism as an American specialist, founding the Fumio Matsuo Office in Tokyo.  He has authored numerous articles and essays on U.S. politics and is recognized as one of Japan’s foremost experts on U.S. political affairs.  In 2004, he published the book Democracy with a Gun: The Making of America (published by Shogakukan of Japan), which won the 52nd Annual Award of the Japan Essayist Club.

In 2007,the book was published in English for American and international readers, under the title of Democracy with a Gun: :America and the Policy of Force ( published by  Stone Bridge Press of Berkeley )

   On August 16, 2005, Mr. Matsuo contributed an article to the opinion page of The Wall Street Journal under the title of “Tokyo Needs its Dresden Moment,” in which he proposed that President Bush lay a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial to mourn the deceased and call for permanent reconciliation between the US and Japan, as Germany had achieved with the U.S. at Dresden upon the 50th anniversary of the Dresden Bombings.

   Mr. Matsuo has also lectured at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Journalism and Communication Studies.  He is presently a trustee of the AFS Japan Association, Inc.