- Wednesday, November 3, 2021
- 4:00 PM–5:30 PM
- Science Building 110
Asian Studies invites the Calvin community to join us for a special lecture by Dr. Nadejda Bontcheva-Loyaga, entitled, “From a ‘Pacifist’ Country to a ‘Normal’ Country? Japan’s Article 9 Debate in the Context of Increasing Chinese Assertiveness ". This lecture will be held on Wednesday, November 3 at 4:00 p.m. in the Science Building, room 110.
The Japanese constitution, introduced during the U.S. occupation at the end of World War II, is the oldest unamended constitution in the world. It is best known for Article 9 in which Japan renounces the right to wage war and maintain armed forces. Debate over changes to Article 9 has been ongoing for over 70 years. This lecture will present the politics surrounding the debate over constitutional revision and position it within the changing security context in East Asia. Will an increasingly assertive China be the breaking point that will, finally, usher a revision to Japan’s ‘peace constitution’?
Dr. Nadejda Bontcheva-Loyaga is an adjunct professor in the Department of Politics and Economics at Calvin University. She obtained her PhD from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, Japan, where she focused on civil-military relations and security studies. An additional interest of Dr. Bontcheva-Loyaga is immigration policy. She has researched Latin-American immigration to the South during her time at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
