I have been working for The Asahi Shimbun, Japanese leading paper, fully since 1981 after graduating from Tokyo Univ.with a B.A. in International Relations, worked at Moscow and Washington Bureau, served as Washington Bureau Chief, and Managing Editor at Tokyo HQ. I studied at Moscow State Univ. and the Institute of Ethnology of the Russian Academy of Science and was a Visiting Senior Fellow at Tsinghua Univ. in Beijing.