War and Health Insurance Policy in Japan and the United States: World War II to Postwar Reconstruction

Acknowledgments

With this, my first book, I remember all the important mentors, friends, and family members who helped me get here. I was born in a rural area of Japan, Fukui Prefecture, where we were rarely exposed to foreign people and cultures. But my parents, Shigeo and Michiyo Yamagishi, helped me to open as many windows of curiosity as possible. When I was young, my mother always told me thatIshouldstudythreetimesashardasothersifIwantedtobecomewhatever I wished. My father, who had had to give up his college education for financial reasons, has always supported me during my long years of graduate work. My two brothers, Yoshinori and Katsuaki Yamagishi, were always my rivals. I remember when we three boys worked hard together in a small study room. When I started undergraduate work at Keio University in Japan, I was very excited, but at the same time I was overwhelmed by the big metropolitan city, Tokyo. Fumiaki Kubo, my mentor at Keio, rescued me from the great sea of studentsandhelpedgetmeinterestedinacademicstudies,inparticularAmerican politics. Among many friends, I developed a healthy competitive rivalry with Takeya Matsuzaki and Yotaro Okamoto; we cheered each other up in the American politics seminar. Afteraone-yearbreak,Ienrolledinthemaster’sprogramofKeioUniversity. Fumiaki Kubo was again my mentor. Now that I am a professor, I have adopted his way of advising. He first established a relationship of trust with his students and then straightforwardly criticized our work so that we students felt pressure to improve our work. For the first time in my life, I engaged seriously in academic work. Although there were some tough times, I rather enjoyed studying , thanks to friends like Sona Kim, Yuri Tamori, and Takahiro Endo. I longed to pursue doctoral work in the United States, because I had never lived there before and I wanted to experience firsthand what the United States is all about. I was wondering if any doctoral program would accept a Japanese student of American politics with limited English skills. The Johns Hopkins Acknowledgments xiv acknowledgments University was my savior. One of the first courses I attended was Matthew Crenson’s “America as a Foreign Country.” Crenson stressed the importance of studying the United States from comparative perspectives. He also got me interested in studies of social policy. He became my advisor and helped me to complete the program. After my first year, Adam Sheingate arrived at Johns Hopkins; he soon became another important mentor. I can say absolutely that I could not have completed my doctoral dissertation without his immense support, imagination, friendship, and patience. He shared Crenson’s belief in the importance of seeingtheUnitedStatesfromcomparativeviews .Healsogavemetheopportunity to focus on health care policy. It was profoundly reassuring that he welcomed me so warmly whenever I knocked at the door of his office and discussed my half-baked ideas with such stamina and interest. He also kindly read all of the chapters of this book at a very early stage. At Johns Hopkins, I received support and advice from many other professors , including Mark Blyth, William Connolly, Joseph Cooper, Andrew Cherlin, Erin Chung, Steven David, Benjamin Ginsberg, Richard Katz, Daniel Kryder, Siba Grovogui, Nan Astone, Kelly Tsai, and Thomas Thornton. Milton Cummings warmly encouraged me to visit his office and discuss American politics. Sadly, he has since passed away, but he was a fine teacher, scholar, and person. Many friends supplied the inspiration, energy, and, on occasion, healing I needed to get through the graduate program at Johns Hopkins. They include Erin Ackerman, Ray Anderson, Michael Boda, David Burgess, Jinline Chang, Lynda Cross, Thomas Donohue, Donald Duedes, Constance Fowler, Curtis Fowler, Takashi Fujimoto, Yumie Fujimoto, Nozomu Kawai, Ellen Keith, Kaori Lindeman,LilyLui,YasushiMatsuoka,TerukazuMorikawa,KoichiOkada,Nobutaka Otobe, Sacrament Rosello, Ariel Roth, Marisa Sheingate, Stephen Stich, Lynne Stewart, Asami Takagi, Shu Takagi, Lynne Stuart, Lars Tønder, Hanne Thornton, Maria Vassileva, Akiko Yamamoto, Hirofumi Yamazaki, Vera Zamboneli , and Julie Zeng. After I came to teach at Nanzan University in Japan, I was again blessed to have wonderful colleagues and friends who supported my efforts to complete this book, including Hiroshi Fujimoto, Toru Hanaki, Masaki Kawashima, Noboru Kinoshita, Yoshimitsu Miyakawa, Yuki Ooi, David Potter, Tatsuya Suzuki , and Ve-Yin Tee. Ichiro Iwano and David Mayer read the entire manuscript andgavemevaluablefeedback.AstheprincipalofficeroftheAmericanConsulate in Nagoya, Jonas Stuart made it possible for me to meet scholars and other prominent figures from the United States. My research assistant, Junko Ito, acknowledgments xv was instrumental in my being able to...