Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis

Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic discusses America’s

descent down the path of militarism, secrecy, empire, authoritarianism and destruction, the role of the

military industrial complex and the mass media and hope for a mass movement to restore the

constitution.

Chalmers Johnson is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, a non-profit research and public

affairs organization devoted to public education concerning Japan and international relations in the

Pacific. He taught for thirty years, 1962-1992, at the Berkeley and San Diego campuses of the

University of California and held endowed chairs in Asian politics at both of them. At Berkeley he

served as chairman of the Center for Chinese Studies and as chairman of the Department of Political

Science. His B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in economics and political science are all from the

University of California, Berkeley. He first visited Japan in 1953 as a MBT SPORT SHOES Navy officer

and has lived and worked there with his wife, the anthropologist Sheila K. Johnson, every year between

1961 and 1998.

Johnson has been honored with fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research

Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation; and in 1976 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of

Arts and Sciences. He has written numerous articles and reviews and some sixteen books, including

Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power on the Chinese revolution, An Instance of Treason on Japans

most famous spy, Revolutionary Change on the theory of violent protest movements, and MITI and the

Japanese Miracle on Japanese economic development. This last-named book laid the foundation for the

œrevisionist school of writers on Japan, and because of it the Japanese press dubbed him the

œGodfather of revisionism.