Akio Kawato
Writer

about


Akio Kawato is a former Japanese diplomat and blogger. Over the course of his career, he has served in the former Soviet Union and Russia, West Germany, Sweden, the United States, and Uzbekistan.

During his time serving in the USSR and Russia, he had the opportunity to witness many of the region’s key developments, from the inauguration of Gorbachev and the fall of the Soviet Union to the transfer of power from Yeltsin to Putin. He left the diplomatic service in 2004 to serve as chief economist at the Development Bank of Japan until 2006.

Kawato has also published extensively, including an epic novel entitled Land of Legend...Land of Dream (available on Amazon Kindle), which depicts Russian society during and after the Perestroika. The Russian version was published by Vagrius, under the name Akira Kumano. He currently writes primarily on his blog Japan and World Trends, which publishes in Japanese, English, Russian, and Chinese.

He received a master’s degree in Soviet studies from Harvard University.


languages
English, Japanese