My Tokyo Drucker Days, Part One

Last week I had the honor of visiting Tokyo, to make four presentations related to Peter Drucker, who remains a major influence in Japan. It was my first visit to the country, and a profound experience. This is the first of a series of posts I’ll write about different aspects of my days there.
Everything revolved around my presentation for the Drucker Workshop 7th Annual Conference, at Waseda University, on May 26th. My appearance there was arranged by Chikao (Chuck) Ueno, whom I first met when researching my book at the Drucker-Ito School in Claremont, Cal., in 2007. (The name of the school further shows Drucker’s ties to Japan, with its benefactor Masatoshi Ito, a Japanese business leader.) A Japanese translation of my book was published last year by Diamond, Drucker’s longtime publisher in that country. On May 25th, the night before the major event, Chuck arranged for me to speak to the monthly meeting of an English language study group of Workshop members.
The format of the 5-26 presentation was “Bruce Rosenstein in Conversation with Joseph Lee.” Joseph teaches at both Pepperdine University in  California, as well as Chuo University in Tokyo. On May 29th I spoke to his leadership class at Chuo’s MBA program for a discussion about my book.
The May 24th event was “An Evening with Bruce Rosenstein,” at the Shibuya Cultural Center Owada, in a very cool part of Tokyo. This was arranged by Tomomasa Yagisawa, a Drucker-Ito alum whom I met, like Chuck, in Claremont in 2007.  The other organizer was Katsu Fujita, a Drucker-Ito alum whom I met in person for the first time, although we’ve been in email contact for the last year and a half.
This has just sketched out a few of the basic details of the Tokyo events, and some of the people who made them so memorable. I’ll go into more detail in future posts. I can see why Peter Drucker had so much affection for Japan!