Japan’s “five-foot giant” of international relations
As United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Japan’s diminutive diplomat Sadako Ogata (1927–2019) led the agency through the turbulent 1990s, managing complex refugee crises in Iraq, the Balkans, Africa’s Great Lakes region and Afghanistan. That’s only one chapter of Ogata’s life story, which intertwines with Japan’s 20th-century international relations history in illuminating ways, says Faculty Fellow and historian Lori Watt.