GRIPS (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies) has a long history, starting with the establishment of the Graduate School of Policy Science (GSPS) at Saitama University in 1977. Over the years we have developed through a number of reforms, and have successfully met various challenges.
GSPS, drawing its students from among highly talented officials from central government ministries and agencies, local governments, and agencies and organizations with ties to government, was conceptualized by GRIPS founder and first president Toru Yoshimura to take up the challenge of broadening the horizons of policy research and education. The unique culture that emerged at GSPS during the period 1977–1997 provided the foundation of today’s GRIPS, and many GSPS graduates are now making contributions on the international stage in numerous countries and regions around the world.
GRIPS was established as an independent graduate school in 1997, building on the track record and successes of GSPS. GRIPS went on to pursue its missions of implementing advanced policy research based on collaboration between government, industry, administrative organizations, and academia, and on international knowledge-based collaboration; and producing leaders and policy professionals in order to promote and direct democratic governance in Japan and overseas. Now GRIPS has added its own twenty years to the GSPS track record, and today 4,528 GRIPS graduates are playing active roles in 112 countries and various regions of the world.
The environment in which GRIPS finds itself today is distinctly different from that of 1997. In September 2015, at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, held at the UN headquarters in New York, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by 193 member countries. With the adoption of these SDGs, the global community now faces a great number of challenging, even daunting issues that can only be addressed through international cooperation. Policy research and leader education at GRIPS are inextricably intertwined with each and every SDG. In that light, in order to continue to make contributions to the world through its first-class policy research and education, GRIPS has created GRIPS Vision and 5-Point Strategy and has embarked on a comprehensive institution-wide effort to implement them.
As a leading Japanese public policy research and education institute, GRIPS has a responsibility to bolster its competitiveness with top-class research and education institutes in the West, Asia, and around the world, and to proactively take up the challenge of resolving a wide range of crucial current policy issues.
GRIPS takes its 20th anniversary as an opportunity to consider the form that policy research should take in Japan in the future; to envision new dimensions for policy research; and to pursue ever higher standards in the work of producing leaders who can contribute to problem solving on a global scale.
Akihiko Tanaka
President of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies
