PROF. RIHO AIZAWA

Riho Aizawa serves as a research fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), under Japan’s Ministry of Defense, specializing in U.S. foreign and security policy toward China and military coercion in the Indo-Pacific region. Until 2023, she also served as both speechwriter and policy advisor in the Ministry of Defense’s Indo-Pacific Policy Division, supporting senior officials in shaping Japan’s regional defense initiatives toward ASEAN and the Pacific Islands Region.

She collaborates with Japanese and international think tanksーincluding the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA), the Nakasone Peace Institute, and the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR)ーon projects related to Indo-Pacific security, with a particular focus on the Taiwan Strait. She was a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. in 2024, and earlier served as a policy research fellow at the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins SAIS, as well as a research intern at the Hudson Institute.

Aizawa holds a Master’s degree from the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University (2023), a Master’s degree from the Graduate School of Gakushuin Women’s College (2020), and a Bachelor’s degree from Gakushuin Women’s College (2016).

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