In June 2022, Robert Pekkanen, Jackson School professor and a Japan expert, received the Outstanding Research Award 2022 from JANPORA (Japanese Association of NPO Research), which is the nonprofit studies association of Japan, for an article he co-authored titled, “Distinguishing Providing Public Services from Receiving Government Funding as Factors in Nonprofit Advocacy.”
The article, authored by Itaru Yanagi, Yohei Kobashi, Robert J. Pekkanen, Yutaka Tsujinaka, was published in the journal Voluntas, the leading nonprofit studies journal for international studies, in Volume 32 Issue 3 (June 2021). One of the co-authors, Yanagi, was a Visiting Scholar at UW and collaborated with Pekkanen on the piece and when he was an undergraduate had earlier worked for Pekkanen as a research assistant on his co-authored book, “The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP” (Cornell University Press, 2011).
This represents the third time Pekkanen has received the JANPORA award. In 2007, his book “Japan’s Dual Civil Society” (Stanford University Press, 2006) won an award “The Research Encouragement Award,” and a co-authored book in Japanese won the 2010 “Outstanding Research Award.” This book was later translated into English as “Neighborhood Associations and Local Governance in Japan” (Routledge, 2014).