Cover of Japanese Politics and Government Has Special Meaning to its Author, Southwestern University Dean of the Faculty Dr. Alisa Gaunder.

For the cover of her latest book, she chose a beautiful picture of the National Diet Building in Tokyo. It is a gorgeous and classic shot that represents the contents of the book, but there is personal meaning as well.

Dr. Alisa Gaunder, Dean of the Faculty at Southwestern University, recently went through this decision process when choosing the cover of her latest book, Japanese Politics and Government.

The next time she saw the building, Gaunder was a college student at Washington University in St. Louis. Determined to learn the language and be able to communicate with her host family and the friends that she’d made, she took Japanese in college and studied a year abroad in Tokyo. She immersed herself in the culture.

Not only did her Japanese language skills grow, but so did her interest in Japanese politics. Gaunder was particularly fascinated with modern, post WWII Japan. She applied for and won a Fulbright Scholarship to study politics in the country after graduation. But before she left, she completed a summer internship for Congressman Howell Heflin in Alabama.

Doing these two internships back-to-back gave her a unique perspective on the differences between the two governments. She compared the Presidential structure of the United States versus the Parliamentary structure of Japan, which again sparked an interest in digging deeper to better understand the complexities involved. She was so intrigued with Japanese comparative politics that she dedicated her graduate studies to the subject. Gaunder received both her masters and doctorate in political science, specializing in comparative politics and Japan, from the University of California, Berkeley.