Tato Takahama (born 1941 in Tokyo, Japan) is a U.S.-based journalist and director of the Pacific Research Institute. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in Journalism and International Relations, he joined Yomiuri Shimbun and covered historic events such as the Okinawa Reversion, the Lockheed scandal, and the Watergate affair. He was a finalist for the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association Award.
Takahama has served as Washington correspondent, chief correspondent for the Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense, and the National Diet, as well as political desk chief (deputy editor), senior research fellow at the Yomiuri Research Institute, and columnist for The Daily Yomiuri. From 1995 to 1998, he was the inaugural Yomiuri Teaching Fellow (visiting professor) at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, teaching “Comparative Japan-U.S. Reporting.”
His books include Nakasone’s Foreign Policy; What Is Japan’s Responsibility for War?; What American Textbooks Teach About Japan’s War; Fabrication and Plagiarism; and After All, What Is Trump’s America?. He has regularly contributed to Sentaku Magazine, Sankei Online, Nikkei BP Online, Japan Business Press, TBS Britannica, and NEWS Post Seven, and frequently appears on U.S. public radio (NPR). He also writes the column “Jishin” (Compass) for the Rafu Shimpo, one of North America’s oldest Japanese-language newspapers.
Since 2016, Takahama has been a member of the “Council of Wise Leaders,” supporting the Ashinaga Foundation’s “100-Year Plan for Higher Education of African Orphans” and advising the late Chairman Yoshimi Tamai (d. 2025) on promoting university studies for orphans from Sub-Saharan Africa in Japan, the U.S., and Europe.