Michael Zielenziger

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Michael Zielenziger, born on June 28, 1955 in New York City, is an American journalist and author, and a visiting scholar at the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He was the Tokyo-based bureau chief for Knight Ridder Newspapers for seven years, until May 2003. He has written extensively about social, economic, and political trends in Japan, Korea, China, and Southeast Asia. After September 11, 2001, Zielenziger also spent time in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Israel, covering the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

His 2006 book, Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation is a study of Japan's social mores and woes, with emphasis on troubled adolescents as well as other problems of contemporary Japanese society, such as hikikomori and parasite singles. The book also contrasts Japan with South Korea.

Before moving to Tokyo, Zielenziger served as the first Pacific Rim correspondent for The San Jose Mercury News, and was a finalist for a 1995 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on China. He was also a contributor to two other Pulitzer Prizes awarded to the Mercury News. Previously, he was National Correspondent of the Kansas City Times as well as a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. He was chairman of the Daily Princetonian during its 100th anniversary year, 1976-77.

Zielenziger was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University in 1991, where he studied in the Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy. He is a 2003 recipient of an Abe Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council of New York.

He grew up in Freeport, New York, where he attended Freeport High School and was editor of FlasHingS, the school newspaper, where one of his stories exposed a teacher's use of funds for booking student trips. The story won an award and led to summertime work at Newsday, the Long Island daily newspaper.

[edit] Works

Shutting Out the Sun : How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation, Nan A. Talese - Random House, published September 2006; paperback - Vintage Departures, published September 2007; Japanese edition - Kodansha, June 2007.