Makoto Iokibe, Professor Emeritus of Kobe Univ., Former President of National Defense Academy, Dies at 80

The Yomiuri Shimbun

13:09 JST, March 7, 2024

Makoto Iokibe, a political scientist and former president of the National Defense Academy, who served as chairman of the Reconstruction Design Council in response to the Great East Japan Earthquake, died of acute aortic dissection on Wednesday. He was 80 years old.

Iokibe collapsed Wednesday afternoon during office hours at the Hyogo Earthquake Memorial 21st Century Research Institute, a Kobe-based organization of which he was president.

Born in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, in 1943, he became a professor at Kobe University in 1981 after obtaining a master’s degree at Kyoto University and working as a research assistant and then as an associate professor at Hiroshima University.

He specialized in Japanese political and diplomatic history and has served as a visiting scholar at Harvard University and the University of London.

He served as president of the National Defense Academy from 2006 to 2012.