Establishment

The Mike Mansfield Fellowship Program was established in honor of Ambassador Mike Mansfield. The legacy of this unique program is a reflection of the inspiring and humble U.S. statesman for whom it was named.

Establishment

The Mike Mansfield Fellowship Program was created through legislation co-authored by Yoshimasa Hayashi and Daniel Bob for U.S. Senator William V. Roth in 1991. The U.S. Congress enacted the legislation into law in 1993, and the Mansfield Foundation began recruiting for its first class of Mansfield Fellows shortly thereafter.

View the Mike Mansfield Fellowship Act »

At the time of its enactment, the Mike Mansfield Fellowship Program was envisioned as a training course to identify promising U.S. federal employees with a career interest in Japan and to train them to serve as experts on Japanese politics and culture. Ambassador Mike Mansfield, the longest-serving U.S. ambassador to Japan from whom the program is named, liked to call the U.S.-Japan relationship “the most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none.” The Fellowship is a reflection of the importance of the relationship. It remains a completely unique program in the U.S. government, and allows the United States more effectively to promote its interests in Asia and more comprehensively understand its closest friend and ally in the region.

The Program operates best under a two-year model, with one full year of pre-departure language and area studies training led by the D.C. office followed by the one-year Fellowship in Japan. The Program’s calendar is subject to change based on funding availability from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). In the past, the Program has assumed a condensed one-year model with Fellows receiving seven weeks of intensive language training in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture, followed by ten months of professional placements within the Government of Japan. Thus, the length of the Fellowship’s pre-departure training could be anywhere from six to twelve months, while the Program in Japan stays consistent at one year. Please refer to the program materials for your specific cycle when attempting to gauge your expected time on the program.

About Mike Mansfield

The story of Michael Joseph Mansfield’s prominence in U.S. government and international statecraft begins far away from the esteemed halls of Congress and the foreign streets of Tokyo. He was born to Irish immigrants in New York City and lived a hardscrabble childhood that took him around the United States. Fate brought him to Maureen Hayes, the moneyed daughter of a Montana family, who later became his partner in life and the principal inspiration of his career. With Maureen as his partner, he escaped the copper mines of Montana eventually to serve in the Senate Majority Leader’s chair for the longest period in that insitution’s history, and to represent the United States as our longest-serving Ambassador to Japan. Learn more about Mike Mansfield »