Kan Kimura

In local societies, he worked as a director of Hyogo International Center from 2006 to 2007, which is under Hyogo Prefectural Government, and successively held various posts of the center from 2001 to 2007. He was also appointed to the president of "the Pan-Pacific Forum", an NPO in Kobe for international cooperations, established in the 1980s.

At academic societies, he is a director of the Association for Contemporary Korean Studies in Japan, and Japanese Association of Modern East Asian Studies. He was also a director of the Japanese Association for Comparative Politics, research collaborator of the sub-committee on the modern history at the First Japan-Korea Collaborative History Research Committee , which was established by the agreement between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in 2001. He became a full committee member of the Second Japan-Korea Collaborative History Research Committee, which was established by another agreement of both governments in 2005.

His first book Chosen/Kankoku Nashonarizumu to 'Shokoku-Ishiki (or Korean Nationalism as a Small Nation) was given the Special Prize of the 13th Asian and Pacific Prize by the Asia Society and the Mainichi Shimbun in 2001, and his second book Kankoku ni okeru 'Kenishugiteki' Taisei no Seiritsu (or Authoritarianization in South Korea) was also given the 25th Suntory Academic Prize in 2003 by the Suntory Foundation.

In 1997 he moved to the Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, Kobe University as an associate professor, and became a full professor in April 2005. He was appointed to the Director of Center for Asian Academic Collaboration at Kobe University in 2017 too.

He was also a Research Fellow of Korea Foundation in 1996-1997, a visiting scholar at Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University in 1998-1999, a visiting scholar at Asiatic Research Center of Korea University in 2001, a visiting scholar at Sejong Institute in 2006, and a visiting fellow at Faculty of Asian Studies of the Australian National University in 2008. He was also a visiting scholar of The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at University of Washington in Seattle from 2010 to 2011, a visiting professor at Graduate School of International Studies, Korea University in 2014.

He became a Research Associate at Faculty of Law and Literature of Ehime University in 1993, and taught between 1994 and 1997 as a Lecturer at the same university.

Kimura was born in 1966 in Higashiosaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. He studied at Kyoto University and received his L.L.D. in 2001 for his first book, Chosen/Kankoku Nashonarizumu to 'Shokoku-Ishiki' (Korean Nationalism as a Small Nation).