Tobias S. Harris is a leading expert of Japanese politics, widely quoted in leading world publications and a regular guest on television and radio programs. He is the deputy director of the Indo Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

After working on the staff of a Japanese legislator in 2006-2007, he ran the popular blog “Observing Japan,” contributed to the Wall Street Journal Asia and Far Eastern Economic Review, and conducted graduate research at MIT and the University of Tokyo. From 2013 to 2021, he was the Japan analyst at Teneo Intelligence, the political risk division of Teneo, a leading CEO advisory firm. He was also Economy, Trade, and Business Fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, a Washington, DC-based think tank focused on U.S.-Japan relations, from 2014 to 2020, and senior fellow for Asia at the Center for American Progress from 2021 to 2022.

He was born in Chicago, and currently lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife, their two sons, and their two cats. He has an M.Phil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge and a BA in Politics and History from Brandeis University.