Fumio Matsuo is a journalist and author and recognized as an expert on US political affairs. He formerly served as the Washington, DC, bureau chief and executive of Kyodo News, a nonprofit cooperative news agency, based in Minato, Tokyo. Before moving to Washington, he was Kyodos Bangkok bureau chief, witnessing the final phase of the Indochina War. His editorial article Tokyo Needs its Dresden Moment in The Wall Street Journal from August 16, 2005, generated significant discussion on the nature of reconciliation. In 2004, he published the book Democracy with a Gun: America and the Policy of Force, which won the 52nd Annual Award of the Japan Essayist Club and was translated into English in 2007.