As an ambassador, she said, “I was standing on the shoulders of giants.” Citing previous, high-profile, male ambassadors, she said, “People would ask me, ‘How do you feel?’ And I would say, ‘Like a woman: Why do you ask?’”

While women are still working toward equality in Japanese society, Kennedy noted ways in which there has been significant progress. “There is universal health coverage; reproductive rights are guaranteed. And Japanese women are allowed up to three years’ maternity leave per child. That may seem long, but it’s hard to make a comparison since we don’t have any here.”

Obama’s trip to Hiroshima struck a chord with her own family history. “On a dark Pacific night in August 1943, my father’s PT boat was broken in half by a Japanese destroyer,” she said. President Kennedy later developed a friendship with the commander of the destroyer, once inscribing a photograph to him with “To Captain Hanami, late enemy and present friend.” As his daughter said on Tuesday, “Their friendship illustrates what happened when we reach out to others.”

Kennedy said Obama’s Hiroshima talk met with advance resistance from both sides of the political aisle. “In the U.S., he was criticized on the right for an ‘apology tour’ and on the left as hypocritical … And the Japanese were concerned that his speech would not do justice to the magnitude of the event. I had confidence in President Obama, but at first [the Japanese] weren’t reassured by my reassurances.”

Yet Obama’s speech wound up justifying her faith, she said. “He asked the audience to focus on the meaning of Hiroshima, an event that changed forever the way we think of our humanity. He urged us to see one another not as enemies but as members of a human family.” The importance of the moment was amplified when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tossed flowers into Pearl Harbor, where a Japanese attack drew the United States into World War II, she said. “Then, in a typical Japanese gesture, he exchanged business cards with a Navy survivor.”

Kennedy noted there has been a change in the two countries’ relations since President Trump took office. Today, she said, “I see an ally that is holding a place for us to the time that we decide to re-engage constructively with the region — a day that I as an American hope comes soon.”

The lecture was sponsored by the Tsai Lecture Fund at the Harvard University Asia Center. Co-sponsors included the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Korea Institute, Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University , Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies.