Caroline Kennedy stepped down on Wednesday after three years as US ambassador to Japan, where she was welcomed like a celebrity and worked to deepen the US-Japan relationship despite regular flare-ups over American military bases on the southern island of Okinawa [...] Some will also remember the efforts of the first female US ambassador to Japan to promote literacy and women’s and LGBT rights. 

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy on Thursday called on Japan and South Korea to mend their soured relations over a territorial dispute and different perceptions of history. “I think that the two countries really should and will take a lead in this process, and the United States, being a close ally of both of them, is happy to help in any way that we can,” Kennedy said in an interview aired by NHK.

Caroline Kennedy took the post of U.S. Ambassador to Japan today, half a century after her father John’s dream of becoming the first sitting president to visit the country was cut short. Referring to John F. Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy said on her arrival in Tokyo she was “proud to carry forward my father’s legacy of public service,” adding she would “work to strengthen the close ties between our two great countries.”

Being something of an op-ed writer myself, I consider the nomination of Caroline Kennedy for ambassador to Japan to be a breakthrough. While America's diplomatic envoys have been chosen on the basis of a variety of criteria before -- key posts during the Obama years have, for example, been awarded for reasons ranging from the bundling of donations to the actual giving of their own personal cash -- the Kennedy nomination is perhaps the first time in history that an individual has been nominated for a top ambassadorial post primarily for having written an opinion column.

Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of former President John F. Kennedy, is close to being announced as the next United States ambassador to Japan, according to people familiar with the appointment process.