Chalmers Ashby Johnson is an author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He is also president and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute, an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia. He has written numerous books including, most recently, two examinations of the consequences of American empire, Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire.

Johnson was born in 1931 in Phoenix, Arizona. He earned a B.A. degree in Economics in 1953 and a M.A. and a Ph.D. in political science in 1957 and 1961 respectively. All of his degrees were from the University of California, Berkeley. During the Korean War, Johnson served as a naval officer in Japan. He taught political science at the University of California from 1962 until he retired in 1992. He was best known early in his career for scholarship about China.

From 1967 until 1973, Johnson was a consultant to the Office of National Estimates (O.N.E.) within the CIA. He largely dealt with issues involving communist China and Maoism. From 1967 until 1972, he also served as chairman of the Center for Chinese Studies at Berkeley.

His book Blowback won an American Book Award in 2001 from the Before Columbus Foundation, and was re-issued in an updated version in 2004. Sorrows of Empire, published in 2004, updated the evidence and argument from Blowback for the post-9/11 environment. Johnson was featured in the Eugene Jarecki-directed film Why We Fight, which won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.