This paper presents an overview of the large international projects in which the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan is involved, namely, the Subaru Telescope, Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and the Thirty Meter Telescope. The last section provides a brief historical view of the international collaboration in East Asia regions over the last 20 years.

We present results of the velocity-resolved spectroscopy of the [Fe II] ⋋1.644 μm emission toward outflow sources with the Subaru Telescope at the angular resolution of 0."16 ~ 0."5 arcseconds. The observed sources are L1551 IRS 5, DG Tau, HL Tau and RW Aur, which are located in the Taurus-Aurigae Molecular Cloud, one of the closest star forming regions (0."1 = 14 AU). We were able to resolve outflow structure in the vicinity of the sources at a scale of a few tens of AU. The position-velocity diagram of each object shows two velocity components: the high velocity component (HVC: 200 - 400 km s-l) and the low velocity component (LVC: 50 - 150 km s-l), which are clearly distinct in space and velocity. The HVC may be a highly collimated jet presumed from its narrow velocity width and high velocity. The LVC, on the other hand, may be a widely opened disk wind inferred from its broad velocity width and low velocity. The spectrum taken perpendicular to the L1551 IRS 5 outflow at its base shows that the LVC has a spatially wide subcomponent, supporting the above interpretation. We demonstrated that the [Fe II] 1.644 μm spectroscopy is a very powerful tool for the studies of fast jets and winds that directly emanate from star-disk systems.

The latest scientific highlights obtained with the Subaru telescope are given together with its current status and on-going instrumentation. We have been successfully operating the telescope and 8 observatory instruments (including an adaptive optics system) since January 1999, when the first light was accomplished. Open-use of Subaru began in December 2000. Subaru has a unique capability of its prime focus among other 8-10 meter class telescopes and has an excellent imaging performance as a result of its sophisticated active optics combined with the high stability of the sky at Mauna Kea. Scientific highlights are given on the discoveries of the most distant galaxies, spiral structure on a protoplanetary disk around AB Aur, and planetesimal belts in the debris disk around β Pic. Brief summaries are given for three new instruments: the Multi-Object Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (MOIRCS), 188 element adaptive optics system, and Fiber Multi-Object Spectrograph (FMOS)