Country Report: Japan (September 2022)

The late summer of 2022 saw responses to multiple bilateral relationships in Japan. At the forefront was the Japan-China nexus, commemorating fifty years since normalization in September. Not […]

Introduction

Overview of the Years 2017-2019 and View of Europe The two articles in this Special Forum cover Abe’s foreign policy focused on Europe—the foundation for a substantial success […]

Japanese Thinking toward the Indo-Pacific, 2017-2019

In 2017-19 Abe’s legacy was determined under a rapidly changing regional environment. Was it to be reassertion of Japan’s great power standing or reconciliation to being a middle […]

Japan and Europe: A Marriage of Convenience Matures

There is only one conclusion to be drawn from Japan’s ever more intimate security relationship with Europe: the world is getting smaller. A region once deemed irretrievably distant […]

Country Report: South Korea (August 2022)

In July and August, the strategic dilemma of South Korea in navigating the contest between the US and China was put into sharp relief by the ratcheted-up military […]

Country Report: Japan (July 2022)

The year 2022 has unfolded strikingly differently from Japanese expectations. Although already in retirement, Abe Shinzo had set the agenda that was expected to prevail. This included not […]

A Japanese Perspective

Japan’s human rights policies, freighted with a historical baggage that South Koreans are well-aware of, are subtle, nuanced – and ultimately, quite frustrating. Governments in Tokyo continue to […]

Country Report: Japan (April 2020)

Geopolitics were not high on the media’s attention list in the first months of 2020; we need to look back a little to capture the state of the […]

Negative Scenario II

Two months after the G20, Abe Shinzo can look back with satisfaction that, despite failing to secure the “supermajority” that the ruling LDP party would have needed to […]

Positive Scenario II

Japan hosted the G20 Osaka Summit at the end of June 2019, and the world promptly forgot about it and moved on. That is not a failure, at […]