China-US-Russia Triangle

After Chairman Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump met on April 6-7 in Florida’s Mar-a-lago, trilateral relations among China, the United States, and Russia became the focus of […]

Japan-Russia-US Triangle

With the advent of the Trump administration, would not, first, Russo-US relations improve, allowing Japan to make progress in negotiations on the Northern Territories with Russia? Until early […]

Japan’s Russia Policy: Looking Back on 2016 and Ahead to 2017

Building closer relations with Russia was undoubtedly one of the main priorities of Japanese foreign policy in 2016. This was made clear by Prime Minister Abe in his […]

Country Report: Japan (January 2017)

Three shocks left Japan’s media groping for answers at the end of 2016 and the start of 2017. The Trump shock kept playing out after the initial alarm […]

Country Report: Russia (November 2016)

Noteworthy in the fall of 2016 has been the increase in articles about the Russo-Japanese relationship. They accompanied the Eastern Economic Forum meeting of Putin and Abe and […]

Introduction

Park Geun-hye’s sober foreign policy choices in 2016 pointedly contrast with her much-lauded ambitions of 2014-2015. In this set of articles we make the comparisons, suggest reasons for […]

Positive Scenario I

Japan-Russia relations started gaining momentum from the beginning of 2016, and even for optimistic observers of that relationship, the tempo of activation that we see now is amazing. […]

On the Brink of a Breakthrough or Doomed to Fail Again: Will A Fresh Effort at Repairing Russo-Japanese Relations Bear Fruit?

Of all major countries, Japan has been the only one to pursue relations with Russia on a generally positive trajectory since the 2014 Ukraine crisis. Recently, the pace […]

Civilizational Divides and Regional Confrontations – 4

Reading Kazuhiko Togo’s powerful piece on the dilemmas of Japan, one feels in a time warp. The echo of the 19th century’s choice of modernization with the adoption […]