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Japan

Abe shoots blanks in New York
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's concern expressed at the United Nations over a rise in China's military budget conveniently ignored that the increase is line with the China's economic expansion. Meanwhile, Japan's defense spending is outstripping national growth as it surges to its highest since the Cold War. Little wonder Beijing responded by pointing to Tokyo's imperial past. - Brendan P O'Reilly (Oct 2, '13)

TPP a Trojan horse
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, planned to cover nearly 40% of the world's economy, is branded as a "free trade" agreement but has nothing to do with fair and equitable treatment. Its secretive commitments do, however, infringe mightily on the rights of individuals and sovereign states. - Sachie Mizohata (Sep 27, '13)

SPEAKING FREELY
Abe flexes ugly military muscle
International comment on the choice of Tokyo to host the 2020 Olympic Games has been mildly supportive, but very little has been said about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's warmongering attempts to drop a constitutional pledge to "forever renounce" military force to settle international disputes. History demands the same attention. - Brian Cloughley (Sep 27, '13)

Apple et al create new working class
Apple and its commercial ally, Taiwan's Foxconn, are facing challenges to their corporate images that require at least lip service in support of progressive labor policy reforms. The consequences could shape the future of labor and democracy in and beyond China. - Jenny Chan, Ngai Pun and Mark Selden (Aug 29, '13)

Sino-Japanese deals hold water
Over the past five years, China and Japan have worked on maritime confidence-building and communication arrangements to reduce the chances of unintended escalation of territorial disputes. These mechanisms, if properly implemented, could play valuable roles in managing bilateral tensions at sea. (Aug 21, '13)

FILM REVIEW
A soaring story of the inventor as hero
Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises) directed by Miyazaki Hayao
The story of Horikoshi Jiro, the designer of the "Zero Fighter", the plane deployed to terrifying effect in the early years of World War II, which later became the funeral pyre of kamikaze pilots, is one of director Miyazaki Hayao's most ambitious and thought-provoking visions in its exploration of the linkages between militarism, industry, and the pervasive image of the inventor as hero. - Matthew Penney (Aug 16, '13)

Abe, big data, bad dreams
For all the publicity surrounding Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's "Abenomics", there is still no key theme for reforming the Japanese economy. A national version of General Electric's "industrial Internet" is being pushed by some members of the country's elite as a transformational model. - Andrew DeWit (Aug 5, '13)

Fukushima fallout hits farmers
Fukushima farmers who have seen sales plummet since the 2011 nuclear plant disaster there take small comfort from Japanese government efforts to remove topsoil and improve radiation monitoring. Distrust and the absence of risk standards means that consumers will continue to shun the region's produce. - Suvendrini Kakuchi (Jul 31, '13)

Japan playing with fire?
Shinzo Abe's upper-house election victory this month gives the Japanese prime minister control of both houses of the national legislature, making it possible for a radical overhaul of the country's constitution that could see a new defense force emerge and even the restoration of the Rising Sun flag. Many hurdles could put Abe's plans in jeopardy, not least the conscience of the Japanese people. - Michael Burns (Jul 29, '13)

SINOGRAPH
Abe gets unfortunate
vote of confidence
The Japanese electorate at the weekend effectively backed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic policies and his confrontational attitude to China on the disputed Senkaku Islands - which is in line with the United States' strategy of a "pivot to Asia". Unfortunately for Abe, Japan and the wider region, inherent contradictions in the "pivot" and Abenomics threaten a dangerous long-term political mess for everybody. - Francesco Sisci (Jul 23, '13)

Worried Okinawa can look to Singapore
Controversy over a future reduced US military presence in Japan's Okinawa prefecture risks undermining the two countries' strategic alliance. Okinawans could find a solution to their concerns by looking to Singapore, which demonstrates that size is no barrier to sustained strong economic growth. - Grant Newsham (Jul 9, '13)

Japan-Taiwan pact will not contain China
The recently concluded fisheries agreement between Japan and Taiwan has been seen as aimed by Tokyo at driving a wedge between Taipei and Beijing. That overlooks the comparable Sino-Japanese pact of 2000 and that the latest deal leaves open the door to further dialogue on the development of a new order in the East China Sea. - Madoka Fukuda (Jun 20, '13)

India places its Asian bet on Japan
Indian overtures to Japan suggest New Delhi, encouraged by the Abe administration's vigorous approach to restoring Japan's national and regional stature, has decided to place an open bet on the fellow democracy over state socialist China. By challenging the Chinese diplomatic narrative that has since World War II painted Tokyo as the colonizer, New Delhi's maneuver could shake up the Pacific power dynamic. - Peter Lee (Jun 20, '13)

Time for Japan, India to go beyond words
Goodwill between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Japanese counterpart Abe Shinzo is mirrored in the state of bilateral ties and the rapid strategic strides taken over the past decade or so - at least through a string of declarations. So much for the words on paper: the reality of strategic cooperation has been less impressive. - Sourabh Gupta (Jun 7, '13)

Nuclear hazard in Tokyo, Delhi embrace
India's soon-to-be-concluded civil nuclear deal with Japan will fuel an anachronistic drive for nuclear energy in India, which is being imposed by the government through brutal repression. It will also help destabilize the Asian continent by deepening the countries' strategic role in encircling China while dealing a severe blow to the nuclear non-proliferation regime. - P K Sundaram (Jun 7, '13)

Migrate or educate in China's borderlands
Urbanization, labor migration and universalization of education are creating radical shifts in China's social and cultural fabric, particularly in minority regions. A study of southwestern Sichuan reveals that as agricultural priorities fade, parents are forced to choose between the immediate income of labor migration and investing in a Han-based education that could lead to college and better jobs. - Stevan Harrell and Aga Rehamo (May 31, '13)

Li makes his Potsdam declaration
Li Keqiang broadened the dispute with Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands by citing the 1945 Potsdam Declaration, the World War II demand for Japanese surrender which set severe (though ambiguous) limits on Japan's post-war territories. Li's remarks, made during a visit to Germany, directly warn China's neighbors not to forget Japan's past aggression. - Brendan O'Reilly (May 28, '13)

Hashimoto echoes Japan's past failure
Many in Japan are dismayed by Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto's claim that "comfort women" were necessary for the morale of troops in World War II. Abetted by the present government, more incendiary sound-bites from the far-right can only be expected. They are symptomatic of the nation's failure to come to terms with a checkered past. - Walden Bello (May 23, '13)

Tokyo, Seoul hold 'ugly' nuclear option
The strategic consequences of a sustained North Korean nuclear weapons program are immensely troublesome. As neighbors such as South Korea and Japan consider possible countermeasures, they might consider it time to reassess whether nuclear weapons are an option to maintain an "ugly stability" in the region. - Tahir Mahmood Azad (May 23, '13)

Japan tips its hand via North Korea
Tokyo characterized the revelation as a diplomatic fiasco maliciously inflicted by North Korea. Seoul slammed it, and the US was kept in the dark. Whatever the truth, the "secret" dispatch of Japanese envoy Isao Iijima to Pyongyang has broken a united stand and revealed Japan's determination to move beyond being an obedient US ally to being an independent regional force. - Peter Lee (May 21, '13)

SPEAKING FREELY
Russia leads the way
in post-Fukushima world
A Western backlash against nuclear power following the Fukushima plant disaster has seen atomic energy's contribution rolled back in numerous countries. Energy needs in developing nations demand acknowledgement that, thanks to Russian specialists, the impact of human error in the nuclear sector has considerably decreased. - Igor Alexeev (May 21, '13)

Fox leads US tiger into China's crosshairs
"Irritating Japan" is well on its way to replacing "Rising China" as the meme favored by the United States as Abe Shinzo's new nationalism exploits US backing to advance its own goals. Beijing sees "the fox pretending to the tiger's might". Tokyo is pushing bigger game, the weakened US Asian "pivot" itself, into Beijing's crosshairs. - Peter Lee (May 17, '13)

US hoist by its own pivot petard
Efforts by the United States to orchestrate a win-win economic and security regime in Asia through constructive pressure on China, aka the "pivot", is being undercut by Tokyo, concerned at China's rise and determined to contain it. Beijing knows how to tweak that tail, with Okinawa a deliciously sensitive spot to touch. The pivot to Asia isn't about China anymore. It's about Japan. - Peter Lee (May 10, '13)

Moscow reserved on rare Japanese visitor
Russia handled Shinzo Abe's visit to Moscow, the first by a Japanese prime minister for a decade, with a delicate mix of hope and reserve amid disquiet over his recent foreign policy choices and the continuing Kurile Islands impasse. The reticence brought one big surprise: the absence of widely expected energy deals. - M K Bhadrakumar (May 1, '13)

Japan stirs Campbell's US 'pivot' soup
Kurt Campbell, architect of the US pivot to Asia, may be ruing the tendency of US partners to usurp the (increasingly nuanced) grand plan by creating trouble for national and domestic political reasons, secure in the knowledge that the United States must back them up. As Japan's adventurism over its islands dispute with China gets out of hand, US discomfort is palpable. - Peter Lee (Apr 26, '13)

Japan bashing quite out of place
Hong Kong is the last place one can expect to find new economics thinking of any kind, so it was perhaps an apt location for misjudged attacks on the Bank of Japan and its new governor Haruhiko Kuroda, courtesy the George Soros-funded Institute of New Economics Thinking and the discredited British technocrat Jonathan Adair Turner. - Henry C K Liu (Apr 17, '13)

Japan agrees to rice deal with Myanmar
Japan, whose rice industry is among the world's most protected, is making its first purchase of the grain from Myanmar in more than four decades and investing in rice processing plants there, as the Southeast Asian country seeks to regain its former top exporter status.- Win Naing (Apr 15, '13)

Japan's militarized island seeks makeover
Okinawa is trying to reshape its image from that of base camp for US troops to a tourist haven of unique culture and natural surroundings. Plans to establish university campuses and transform the island into an Asian entertainment center are also priorities goals in the bid to reduce Okinawa's dependence on army dollars, but regional tensions threaten to kill the strategy.
- Suvendrini Kakuchi (Apr 11, '13)

Japan's turn to give lesson in economics
Japan and the United States have over the years alternated as role models for economic progress. Tokyo's latest ''lesson'' under Shinzo Abe appears to be showing the West how to encourage growth, at just the time that the US, and even more so the UK, are following the path that led to Japan's lost decades. - William S Comanor and Takahiro Miyao (Apr 4, '13)

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