Commentary Topics

A strong Japan can help the United States in Asia

by Vance Serchuk

China's continuing dispatch of ships and aircraft to the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands previews the future Japan faces if Beijing keeps rising and Tokyo keeps falling.

Conservative tasks in Japan

by Hisahiko Okazaki

As the first conservative government in Japan for a long time, the Abe Cabinet faces two major tasks, including departing from the postwar regime on security.

Japan-related | SENTAKU MAGAZINE Apr 22, 2013

ASEAN looking a bit like '97

Amid the economic boom in many ASEAN countries, there is also a feeling of deja vu that current conditions resemble those on the eve of the '97 financial crisis.

The 'Iron Lady' and Japan

by Hugh Cortazzi

Margaret Thatcher was a role model for Japanese women and her combination of talents as a politician and scientist has had an important impact on Japanese attitudes.

Japan must re-learn its militarist past

by Pankaj Mishra

Japan's conservative rulers will need a more capacious sense of history if they are to succeed in building new bridges with the country's Asian neighbors.

No resting on techie laurels

by Takamitsu Sawa

Only a few years ago, it was forecast that Japan's best growth strategy would be to develop environment-related products. That forecast was off the mark.

A revived Japan must adjust its ASEAN business sights

by Simon Tay

If resurgent Japanese companies return to Asia looking for the strongmen, cheap land and low-wage labor of old, their expectations will be frustrated.

Japan: a most interesting story in economics

by Neil Irwin

Regardless of whether the Japanese economy makes a Keynesian recovery or enters a gargantuan sovereign debt crisis, there will be lessons for all.

A Japanese poet's whale elegy

by Shaun O'dwyer

If some Japanese advocates of whale hunting could commune with their ancestors, they'd feel the past dismay at the impious waste of whales’ lives.

Japan's deficit in visionary thinking

by John Edward Philips

Japanese opposition parties' failures to develop alternatives to LDP policies could be attributed to a deficit in the number of independent think tanks.

Japan-related | COUNTERPOINT Apr 7, 2013

Abe-phoria: A national punching bag morphs into a popular leader

There is an irrational exuberance about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe evident in his 70 percent public-approval rating, a soaring Nikkei stock average and the Japanese media cheerleading the same man it hounded out of office in September 2007. The polite, face-saving fiction that Abe ...

Japan-related Apr 5, 2013

'Flammable ice': a bad choice

by Peter Wynn Kirby

Exploiting domestic offshore reserves of methane hydrate may be too tempting for Japan's leaders to resist. But this "flammable ice" is a fuel decoy.