Abe Wants North Korea to Surrender Before Talks Begin
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported on March 25, 2018.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported on March 25, 2018.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported on February 13, 2018.
Futenma Marine Corps Air Station in Ginowan, Okinawa, must close—on that much everyone agrees. But the insistence by the United States and the Japanese central government on building a replacement facility in another part of Okinawa is bitterly opposed by Okinawa’s people and prefectural government.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported on December 21, 2017.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported on November 12, 2017.
Well, they’ve done it again. Just when you see glimmers of hope that Japan’s opposition parties might just be getting their acts together, they go and show you once again just how incompetent they really are.
Japan Innovation Party leader Kenji Eda couldn’t have framed the events in starker terms when he discussed the issue of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank at a press conference last Thursday: “It was a victory for Chinese diplomacy and a complete defeat for Japanese diplomacy,” he declared.
Faced with a complex and increasingly dangerous regional scenario, under growing demands for naval hardware and diplomatic support from countries like Vietnam and the Philippines, in the midst of complex domestic negotiations concerning the evolving interpretation of constitutional provisions on security and defense, and faced with the need for Japan to redefine its international image, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seems to have decided to emphasize the “rule of law” as a central tenet of Japanese foreign policy.
Beijing’s declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) covering the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands and part of the waters between Japan and Taiwan has prompted a strong reaction from Tokyo and, generally speaking, has left nobody in East Asia indifferent.
Recent news from Southeast Asia has been dominated by maritime conflicts, and then trade negotiations in second place. However, nature has once again reminded us all that it is not just conflicts among nations that threaten the life and property of citizens. The reminder has come in the shape of a terrible typhoon, known as Haiyan or Yolanda.