It was exactly a month ago today that Shinzo Abe was assassinated in Nara by 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami. As the passions of that event begin to settle, this is an opportune occasion to reconsider both the benefits and the costs of an administration which lasted longer than any other in Japanese history.
This SNA Speakeasy features Hiroki Takeuchi on the theme of “Japan at the Center of Trade Rulemaking in Asia-Pacific.”
The Tsai Ing-wen administration surprised last week with the announcement that it intended to open Taiwan up to beef and pork imports from the United States. This move is clearly aimed at removing one of the major political hurdles to a bilateral trade agreement with Washington, which had made this a precondition for a bilateral trade agreement with Taiwan for well over a decade.
Whereas most Japanese political parties, whether the ruling conservatives or the mainstream opposition, effectively have little in the way of fixed party policies, the Japan Communist Party, the nation’s oldest political party, is very different, taking its own platforms very seriously.
The Shingetsu News Agency has been keeping a running log of the major developments in Japanese politics since January 2012. The following is our contemporary account of the entire year 2012.
Whenever American and Japanese officials meet, they engage in a ritual. Their joint statements, invariably invoking a “free and open Indo-Pacific” and “rules-based maritime order,” always swear that their “ironclad alliance” is stronger than ever.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported on October 21, 2018.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported on May 3, 2018.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported on April 13, 2018.
Kazuyoshi Umemoto, Japan’s chief negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, says that the new pact between eleven nations has been consciously designed to facilitate the return of the United States in the future.
