Category: Uncategorized

  • Off Topic: An Age of Empiricism? Let's See Some Numbers.

    This is the first of what promises to be many short essays on topics not related to the transpacific triangle. I’ll cut them off after their introductions to spare uninterested readers the details. John O. McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern (whom I’ve never met), writes over the summer in Policy Review that “we are…

  • This Week: China-Japan Ties Easing, Nakasone Broaches Nuclear Japan

    It’s been a news-filled week for Japan-China relations and Japan in general, leading up to the LDP election later this month. Several signs that tensions between China and Japan may ease after Koizumi’s departure emerged this week. Using the a signed commentary in the People’s Daily overseas edition, the Chinese government demanded Abe Shinzo take…

  • China and South Korea Appear Ready to Deal With Abe

    You could say I’m behind, not yet having addressed Abe Shinzo’s official announcement that he’s running for LDP president, and the more important announcement that he would get behind constitutional revision full-force as prime minister. “I’d like to draft a new constitution with my own hands,” he said. In fact, top LDP officials have said…

  • Poll Finds Both Japan and China Popular in S.E. Asia

    A survey conducted in seven Asian countries found that more than 90 percent of people in Southeast Asian countries felt their countries had a good relationship with Japan and between 70 percent and 90 percent said Japan was a trustworthy nation.In particular, 96 percent of respondents in Indonesia and Thailand said their countries had “very…

  • Japan and the U.S. 'Beyond Bilateralism': Introduction

    “Challenges to Bilateralism,” T. J. Pempel’s wide-ranging introduction to 2004’s Beyond Bilateralism (which he edited with Ellis S. Krauss) lays out a compelling narrative for post-WWII U.S.–Japan relations. One of modern history’s strongest and most enduring bilateral relationships, he writes, is giving way to a complex network of ties involving other actors: in short, moving…