Tag: Aso Taro

  • Five Years of Transpacifica: Five New Japanese Prime Ministers

    I’m in transit these days, moving for the time being from Seattle to New York. This is a perfect opportunity to look back on what I’ve written in this space since I started here just over five years ago, on Aug. 18, 2006. Looking back, I found some early speculation about what Aso Taro, then…

  • Japan's New Foreign Policy: Step Back and Focus on Asia

    Fukuda tells the Washington Post that Asia is Japan’s top responsibility, sending a signal to the United States on Japan’s expired Afghanistan refueling mission. This is also a departure from Abe and Aso’s aspiration to “Eurasian” reach. It wasn’t too long ago that then-Foreign Minister Aso Taro declared that Japan would work for an “arc…

  • Aso Knocks Blonds, CNN Runs Un-Flattering Photo of 'Asa'

    Japanese Foreign Minister Aso Taro is in rare form, even for his inflammatory self. Making a case for the potential for Japanese diplomacy in the Middle East, he asserted that skin color would be a major advantage: “Japan is doing what Americans can’t do,” the Nikkei business daily quoted the gaffe-prone Aso as saying in…

  • Japan's 'Arc of Freedom and Prosperity'

    Japanese Foreign Minister Aso Taro on Thursday unveiled the new foreign policy rhetoric for Prime Minister Abe’s leadership: the “arc of freedom and prosperity” (自由と繁栄の弧). From Yomiuri Shimbun: “Another new core policy will be added to the basis of Japan’s diplomacy, strengthening the Japan-U.S. alliance and enhancing relations with neighboring countries, including China, South Korea…

  • A Missed Opportunity in U.S. East Asia Policy

    It is an imaginative exercise to read speculative accounts of Sino-Japanese relations from earlier in the Koizumi years. No one knew just how bad it would get in the public sphere, and I find that most writers at the time imagined the Koizumi administration and China’s new leadership under Hu Jintao beginning in 2002 would…