Tag: Abe Shinzo

  • Statements in the evolving US rhetoric on the Chinese ADIZ

    This post contains raw text of policy-relevant statements by the U.S. government about the Chinese air defense identification zone announcement in late November. The statements are edited excerpted by me and have been compiled from numerous sources.

  • What kind of 'hawk' is Japan's Shinzo Abe? Probably not the kind you think

    Shinzo Abe became prime minister of Japan in December, more than six years after he first took the job, succeeding long-serving Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in September 2006. In the U.S. press especially, Abe is often termed a “nationalist” or “hawk” for supporting expanded military activities and a potential revision of the Japanese constitution. Crystal…

  • 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…

  • Who's the Bigger Nationalist: Abe or Koizumi?

    Ampontan criticizes English-language media for their “[m]indlessly parroted assumptions based on conventional wisdom” that lead to their labeling Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo as a “nationalist.” The entry notes Abe’s hands-off approach thus far on the disputed island situations with Korea and Russia as evidence that he is no “hawkish nationalist.” Observing Japan, on the…