On 24 January, I was invited to participate in “Japan in 2020,” the latest iteration of an annual event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and sponsored by the Japan America Society of Washington.

Now, little more than two months later, this discussion – on a domestic politics panel with CFR’s Sheila Smith and Keio Research Institute’s Dai Mochinaga – sounds like it was from a lifetime ago. Shockingly, we were all in agreement on how boring Japan’s politics would be this year. That forecast was good for roughly a week, and, from the perspective of late March, is laughable.

Nevertheless, video of that discussion is below.