With the yen's falling to below ¥100/$1 for the first time since 2009 and the Nikkei’s posting five-year highs, analysts have begun declaring victory for the Abe administration’s campaign against deflation and slow growth. Paul Krugman, the intellectual godfather of Abenomics, has not quite begun his victory dance yet, but he is optimistic that under …
Category: Observing Japan Blog
Abe’s neo-statism
This week Prime Minister Abe Shinzō criticized right-wing demonstrations in Koreatowns in Tokyo and Osaka, stating, “The Japanese way of thinking is to behave politely and to be generous and modest at any time.” While it is, of course, good that Abe made a point of criticizing hate speech, it's important to recognize that Abe …
Resisting the urge to "just do something" in US foreign policy
Edward Luttwak has a brief piece at Foreign Policy in which he praises the restraint with which the Obama administration has approached the ongoing conflict in Syria. Luttwak argues that the importance of managing China's rise means that the US should get out of the business of determining the nature of political regimes in the Middle …
Continue reading Resisting the urge to "just do something" in US foreign policy
Following the leader
Michael Cucek catches a comment from LDP Secretary-General Ishiba Shigeru at a public appearance in Kagawa. Ishiba said, "The Liberal Democratic Party is a party for doing what?...First and foremost, it a party for the revision of the Constitution." Cucek raises some useful questions about what this statement means, but I wonder whether Ishiba wasn't just being …
A cleaner, leaner Observing Japan
::Sweeps away dust and cobwebs::*cough cough*Is anybody here?I've been away so long that Google completely redesigned Blogger's dashboard, so that it took me a little while to figure out how to use it. Anyway, as you can see, I've cleaned up the blog, switched to a more minimalistic template, and removed dead links and obnoxious buttons …
Kan tries again on trade
When the DPJ was campaigning to unseat the LDP in 2009, its manifesto included a pledge to "conclude" a free-trade agreement with the United States. The agricultural lobby flexed its muscles, and shortly after releasing its manifesto the DPJ issued several "clarifications," changing its pledge to reach an FTA with US to a pledge to …
The wages of uncertainty
The exchange of fire between the North and South Korean militaries that left two ROK Marines dead and at least a dozen wounded (see the roundup at Wired’s Danger Room blog), following closely on the heels of revelations regarding a new North Korean uranium reprocessing facility, strengthens hopes that the US and Japan might be …
Observing Japan, now on Twitter!
After having resisted Twitter, I've decided to try it. I'm not sure whether I'll stick with it, although I'm enjoying it so far.You can find my Twitter feed here.
Why don’t Japanese take to the streets?
The Eurasia Group's Ian Bremmer has an op-ed in the IHT in which he argues that despite widespread pessimism among Japanese regarding their country's future, things may not be so bad. Basically he suggests that the DPJ may well be learning to get along with business elites and bureaucrats, Japan and the US may be …
Selling free trade
Bogged down by an unfavorable political situation in Tokyo, the Kan government has few avenues for policy innovation. In recent weeks, however, it seems that the Kan government has decided to consider joining the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP), a multilateral free trade agreement that currently includes only Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, and Brunei, but …
Tobias S. Harris 