Over at 空, Ken Tanaka wonders about my criticism of Mr. Ozawa's remarks in China in this post, echoing the questions of several commentators to the same post.Let me be clear: Japan has no choice but to have cordial and constructive relations with China, the same as for the United States, Australia, India, and other …
Tag: Sino-Japan relations
Ozawa glorifies the Sino-Japanese relationship
I was way off target in my hopes that Mr. Ozawa would be reasonable on his trip to China."The intensely cold period in Sino-Japanese relations has been surmounted, and the warm period has advanced," he said. "Both of our countries must bear a great responsibility politically, economically, and even for the global environment, and there …
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Ozawa, posturing
I was apparently mistaken to think that Mr. Ozawa might use the occasion of a visit to China to find some common ground with Mr. Fukuda by staking out a shared position on Japanese China policy.Mainichi reports that Mr. Ozawa plans to use the trip as an opportunity to criticize the Fukuda cabinet's approach to …
Finessing China
In the midst of rising tensions between the US and China, Japan and China held a ministerial-level strategic economic dialogue akin to those held between the US and China and the US and Australia, a timely reminder of what's at stake.The summit did not produce much in the way of concrete results, much to Amaki …
In Asia’s future, flexibility first
In the week since Prime Minister Abe called for an organization of democracies that would implicitly encircle China, his proposal has been met with deafening silence from the capitals of the countries that would be involved, illustrating just how out of touch with new realities the prime minister's foreign policy thinking is.As I've argued before, …
Another sign of lingering Japanese war guilt
Following yesterday's finding that a plurality of respondents indicated that Japan still needs to apologize for its actions during the war, I have found, thanks to a tip from a trusted correspondent, a survey conducted by Fuji TV'sHodo 2001" program in April that suggests that the Japanese people are far from defiant when it comes …
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Don’t panic
Pollster Karlyn Bowman, writing at American.com, presents data on Japanese public opinion drawn from a variety of recent surveys (mostly old Pew Global Attitudes polls).The overall picture — Japanese are generally pleased with relations with the US, displeased about the rise of China — is not altogether surprising, although some findings were unexpected.First, in response …
Murakami Haruki and Sino-Japanese relations
Joel Martinsen at Danwei posted a translation of an interview in the Southern Metropolis Weekly with Lin Shaohua, Murakami Haruki's Chinese translator.It is a bizarre interview, to say the least, starting with the unironic use of the word "bourgeois" to describe novels like Norwegian Wood. Bourgeois? I guess. And then there's a statement like, "his …
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Combating the China threat thesis
Japan's Ministry of Defense has issued its first white paper as the Ministry of Defense, and it seems that this year's edition is unique in its focus on China as a threat to Japan.And it seems that the Yomiuri Shimbun is quite pleased by this, according to its editorial today. Citing America's debate on the …
Australia plays the game
A day after reports that Australia is set to join the US and Japan in researching missile defense — an agreement reached at the first Australia-Japan 2 + 2 meeting — Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has, in the words of The Australian, "defend[ed] China's military build-up."Readers can probably imagine that I have no problem …
Tobias S. Harris 