The DPJ is transitioning into power, and Hatoyama Yukio is doing burasagari press conferences again after not doing them during the campaign.(For those wondering what burasagari means, it simply refers to impromptu press conferences given by politicians to reporters as the politicians walk to or from, say, a car. The term, which means "hanging" or …
Tag: US-Japan relations
Hatoyama’s media problem
As expected, the translation of Hatoyama Yukio's essay in VOICE (discussed here) has caused a stir in the United States.Asahi quotes several anonymous former US government officials, as well as Sheila Smith from the Council on Foreign Relations, criticizing the essay. One of the former officials suggested that the Obama administration will simply ignore the …
Hatoyama in the New York Times
There isn't much I can add to MTC's comments on the New York Times's publication of the translation of Hatoyama Yukio's essay in Voice (which originally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor). I am stunned that no one at DPJ HQ thought better of having Hatoyama's provocative essay appear — again — in an American …
More on the Roos appointment
Considering the appointment of John Roos and other Obama donors to ambassadorial posts, David Rothkopf makes a strong argument against the relevance of ambassadorships in the first place:For really important relationships, we need permanent high-level representation. But those relationships are comparatively few and in those cases, we need a special breed of highly empowered, highly …
Roos to Japan
While the White House has not made the announcement official, the Nelson Report said that the Obama administration will be sending John Roos, Silicon Valley lawyer and major Obama fundraiser, to Tokyo as U.S. ambassador.(Click here to read this post in Japanese.)As Armchair Asia notes, this is a sign that Japan has indeed become normal: …
Benign neglect at work?
After President Barack Obama met with Prime Minister Aso Taro at the White House in February, I suggested that " the administration may be prepared to follow through on an unstated policy of benign neglect: having given Japan its assignments (civilian reconstruction in Afghanistan, progress on realignment, etc.), the administration will now turn its attention …
The end of values diplomacy
Prime Minister Aso Taro is a firm believer in "values-oriented diplomacy," the use of Japan's foreign policy tools to promote the spread of "universal values" like democracy and human rights.As foreign minister under Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, he spoke of Japan's role in creating an "arc of freedom and prosperity," a belt of what he …
The beginning of benign neglect?
Aso Taro has returned from his meeting with Barack Obama, the first such meeting between Obama and a foreign leader at the White House, as the Japanese media has repeatedly emphasized. The LDP website invokes this phrase like a mantra in its summary of the prime minister's visit, as if citing the name of the …
A future for values diplomacy?
Daniel Twining, currently a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund and formerly an Asia policy staffer at the State Department's policy planning staff and an adviser to John McCain, offers his recommendations to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Shadow Government, a new blog at Foreign Policy featuring the writing of conservative and Republican …
Benign neglect
After being misled twice (perhaps thrice) by premature reports in Japanese newspapers regarding some aspect of the Obama administration's Japan policy — despite articles in both Asahi and Yomiuri, the administration has yet to announce an ambassador to Japan, and the State Department has yet to confirm that Hillary Clinton's first foreign trip will take …
Tobias S. Harris 