So the US Department of Commerce has imposed tariffs on imports of glossy paper from China, bowing to pressure from the paper industry.This is one of those cases that lead me to question whether the Bush administration is capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.At the same time that the administration has …
Tag: US-Japan relations
George Bush helping Matsuoka?
George Bush, speaking to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, issued a challenge to Japan (and others):Today, more than 100 countries have fully or partially opened their markets to U.S. beef. The objective of this administration, however, is to make sure that they're better than partially opened, they're fully opened, including the countries like Japan and …
Why Japan is losing friends
The Jiji wire service reports that the minister responsible for public relations at Japan's embassy in Washington has called out the Washington Post for its "mistakes" and "not understanding sufficiently" the positions of Prime Minister Abe and the Japanese government on the comfort women question in its recent editorial on the issue, discussed here.I suppose …
Putin meets Hu
I feel like the title of this post could be the beginning of a corny geopolitics-themed Abbot and Costello parody.But seriously, the Japanese media seems to be keeping a close eye on the meeting in Moscow between Presidents Hu and Putin. This Mainichi article, for example, calls attention to the two countries agreeing to strengthen …
Japan’s friends, kept at arm’s length
The Japan Times today has two op-eds that illustrate Japan's troublesome ties with the US, its ally, and South Korea, its wealthy, democratic neighbor and former colony.The first, by journalist Hanai Kiroku, calls for a US-Japan economic partnership agreement (EPA), to follow on the heels of the Japan-Australia EPA currently under negotiation. Given the scale …
The Washington Post on Abe
The Washington Post published an editorial on Saturday criticizing Prime Minister Abe for his "double talk," pressing North Korea on abductions of Japanese citizens while denying the use of coercion by the Imperial Army in establishing "comfort women" stations.The conclusion:Mr. Abe may imagine that denying direct participation by the Japanese government in abductions may strengthen …
Seoul speaks up — how about Washington?
The Jiji wire service carried two articles today that report on South Korean officials criticizing Japan for its focus on the abductions issue in the multilateral de-nuclearization talks.First, Yu Myong-hwan, South Korea's newly appointed ambassador to Japan, said at a press conference with Japanese journalists in Seoul that the resolving the nuclear issue must take …
Seeking options
I found this op-ed by Gregory Clark in last Thursday's Japan Times fascinating. Clark suggests that North Korea may well be more open to an agreement with the US than commonly assumed, because Pyongyang is looking to expand its foreign policy options: "Even less is there any realization of an even more important factor possibly …
This is not another mutual security treaty!
I take issue with the opinion cited in this post at Japundit, which cites Shen Dingli, Chinese academic, as arguing:If China wanted to invade Japan, Australia would come to Japan’s aid, and if China were to invade Australia, Japan would come to its aid. But if we don’t invade either of them, such a pact …
Continue reading This is not another mutual security treaty!
The problem with history
The Sankei Shimbun's Komori Yoshihisa, editor-at-large based in Washington, DC, illustrates why the congressional comfort women resolution is so disastrous.In response to this NY Times editorial, Komori, in this post, shows the defensiveness of Japanese nationalists -- and why Congress is not in a position to criticize Japan's treatment of its own history.He wrote (my …
Tobias S. Harris 