Japan

There is no denying that the Mekong region has become an economic battleground where Japan and China are competing to gain and sustain economic influence in the region.

Assessing the state of democracy in Asia is a challenge. While some countries, such as Japan and India, have been showing the way from early days, some others, such as in Southeast Asia are still struggling to ensure stable and sustainable democratic institutions and practices.

The global environment for trade is undergoing significant changes. New emerging players such as China are aiming to adapt the rules and institutions inherited from the postwar Bretton Woods system.

By reinforcing hostility between Russia and the West, the Ukraine crisis has shone a spotlight on the limits and contradictions of any Russo-Japanese rapprochement. Russia has grown more dependent on China, just as Japan has become more reliant on the United States.

On the eve of the Vladivostok Summit, should we expect any significant progress in the laborious rapprochement between Japan and Russia?

If some African countries are on their way to achieving dynamic economic growth, many are also still struggling with a lack of economic and social infrastructure, latent governance issues and often complex and risky security environments. In this context, both Japan and European countries,...

There is still a big gap between the discourse and the reality of what Japan wants - and what it can achieve in Africa.

This paper documents new features of Japan's diplomacy that tends to gradually integrate Africa into Japan's strategic interests.

This paper provides an overview of the womenomics strategy launched by Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and shows how a plan designed to mitigate Japan’s demographic crises and labor shortages also evolved into a foreign relations strategy to help manage Japan’s reputation abroad on gender...

Japan’s cyberdefenses remain underdeveloped compared to the country’s great reliance on information and communications technology. Despite Japan’s initial slow response to the security challenges emerging from cyberspace, this paper posits that cybersecurity under the administration of...