Japan

Four years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and a few months before the opening of the Paris Climate Conference, Japan is about to clarify its energy and climate policy.

Nationalism appears to be an important part of the growing frictions between China and Japan.

At the beginning of 2014, Japan experienced the deadliest volcanic eruption on its territory in over a century. The unpredictable nature of the event reignited fears of the risks of nuclear power plants. 

The alliance born of the Korean War trades the assurance of security for Seoul with a certain alignment with Washington. 

Asia is now a nerve center for global economic activity and a theatre of some of the most pressing security concerns of our time. So important has Asia become to global affairs today, and ostensibly for the decades to come, that many have already dubbed the 21st Century as the “Asian Century”....

The March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station turned Japan’s energy policy on its head, shedding a harsh new light on Japan’s energy policy and power supply system, and throwing into relief six major problem areas that had largely escaped scrutiny before the disaster.<...>

Sino-Japanese relations have deteriorated since Shinzo Abe and Xi Jinping came to power.

Do the peace talks between Japan and Russia, reopened in March 2013 by Shinzo Abe and Vladimir Putin, have any chance of success? A window of opportunity has indeed opened for an historic rapprochement between Russia and Japan. 

This paper analyzes the rise of maritime China and its implications for Japan’s security policy. 

During the last decade, Japan has sought partnership with many Asian nations - the drive remaining strong regardless of ruling parties. Newly elected Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan is to continue this trend under the name of ‘value diplomacy".