Japan’s prime minister Yoshihiko Noda suddenly announced this Wednesday that he would dissolve the Lower House of parliament, and today marks the end of the Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) majority in the Lower House. Opposition criticism of his leadership may have stung, but the long overdue passage of legislation to issue government bonds that should have been uncontested yet again raised questions about Japan’s parliamentary contortions. Noda’s final words repeated what he came into office arguing for—political reform of a government that seems unable to make decisions. Read more »

A few weeks ago, the blow up between Tokyo and Beijing over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands captured out attention. But a little less conspicuous is the new era of Japan-South Korean tensions in the seas of Northeast Asia. The eruption of tensions between Tokyo and Seoul resulted after South Korean president Lee Myung-bak visited islands at the center of a territorial dispute between the two U.S. allies.

News reports in Tokyo and Seoul last week revealed that on September 21 the South Korean air force sent F-15K fighter jets to respond to a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) helicopter that had entered the South Korean air defense zone without notification. Read more »

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda departed Tokyo today for the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, and Japan’s vice minister for foreign affairs, Chikao Kawai, departed for Beijing. At best, a chill lies ahead for the Japan-China relationship. At worst, a confrontation in the waters around the disputed islands in the East China Sea could propel the two Asian giants into a very dangerous scenario.

The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute will be high on the UN agenda. Washington and other regional powers should assist in finding a credible mechanism for peaceful dispute resolution before this crisis worsens. Read more »

Japan’s newly appointed ambassador to China, Shinichi Nishimiya, passed away suddenly yesterday in Tokyo. He was hospitalized last week after collapsing outside his home. Ambassador Nishimiya was sixty years old.

Ambassador Nishimiya was well-known in the United States as one of Japan’s most energetic and passionate diplomats. Educated in the United Kingdom, he represented Japan here in United States multiple times, and he emerged as one of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ leading America hands. Read more »

This week, contests for the head of both the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) are underway, with the expectation that Japan will be heading into a full campaign later this fall. The pundits are already predicting that the DPJ will lose seats and the LDP will gain. But neither seems likely to garner a majority in the parliament. Thus, the next coalition government will depend on where and with whom policy cooperation becomes possible.

Yesterday, I introduced the newest player in the mix of Japan’s coalition dynamics, the Japan Restoration Party (Nippon Ishin no Kai) led by Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto. Read more »

Yesterday, the charismatic mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto, announced he was forming a new national political party, and the race for Japan’s next government seemed to officially begin. Hashimoto’s unconventional entry into national politics has galvanized the Japanese media. But beyond his ambition of reforming Japanese politics, the policy agenda of this much heralded new Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) remains unclear. Read more »

August 15 marks the anniversary of the end of World War II in Asia. Japan’s defeat was complete, and its losses unprecedented. Today, Japanese television coverage traced the final days of devastation, with those who lived through the war (now in their 80s) narrating accounts of the firebombing that ruined most of Tokyo and the atomic bombing that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For Japanese it continues to be a day of national mourning for those lost, and an annual opportunity to remind the nation and its neighbors of Japan’s postwar commitment to peace. Read more »

Coming home after several weeks in Tokyo, I had planned to write about several issues that are consuming the attention of Japan’s political and policy elites. But instead I came back to a hubbub stirred up by presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s commentary on Japan.

At first, I found it hard to believe that Japan had come up at all in the U.S. presidential race. Not since the trade disputes of the 1980s did Tokyo factor in our domestic political contests, and even then it was in large part a function of our own economic concerns and the protectionist impulse that this created in some sectors of our society. China seems to be our demon of choice today in electoral politics, and politicians in the midterm elections fixated on that perceived threat. Read more »

Yesterday, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda succeeded in passing his legislative initiative on consumption tax and social security reform by a vote of 393 to 96. But it was Noda’s ability to gain the cooperation of his opposition in parliament that made it possible. Fifty-seven members of his own party decided to thwart his appeal for unity and compromise by voting against the bill (while another fifteen abstained).

The engineer of this continued power struggle within the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is none other than Ichiro Ozawa, the former secretary-general of the party who has spent almost two years fighting an indictment for mishandling campaign funds. Ozawa was never proven guilty, and after a final court decision on April 26 to that effect, Ozawa returned to political life in the DPJ. Read more »

Yesterday, the Japanese people remembered the tragedy of March 11, 2011 as the nation looked back on the year since a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck the northeastern Tohoku region. A large public ceremony in Tokyo included the emperor and empress of Japan as well as Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, and his cabinet.

Elsewhere, I have written of the broader political and economic challenges Japan confronts, challenges that have become vastly more acute as a result of the March 11 disasters. Yet today it is important to note where Japanese attention has focused. Read more »