Tag: Japan

Japan’s Abduction Issue: Why Japan-North Korea Relations Remain at a Standstill

Prior to 2002, the idea that Japanese nationals were once abducted and transported back to North Korea was labelled as a conspiracy theory by the Kim regime. This was until the Japan-North Korea summit meeting held in Pyongyang on September 17, 2002. The Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had hoped for three outcomes: for North Korea to agree they will no longer seek compensation and reparations, but rather economic cooperation; for North Korea to pledge to maintain international agreements on its nuclear programme and the moratorium on its missile testing programme; and finally, for North Korea to acknowledge the 1970s and 1980s abductions of Japanese nationals (Hughes, 2002, p.61). Few people expected North Korea to formally acknowledge their crimes, making the events of the summit and of the months to follow even more astounding.

Away from home when disaster strikes : Diary from a UK-based Japanese community after the Tohoku catastrophe

Diary from a UK-based Japanese community after the Tohoku catastrophe

The Great Eastern Japan Earthquake: Unmitigated disaster followed by a New Deal-type reconstruction?

Four moving tectonic plates crowd each other in the eastern vicinity of Japan, and on Friday 11 March at 2:45 in the afternoon Japan Standard Time, pressure that had built up between two of them for years, perhaps centuries, was suddenly released, causing one to slip under the other. The ocean above this rising sea floor also rose, and these displaced masses of water shortly after inundated the northeastern coats of Japan.

Still Repairing Chinese-Japanese Relations by Asger Røjle Christensen

Yes, there has been a serious crisis
recently between China and Japan.

The collision between a Chinese
fishing trawler and a Japanese coastguard patrol boat close to the disputed
islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, prompted both countries
to take drastic measures which resulted in China canceling a number of
high-level ministerial meetings between the two countries. But no, this doesn’t
imply that the region is on the brink of open confrontation. It doesn’t disturb
the general trend towards a more pragmatic cooperative attitude from both
sides.

Separate surnames: the breakdown of families vs. the emancipation of women by Karl Jakob Krogness, Ph.D., Ritsumeikan University

In the last days of August, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) put a decisive end to the Liberal Democratic Party’s  (LDP) half century of practically uninterrupted rule. Soon after, 29 September, the new minister of justice, Keiko Chiba (DPJ), announced she would introduce early next year a bill for revising the Civil Code in order to introduce an optional separate surnames system for married couples. Such a bill would arguably reform the family model that has ruled Japanese social life for over a century.

Exhibiting the Chinese War of Resistance in the People’s Republic of China

Karl Gustafsson,
M.A., Ph.D. Candidate,
Department of Political Science, Stockholm University

A New Wave of Japan’s Politics by Akihiro Ogawa, Ph.D. Stockholm University

Worried Japanese Businesses Lash Out against Climate Deal

Alexandru Luta
Research Assistant
International Politics of Natural Resources and the Environment Research Programme
Finnish Institute of International Affairs

On Tuesday, March 17, 2009, a full-page newspaper advertisement, run in reportedly all of Japan’s dailies, sent shockwaves through the country’s green community. The advertisement’s message, co-sponsored by the Nippon Keidanren (English: the Japan Business Association) and 27 other business and industry federations, asks of the newspapers’ readership if they will not think about “the costs we all have to bear”.

Lean in Japan by Lau Blaxekjær

In Denmark as well as the US and many other European countries Lean has developed from being a production system in the private sector to becoming a public administration management tool. Critics call it a panacea, but Lean is without any doubt a buzz word in public administration circles and applied many places. However, there […]