Despite being a member of the permanent member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, China is making no attempt to abide by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. China’s one-sided claims are similarly based on flimsy grounds. If it wants to become a great sea power however, China cannot afford to make enemies. Japan meanwhile needs to focus its full attention on this increasingly fierce legal battle.   Adopted in 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is also known as the “Constitution of the Oceans”. As of 2016, 167 countries are parties to the Convention, including Japan, China and every other country with a coastline along the South China Sea. Each country is required to comply with provisions set out in UNCLOS, which serves as an international code of conduct for marine activities. At ... ... [Read more]

Mikan no Chugoku: Kadai to Shite no Minshuka (Author: Kagami Mitsuyuki; Iwanami Shoten, 2016) is a collection of selected writings published by the author, analyzing decades of China’s modern development from a unique perspective. Frankly, I find the author’s discussions and analyses in this book to be incomplete and he fails to put China’s sociopolitical movements into perspective with regard to the Great Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square protests in light of related empirical studies in later years. Each individual article collected in this anthology largely reflects the critical view of the author at the time of its writing. You can see a clear consistency in the perspectives presented by the author regarding China or Japan. The author’s attitudes towards Modern China seem to be characterized by some particular viewpoints. First, he maintains a critical view regarding materialistic prosperity under a capitalist economy. ... ... [Read more]

Future course for Japan to take Yamazaki Masakazu: On the domestic front today, things surrounding our society seem to be remaining stable at a level that has never been experienced before. This observation does not take the form of a commonly shared view in the media, however. Japan was engaged in a war when I was at elementary school. Compared with those gloomy days that I had to spend as a child during the war, our current era is so much better. It is true that our economy is struggling to take off in one way or another, with growing concern among us regarding our future amid the progress of an aging population with a declining birthrate. But if you look at the bright side, you will find that the jobless rate for young adults remains low and our public safety standards are by ... ... [Read more]

On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The achievement of Mao Zedong as founding father of the PRC is, indeed, great. If we focus attention on this achievement alone, Mao Zedong can be described as “a man of great stature” who deserves to be respected. It should be noted, however, that the PRC is a state that was ultimately created through victory in the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) forces led by Chiang Kai-shek and forces loyal to the Communist Party of China (CPC) and is not by any means a state created by defeating the Japanese Army in the Sino-Japanese War. The proof of this is that Japan announced defeat on 15 August 1945, but it was 1 October 1949 that the PRC was founded. During this four-year period, the KMT and ... ... [Read more]

Kumagai Shinichiro: The coming summer will be the seventieth since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) held the latest Review Conference from April to May this year according to its interval of five years, but it produced no agreement on the final document. First of all, please tell us about your impression of the Review Conference.
TAUE Tomihisa: The fact that the Review Conference produced no agreement on the final document disappointed me deeply. About 100 citizens from Nagasaki took part in the conference ]]> ... [Read more]

The government of Abe Shinzo decided to revise the Japan-U.S. Guidelines on April 27, and approved the bills for “improving the security-related laws” (a bill for the collective revision of ten laws) and “supporting international peace” (a new law) in a cabinet meeting held on May 14. These were submitted to the Diet the following day, May 15. They are expected to significantly change Japan’s defense posture as well as the role of the Japan-U.S. alliance. Self-Defense Forces officers’ pride as guardians of the nation Considering the security environment in which Japan finds itself today, these bills should be approved as laws with the support of a majority of Japanese. Leaders of the opposition parties and some journalists, however, notably highlight the danger of the bills or insist on preventing their passage. If nothing else, their stance adheres to the postwar “one-nation pacifism” line ... ... [Read more]

“Otagai-no tameni (For the benefit of each other).” U.S. President Barack Obama described the essence of the Japan-U.S. alliance this way in Japanese at a joint press conference held after his summit conference with Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. I believe this single phrase symbolizes the evolution of Japan-U.S. security cooperation based on the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in collaboration with reciprocity suitable for an alliance and cooperation between sovereign nations through the new Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation. Reciprocity Made Clearer At the conference, the two leaders confirmed that Japan and the United States would cooperate for peace and security not only in Asia and the Pacific but also all over the world. President Obama went on to call Japan a “partner on a global scale” for the United States, instead of a mere ally. It was only natural for Prime Minister Abe to ... ... [Read more]

Experts’ Views on Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s Address Prime Minister Abe Shinzo delivered an address from the stage at a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress on April 29, 2015 as the Prime Minister of Japan, the first such address in 54 years. He was the fourth Prime Minister to deliver such an address following Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato 54 years ago, Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, the grandfather of Prime Minister Abe, 58 years ago and other predecessors on this occasion. It was, in fact, the first time for a Japanese Prime Minister to deliver an address in front of all the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives at a joint meeting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Partly due to the fact that this year is the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, before Prime ... ... [Read more]

Experts’ Views on Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s Address Prime Minister Abe Shinzo delivered an address from the stage at a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress on April 29, 2015 as the Prime Minister of Japan, the first such address in 54 years. He was the fourth Prime Minister to deliver such an address following Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato 54 years ago, Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, the grandfather of Prime Minister Abe, 58 years ago and other predecessors on this occasion. It was, in fact, the first time for a Japanese Prime Minister to deliver an address in front of all the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives at a joint meeting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Partly due to the fact that this year is the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, before Prime ... ... [Read more]

What exactly is “new” about the recently revised Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation? National Defense Academy Professor Kamiya Matake comments.
On April 27, Japan and the United States revised the Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation for the first time in eighteen years. The guidelines represent the basic framework and direction of defense cooperation between Japan and the United States as allies based on the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, and serve as a document setting forth the division of roles between the Self-Defense Forces and U.S. forces. The guidelines were first created in 1978 and underwent a revision in 1997 after the end of the Cold War. The latest changes are the second revision to the guidelines. ]]> ... [Read more]