Senator Inouye Speaks At Japan Society

"this is one of the most trying and challenging times experienced in the U.S. and Japan relationship during the past 65 years" -- Senator Daniel Inouye

Japan Society had the privilege of welcoming U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye on Monday, June 14. to deliver a rousing lecture on U.S.-Japan relations.

The lecture attracted 175 movers and shakers, including Ambassador Nishimiya, Consul-General of Japan in New York, Michihisa Shinagawa, the head of Sumitomo Corporation of America, and Yoshihisa Suzuki, the head of ITOCHU Int.. The lecture was presided by Douglas Petersen, COO of Citibank.

According to Chris Poston, director of Japan Society’s Corporate Program, Inouye “spoke at a time of political instability in Japan on an issue that has for 65 years relied on political stability, namely the state of the U.S.-Japan security alliance. He raised some interesting issues of the need for Japan to increase its defensive capability, so that the U.S. military can reduce its footprint in Japan."

This topic is especially prescient now because of the debate surrounding the Futenma military base in Okinawa – which was a factor leading to PM Hatoyama’s resignation. Senator Inoyue took the Democratic Party of Japan to task for having questioned the deal struck with the Liberal Democratic Party in 2006, thereby ruffling feathers in D.C. and causing some on the Hill to question the strength of the alliance. He noted in his speech "We must keep in mind that the supreme goal of our two nations is to strengthen our relationship, and in that process bring about stability and the absence of military violence in the Asia –Pacific region." (Full speech.)

Senator Inouye has served as a senator from Hawaii since 1963 - for 47 years. He was born in 1924 to Japanese parents, and raised in Honolulu. In World War II, he served with the U.S. Army, and lost his right arm in the Assault on Colle Musatello in Northern Italy. He received the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Medal of Honor, and returned to university after the war thanks to the GI Bill.

Over his almost 50-year congressional career, Senator Inouye has served as a moderate Democrat. Last year he was appointed chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, which manages the Senate’s discretionary spending.

Keep an eye on our Corporate Programs page for upcoming opportunities to listen to politically and socially topical lectures like these – not to mention hob-knob with decision-makers!

N.O.

Japan and Friends: Foreign Relations

"East Asia is dominated by the security triangle between the US, Japan and China," writes John Hemmings for East Asia Forum. He goes on to explore three interpretations of this triangle: realist, liberalist, and constructivist.

This was an insightful article and highly relevant to topics being discussed at Japan Society, in recent events and upcoming ones, such as the Corporate Conference on May 19th: Celebrating 150 Years of U.S.-Japan Trade Relations: Promoting the Next 150 Years of U.S.-Japan Business Collaboration.

Panelists Edward Lincoln, Shinichi Nishimiya, Tadayuki Hara, Hajime Ito

In 1860, as the Tokugawa era drew to a close, the Kanrin Maru, captained by Kaishu Katsu, set sail for San Francisco, marking the first time a Japanese-piloted ship crossed the Pacific. 2010 is the 150th anniversary of this extraordinary but little known historical event -- the first official Japanese mission to the West following over 200 years of self-imposed isolation.

In combination with the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Japan Security Alliance, this 150-year milestone is a testament to the importance of this essential bilateral relationship. However, Hemmings' conclusion sums up the future of the situation well:

"The US-Chinese-Japanese security triangle is a complex situation. Discussing it through the prism of three international relations theories helps to clarify possible developments. But this discussion has shown that, even if one of these theories is adopted at the expense of others, future movement remain hard to predict."

The Japan – China – US Triangle

Considering the fact that East Asia Forum has been reporting almost obsessively over the relationship between China and the United States, the United States and Japan, or Japan and China, it's obvious that whatever the results of this tense triangle are, their influence will be global.

Left to right: Philip Berkowitz, Henry Liu, George Pierce, Timothy Wilkins.

Japan and the U.S. have enjoyed the closest of relationships, politically and economically, for the last sixty years. However, China’s emergence as a world economy in the past decade has made it a power to be reckoned with. Japan Society will host a breakfast panel discussion that focuses on the business experience of multinational companies -- and their counsel -- in navigating mergers and other alliances among China, Japan and the United States, nations with completely divergent cultures, histories, and legal systems.

We've got a great line up for this event.

Speakers:
Carl Cheng, Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP
Henry Liu, Chairman and Managing Partner of China Practice, Nixon Peabody LLP
George Pierce, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Toyota Tsusho America, Inc.
Timothy Wilkins, Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP

Moderator:
Philip Berkowitz, Partner, Nixon Peabody LLP

It's open to the public, completely free, and happening on April 20th! 

News Blast

Japan's response to its ageing crisis

An ageing population, coupled with a declining birth rate, is an unprecedented challenge for Japanese policymakers. The issues created by this situation can be readily identified in the administration of Japan's pension system. It is widely recognised that record management for Japanese pensions has been, moderately speaking, incomplete, and more strictly speaking, defective. On the occasion of the introduction of the basic pension identification number, the Social Insurance Agency identified some 250 million numbers out of 300 million and consolidated them into 100 million basic pension identification numbers. As a consequence, 50 million pension numbers still remain to be identified.

Ministry unveils strategy to boost 'Cool Japan'

The government has drawn up a list of strategies aimed at boosting Japan's pop culture industry, thereby making Japan and its contemporary culture more competitive internationally. Japan's pop culture--namely its anime, games, food and fashion--is believed to have great potential for improving Japan's image and making its products more competitive in Asia, Europe and North America, where it is popular and being promoted under the name "Cool Japan."

New party set to be launched this week

Former Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano, who is set to leave the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party after severely criticizing the party leadership, and former trade minister Takeo Hiranuma confirmed Monday evening their plans to launch a new party by the end of the week.

Sumo: Fans hope 15-year-old Japanese prodigy can rise to the top

A 15-year-old boy, who has joined the Takadagawa sumo stable, has drawn attention as a possible future star. Despite his young age, Ryoya Tatsu, who is 193 centimeters tall and weighs 145 kilograms, is almost equal in size to Yokozuna Hakuho, who is 192 centimeters tall and 152 kilograms. Tatsu was among the newcomers who were introduced to the audience during the Spring Grand Sumo Tournament held in Osaka in March. The spring tournament, which coincides with the school graduation season, is also dubbed the "job placement tournament."

Japanese carriers to end mobile phone locks?

Japan's regulators decided to end restrictions on mobile phone users switching operators or changing the SIM card in their phones. The communications ministry and the country's four major carriers reached the agreement and will set up new guidelines for the plan, Jiji Press reported. At the moment, Japan's major mobile networks sell handsets that accept only their respective SIM cards only, and cannot work with handsets bought from other carriers. In other words, they sell network-locked devices.

Japan and Friends: Foreign Relations

"Last Wednesday at the Grand Prince Hotel, the Japan Institute for International Affairs convened a symposium on the East Asian Community. With the opening speech delivered by Hatoyama himself, and a promise to broadcast the entire proceedings both domestically within Japan and overseas, the event was quite high profile," writes Joel Rathus in his recent article Japan’s early moves on the East Asian Community. "The presenters themselves represented the cream of Asia’s Track II diplomacy. This was underlined by the fact that, in addition to handshakes with Prime Minister Hatoyama, Foreign Minister Okada met with the international guests over dinner at the Foreign Ministry’s official guest house that evening. The conclusions of the symposium will surely find a place (at least informally) in the policy-making process of Japan, and perhaps more broadly."

In his weekly editorial on East Asia Forum, Peter Drysdale adds, "A crucial question is whether the United States should be invited to join the enterprise. No step forward in consolidating East Asian regionalism can be taken without consideration of trans-Pacific economic and political security interests and the US interest is welcome. But the US is not a natural fit in the economic integration agenda that East Asia needs to work up in detail within EAS and US participation within EAS itself would be awkward logistically. Which is where Australian Prime Minister Rudd’s Asia Pacific Community idea comes into play. If, and as, EAC moves forward it makes good sense to tie its development in tandem with entrenching a comprehensive (Asia Pacific Community) dialogue between Asia and the United States (and probably Russia). And that is where there would seem to be a great deal of complementarity between Mr Hatoyama’s and Mr Rudd’s thinking about the evolution of regional architecture. In the coming weeks we shall post contributions from top analysts from across the region on these and related issues."

Japan and Friends: Foreign Relations

There has recently been some friction between Japan and the United States over the Futenma base in Okinawa and over the existence of secret Cold War-era agreements with Washington that, among other things, had allowed American nuclear-armed warships to sail into Japanese ports in violation of Japan’s non-nuclear policies. Martin Fackler for The New York Times summed the issue up succinctly:

"The existence of the pacts, known in Japan as the “secret treaties,” has long been known from declassified documents in the United States and the testimony of former American and Japanese diplomats. But successive prime ministers denied their existence, turning the agreements into a symbol for many Japanese of how Liberal Democratic governments had turned their country into a stunted democracy run without full consent by the public."

After ending the Liberal Democrats’ nearly unbroken 54-year grip on power last summer, the new Democratic Party government opened an investigation into the pacts as part of their promised housecleaning of Japan’s postwar order. Exposing the truth about their nation’s secret dealings with the United States was also part of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s pledges to put Tokyo on a more equal footing with Washington. This fed concerns among some in Washington, particularly conservatives, that revealing the treaties was part of an effort by Mr. Hatoyama’s administration to push away from the United States."

Tobias Harris contributed some much-needed perspective on both situations in his essay Japan: The importance of open diplomacy for East Asia Forum, which was posted today. Here is a snippet:

"The Hatoyama government deserves some blame for not being clearer about why it wanted a review in the first place, which enabled some to paint the government as anti-American. But those who see the Futenma dispute in the worst possible light have misinterpreted the Hatoyama government’s position. I think that the Hatoyama government is approaching Futenma less as a foreign policy issue than as a domestic policy issue, because a bilateral agreement as complicated the realignment plan involves too many actors within Japan to be simply a bilateral matter for governments in Tokyo and Washington. Indeed, if the 2006 agreement has a flaw it is that the Koizumi government acted without the full approval of Okinawan constituents, which explains at least in part why subsequent LDP governments did little but drag their feet on implementing the agreement."

According to The New York Times, by March 3rd the Japanese government had approached United States officials with a tentative proposal for resolving a festering dispute over the American air base in Okinawa. The proposal would relocate the Futenma Marine Corps air station, a busy helicopter base, from a crowded city in southern Okinawa to a less populated area in the island’s north, but would be smaller and have a diminished impact on local residents and the environment than previously agreed upon.

It is unclear whether the proposal is going to be acceptable to Washington, or indeed to members of Prime Minister Hatoyama’s own coalition, particularly the Social Democratic Party, a tiny leftist group that wants the base removed from Japan altogether. Harris concludes:

"But whether or not the Hatoyama government succeeds, it is important to recognise that it is acting on the basis of an old idea, that a democratic foreign policy must necessarily be conducted in the sight of the people in whose name it is being conducted. In its pursuit of this aim, the Hatoyama government has also implicitly suggested that an alliance conducted behind closed doors is inappropriate for a more democratic Japan, that the alliance will not endure if it continues to rest upon secret agreements and understandings."

APEC Japan 2010

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (or APEC), which turned twenty years old last November, is seeking a fresh way forward against the backdrop of the global economic crisis and the need to further boost open trade and investment in the Asia Pacific region. The coming two years offer Japan and the U.S. a golden opportunity to coordinate their efforts in support of the shared APEC goals, as Japan will host the 2010 summit in November in Yokohama while the U.S. will host the 2011 summit in Hawaii.

Unfortunately, the private sectors of both Japan and the United States tend to have at best a vague understanding of APEC's goals and accomplishments. Japan Society is here to help!

APEC 2010 SOM Chair Ambassador Shigeru Nakamura of Japan and his U.S. counterpart, U.S. Senior Official for APEC Kurt Tong, are going to join us on March 15th for a corporate luncheon to discuss the principal themes for APEC Japan 2010. These include regional economic integration; a strategy for promoting balanced, inclusive and sustainable economic growth; and further emphasis on human security issues to protect societies against a multitude of threats including natural disasters, terrorism, food security and pandemics.

The internet has been buzzing about Japan's new role as the APEC chair. The Japan Times discussed the busy year ahead and on East Asia Forum, Christopher Findlay of Adelaide University intelligently analyzed APEC's goals:

"Balanced, inclusive, sustainable and knowledge-based – these are the dimensions of growth which APEC is talking about. Put their first letters together and you get BISK.

This agenda comes out of a number of forces for change, including the response to the global financial crisis, the concerns which have been raised about the distribution of the benefits of growth within economies (and between them), the intersection of these developments with the climate change debate, and the twittering rate of technological change in the digital world.

So BISK wraps up these forces for change. There are at least two sets of issues. One is what it really means. Is there a core component or is this another list in the APEC list of lists?"

Make sure to read the rest of the article to learn more and then, armed with knowledge, come to Japan Society on March 15th to participate in what should be a fascinating discussion!

Japan and Friends: Foreign Relations

Today on East Asia Forum there was an article entitled India’s deepening relations with Japan written by guest author, Nabeel Mancheri of Jawaharlal Nehru University. The article does an excellent job of summing up the history of relations between Japan and India post-Cold War, the status of the two nations' relationship now, and what the future holds.

This is just a taste (so be sure to read the full article later):

"Until the 1990s, the relationship between India and Japan had been highly asymmetrical. The Cold War created a strategic-political void between the two countries. Economically, India was too inward-looking to be of any great interest to Japan. The post cold-war realities, however, have been forging new strategic bonds.

As a result of the flowering relationship, 2007 was declared the Indo-Japan friendship year. The number of Japanese delegations visiting India over the past few years shows that India is a significant beacon on the Japanese investment radar. India, with its growing economic strength, has adapted its foreign policy to increase its regional as well as global influence, and Japan has been elevated into an important position within India’s ‘Look East Policy.’"

Japan and Friends: Foreign Relations

Senior Fellow at the Japan Center for International Exchange, Hitoshi Tanaka, who spoke at Japan Society on January 14th about changes in Japan's foreign policy, recently published an insightful article on East Asia Forum about the state of the relationship between the United States and Japan entitled The US-Japan alliance: beyond Futenma. Here's a brief exerpt:

"The benefits for Japan are clear. The alliance was conceived during the Cold War as a mechanism to protect Japan from a single looming threat—the Soviet Union—that has since disappeared. However, the end of the Cold War has not eliminated Japan’s need for some sort of deterrence capacity. Nearby countries such as China and Russia have nuclear capabilities and North Korea is developing its capability. Japan cannot ignore this."

Also making an appearance on East Asia Forum's lineup was Tobias Harris of MIT, who we featured in an earlier post, with a piece on Okada Katsuya’s first time visiting South Korea as the foreign minister for meetings with President Lee and other senior officials. Here's a quote from his article, entitled Okada acknowledges past wrongs in Seoul:

"Japan has apologized to South Korea before, and many — not only conservatives — will wonder why Japan has to apologize again. Okada’s remarks provide some hint as to why Japan still has work to do on historical reconciliation. Rarely has a Japanese statesman shown that he is apologizing because he has looked at his country’s behavior through the eyes of its victims and come to appreciate just how destructive Japan’s actions were."

Japan-China Relations & Japan-US Relations

“For the Japanese, there is a feeling that somehow bilateral problems will be resolved because both sides agree about the importance of a good relationship for their own national interests,and that China will always seek a compromise. The Japanese believe China needs Japan for a number of reasons, be it to protect its foreign image as a peacefully developing country, to maintain its export- and FDI-dependent economy, to cope with its environmental problems, or to reduce its energy consumption. Prime Minister Hatoyama has stated that the creation of a good atmosphere and a strengthening of an East Asian community will allow the solution of even the most difficult problems. But are such views too complacent? Do they actually reduce Japan’s options in the medium and long term while China’s overall power is growing?”

[ A new start for Japan-China relations? on the East Asia Forum ]

This is a really hot topic right now. This Thursday (January 14th), we’re having former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Hitoshi Tanaka shares his view of changes in Japan’s foreign policy since the DPJ came to power last fall and implications for U.S. – Japan relations now that the DPJ is shifting its attentions to its Asian neighbors.

Learn more about the event