Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Which Comes First, TPA or TPP?

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The assumption always has been that the Obama administration needs the fast-track Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) in order to secure conclu...
Monday, February 17, 2014

What If the Japanese Public Had Reacted Differently to the Koizumi Overtures to North Korea?

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One of the great what-ifs of contemporary East Asian history is this: What if the Japanese public had reacted differently to the Koizumi ov...

The Obama “State Visit” Revisited

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Just to wrap up a thread that I’d opened here, it looks like President Obama will stay only one night in Tokyo but the two sides will work ...
Monday, February 10, 2014

The Might-Have-Been of the Tokyo Gubernatorial

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…some doodling for which I find no immediate practical use… The pro-nuclear media is taking Yoichi Masuzoe’s landslide victory over ant...
Sunday, February 09, 2014

So Which Is It Going to Be, The Kaiserreich, or the Third Reich?

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While attending the annual Davos meeting, Prime Minister Abe caught some flak when he responded to a question about the possibility of mili...

Tokyo Gubernatorial Election: A Pre-Postmortem

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Between Yoichi Masuzoe’s victory as the foregone conclusion and the treacherous roads from yesterday’s snow, I am not going to cast a vote ...
Wednesday, February 05, 2014

Off-the-Cuff: Some Thoughts around President Obama’s April Visit

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The following are some of my thoughts around President Obama’s April visit to Japan, specifically regarding the new South Korean bid for it...
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Monday, January 27, 2014

Off-the-Cuff: Hosokawa, Abe…

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A quickie, from a late-night, transpacific email exchange with a couple of people whom I deeply respect. (Yes, I’m the wiseguy.) Speaking o...
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Sunday, January 26, 2014

Japan Catches, China “Asks/Demands,” Japan Releases—So What’s the Story Here?

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A friend cites this Japan Times article (translated Kyodo wire) and finds it “very encouraging.” The story is that “Beijing asked Tokyo ...
Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Week-old Building Blocks for an Abe Profile

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A week ago, I whacked out answers to four questions put to me and likely a few other talking heads by a journalist writing an Abe profile. ...
Saturday, January 18, 2014

Addendum to My Commentary on the Sasae Op-Ed

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The following was an afterthought to the memo that became my preceding post , just in case it might come in handy. Since I’m not getting pa...

The Empire of the Rising Sun Strikes Back (with Its Mighty Pen)

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I have been harsh on MOFA at times. This time, I had some nice things to say in response to a link that I received today. (I don’t follow t...
Friday, January 17, 2014

Whoever Wins, a Senior Citizen Will Be Tokyo Governor (But He Won’t Be an Heirloom Turkey)

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Yoichi Masuzoe is the frontrunner for now. Morihiro Hosokawa, his main rival, has stumbled badly before reaching the gate by postponing the...
Thursday, January 16, 2014

Politics Unusual: Four-Nation Study around the “Mongolian” Invasion?

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Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Hakubun Shimomura gave a talk at the Japan National Press Club yesterday (Ja...
Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Post-Mortem: My Koizumi Call on Hosokawa’s Gubernatorial Bid Goes South

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Yesterday (Jan. 14), Junichiro Koizumi offered his full support for Morihiro Hosokawa in his bid for the Tokyo governor’s office after a wi...
Monday, January 13, 2014

Why Waste Prospective Comments on MOF, Businesses, and the Consumption Tax?

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I wrote the following memos this morning to prepare for a conversation with a client. It turned out that the client had a very specific pro...
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Secretary/Minister of Defense/Defence

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And a little something that I’d typed up last night, extensively reedited in the morning light sans (mostly) the influence of alcohol. ...
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