Analysis: How Japan's cost-of-living crisis weighed on voters
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The Mainichi
3 hours ago
- The Mainichi
Bill Emmott: Japan should lead regional collaboration to cope with Trump 'typhoon'
By Bill Emmott, independent writer, lecturer and international affairs consultant During all the decades of the U.S.-Japan security alliance, which has been one of the closest security partnerships anywhere in the world, Japan has had to worry about two contradictory dangers: abandonment and entrapment. Abandonment would involve Japan's interests being ignored by its partner amid a deal with one of its enemies; entrapment would mean being forced to fight alongside the United States in a war chosen by the Americans but not by the Japanese. These worries about extreme outcomes have tended to alternate, depending on the political mood in Washington, DC, at the time. Yet currently Japan finds itself worrying about both abandonment and entrapment simultaneously. This may be as good a sign as any that the Trump administration represents a sharp break with the postwar past. The entrapment fear has always felt the likelier danger. It has now reared its head again in a surprising way, as senior US defence officials have been reported to have been pressing Japan and Australia to make explicit commitments about whether they would fight to defend Taiwan in the event of an attempted Chinese invasion or coercion. The surprise is that American officials are pressing such close allies for an explicit commitment when not even the United States itself, and especially not its Commander in Chief, President Donald Trump, has made its own intentions clear. This is not a total break with recent American administrations, but it does put Japan in a potentially awkward position. During the Biden administration a mutual concern over the security and stability of Taiwan did begin to feature in the US-Japan communiques issued after meetings between the Japanese prime minister and the U.S. president, showing that some sort of explicit commitment to working together to preserve the status quo was being sought by the United States. However, that is not the same, at least not politically the same, as actually committing yourself to fight a future war, in circumstances that cannot be predicted and without knowing what America's own stance would be. To do so would be politically extremely difficult, especially for a government that currently lacks a majority in the Diet. Beyond domestic politics, the immediate risk would not be of a war itself but rather of such a commitment causing a further worsening of Japan's relations with China, to no obvious purpose. Abandonment has always looked the less likely of the twin dangers, for having Japan as its largest overseas military base has mattered so much to America and its regional presence in the Indo-Pacific that the idea of it deserting its Japanese ally has looked implausible. This remains true, especially given the emphasis being laid by leading figures in the Pentagon and the Republican Party on the contest with China for both regional and global supremacy. However, President Trump is well known to be highly transactional, especially in foreign policy. He has also indicated a strong sympathy for the very 19th century idea that great powers are entitled to have "spheres of influence" in the areas around their own borders. He has, for example, expressed a determination that America should gain control over Greenland, the icy territory that is part of Denmark but adjacent to the north-east coast of the United States, has declared that Canada should become the U.S.'s "51st State," and has insisted the U.S. should regain control over the Panama Canal. This makes it conceivable, even if still improbable, that at some point Trump could be tempted to accept Chinese control over its "sphere" of Taiwan and the South China Sea in return for China accepting US control over territories in its region. That would give China control over the main sea lanes surrounding Japan and a greatly increased ability to intimidate other countries in the region, including Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. This is, admittedly, a rather extreme scenario. The identification by most members of Trump's Republican Party of China as America's leading global adversary, and the strong support for Taiwan held by those same Republicans, makes it feel especially unlikely. Yet the fact that the idea of such a "grand bargain" with China is talked about at all simply underlines how unpredictable is the foreign policy of this American president, with the range of actions and outcomes during the remaining three and a half years of his term looking wider than under any U.S. president in living memory. The governments of every longstanding ally of the United States are having to live with this uncertainty, one which reflects a broader question: using a meteorological metaphor, does Trump represent a temporary extreme-weather event, like an especially severe typhoon, or does he represent climate change, a trend that will endure? The safest answer is that he is a bit of both: his extreme volatility and hostile manner can be seen as personal and thus temporary, but some of the ideas he is purveying have a broader resonance in the United States that could persist after he is gone. The central role that America plays in the security of the Indo-Pacific gives Japan little choice other than to adapt to whatever extreme weather emerges from Washington, DC. The more forward-leaning stance Japan has taken on defence, first under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and then with the new National Security Strategy under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in 2022, has had the dual purpose of increasing Japan's contribution to joint deterrence operations with America and creating more long-term options for national security in case relations with Washington become more fractured. Continuing and even enhancing this strategy remains Japan's only viable plan. What Japan could perhaps invest even more time in is in its already impressive diplomatic efforts in north-east and south-east Asia. To cope with the Trump "typhoon" and to increase Japan's own leverage over Washington at any time of crisis, it makes sense to work more closely with other countries that face the same pressures, starting with South Korea but also extending south to Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan itself. All these countries are facing hostility from Trump over trade while also needing to invest more in their own security and economic resilience, in a region in which the two superpowers, China and the U.S., are both unavoidable presences but also habitual bullies. It therefore makes sense to work together on trade, technology, security and other issues as much as possible, to increase bargaining power as well as resilience. Japan has a key role, as well as opportunity, to drive this regional collaboration. The contradictory fears of entrapment and abandonment can never be eliminated, but through collaboration they can perhaps be mitigated.
NHK
7 hours ago
- NHK
Japanese ex-abductee collects signatures calling for return of other victims
A man who returned to Japan after being abducted to North Korea has collected signatures calling for the government to take concrete action to bring back all abductees as soon as possible. Hasuike Kaoru was abducted on July 31, 1978, along the Niigata Prefecture coast and returned home in 2002 after a Japan-North Korea summit. He took part in Saturday's signature collection campaign near the site where he was abducted, ahead of the 47th anniversary of his abduction. People passing by responded to his call for signatures, some of whom said they are supporting him. The Japanese government says at least 17 of its citizens were abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. Five returned home in 2002, but the other 12 remain unaccounted for. After abductee Arimoto Keiko's father, Akihiro, died at the age of 96 in February, abductee Yokota Megumi's 89-year-old mother, Sakie, is the only surviving parent of the recognized victims. Hasuike said it is important to send a message to North Korea that the Japanese people have not forgotten the abduction issue. He said he wants the Japanese government to seriously consider how to make progress in the issue and take action, regardless of the political situation following the Upper House election.
Japan Times
8 hours ago
- Japan Times
Privacy safeguards needed to help fuel AI growth in Japan, panel chair says
The head of Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission has emphasized the need to introduce a monetary penalty system to help develop the country's artificial intelligence industry. In a recent interview, Satoru Tezuka, who assumed the role of commission chair in May, said that the country "should introduce" a system that includes fines for profits gained through the misuse of personal information, as part of a triennial revision of the personal information protection law. The law revision was postponed during this year's ordinary parliamentary session amid strong opposition from business circles toward a system involving fines. "The word 'fine' makes businesses cautious, but our planned system is intended to crack down on malicious law violators and would not affect diligent business operators," Tezuka said. "We are proposing making personal information available without consent in principal if it is used for AI development, and for this, we need to ensure proper governance among business operators," he said. Noting that the world is changing with the emergence of AI, the commission chair said, "AI is like a living thing, so we need to feed it data and let it grow." "If personal information is included in such data, the current law requires people's consent in advance in some cases," he pointed out, adding that this requirement has hindered technological development. The personal information protection law is "essential in ensuring the healthy development of data use," Tezuka said. At the same time, he stressed that Japan cannot compete with other countries in AI development under the current law. Among the Group of Seven major democracies, only Japan and Canada have not introduced a system involving monetary fines, he said. Another focal point of the law revision is child protection. "Children's judgment is not on the same level as adults," Tezuka said. "It's important to develop systems and technologies on the assumption that they are used by children." "We aim to submit (a bill to revise the law) soon, but we don't have a specific schedule in mind," Tezuka said. "The commission had previously been headed mainly by legal experts, but I was appointed this time as someone who specializes in technology, because what is needed now is a data strategy," he emphasized. "I think the government's policy on personal information protection has entered a new stage," Tezuka said. "It is my duty to ensure coherence between data use and protection, and to work out the details (of the law revision)."
