JAPANESE DOMESTIC POLITICS

Sheila A. Smith, Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (A Council on Foreign Relations Book) (New York: Columbia U. Press, 2015) ("A second policy commitment by Japan that could be sorely tested by China is Tokyo's commitment to an open and liberal global trading order. Throughout the postwar era, Japan has sought to rebuild its national economy and expand its industrial base through the Bretton Woods commitment to open and free trade. While Tokyo was considering how to stimulate greater competitiveness, it began a new round of trade talks in 2013. Japan has agreed to join the trans-Pacific Partnership with the United States and eight other Pacific nations, Equally important, Tokyo remains committed to a free-trade agreement with both South Korea and China. If China were to abandon this effort and turn instead to a more protectionist path in its economic relations with Japan, it would signal a challenge to the principles of free trade as well as restrict market access for Japanese companies in China. Likewise, if the Chinese government decided to discriminate against Japanese goods, companies, and/or capital, it would have a serious impact on Japan's own economic performance. Any tit-for-tat trade dispute or other kinds of economic tension between Japan and China could alter Japanese attitudes toward free trade and an open Japanese economy. Japan's and China's economic interdependence will become an even greater source of anxiety when Japan's need to service its national debt forces it to sell its bonds on the global market. Already, China is beginning to buy Japanese government bonds, through not yet on a scale comparable to that of other advanced industrial economies. The more Chinese that purchase Japanese debt, the greater Japan's vulnerability to China will become, and this, too, could exacerbate domestic anxiety in Japan about the Chinese governments long-term ambitions." Id. at 261-262.).

Sheila A. Smith, Japan's New Politics and the U.S.-Japan Alliance (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, July 2014) ("[T]he U.S. role in the postwar settlement of Northeast Asia is central to the understanding of the postwar peace. Washington has not been a bystander in the postwar order in Asia, and it should not assume that role now as questions about the legitimacy of the San Francisco Peace Treaty and other regional peace treaties are called into question. New generations of Asia citizens, including Japanese, are asking new questions about the origins of the postwar peace, and the domestic politics surrounding this revisionist impulse will be important drivers of policy in Asia. [] Reconciliation has been the cornerstone of bilateral U.S.-Japan relations for more than half a century, and the United States and Japan should not hesitate to look back at that choice. As with all reconciliation efforts, however, more can be done. A visit by the U.S. president to the sites of the atomic bombings in Japan--the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--would be one one of demonstrating the continued desire for reconciliation as the premise of the alliance partnership, and would offer a powerful example for other parties in Asia struggling to overcome the politics of national identity associated with memories of twentieth-century conflict." Id. at 34-35.).