44 posts
EU trade negotiations with Japan
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A “scoping exercise” by the European Commission and Japanese government on a possible free trade agreement was concluded on 31 May 2012. The Commission subsequently recommended to the Council that it authorise the opening of negotiation...
Japan: They call it lonely deaths
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Will more people die alone without anybody knowing that for many days? Question: 1. Is this a real problem and Japanese society should be worried? 2. In general how the Japanese society perceives elderly and less successful people? Answers: Yumi Hash...
Uncertain World: China-Japan Tensions – Who Stands to Gain?
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video By Fyodor Lukyanov The Asia-Pacific Region’s...
A currency war campaign plan for the BoJ
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(Chart from RBC Capital Markets.)Maybe we should have sent this earlier. Sorry BoJ.Anyway, the last two pushes by the BoJ, in April and February, didn’t have much of...
The BoJ’s feud-driven asset purchase extension
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Japan’s finance minister Jun Azumi was pretty clear about how the country might respond after the FOMC’s decision last week threatened to push the yen higher against the dollar....
The EU’s Assistance to 3.11 in Japan: Evaluation and Prospects
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Although it has been a while since Japan’s 3.11 Earthquake, as a response to the ECFR’s analysis ‘Assistance to Japan after the tsunami’, this post will briefly present: (1) the evaluation of the EU’s disaster relief; (2) the lack of Japane...
Japan Stands Up
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In a display of its resilience, Japan is getting up once again after the devastating earthquake and tsunami of a year ago. But the world’s third largest economy still faces multiple challenges, and in our latest assessment of the country’s econo...
The Eurozone is f***ed, but at least US and Japan are more f***ed
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The president of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy used his remarks after the meeting with the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Iveta Radicova, to announce that the economy of the Eurozone is not in a crisis – at least not compared to the USA a...
Commissioner Oettinger’s loose lips
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Beleaguered Japanese officials are already grappling with a humanitarian crisis wrought by a biblical earthquake and tsunami, and the prospect of apocalyptic meltdowns at a pair of stricken nuclear reactors. Add to their list of woes one European com...
Japan remains calm - the West panicks
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Just read this piece from a Japanese insider - when this catastrophe is over, we seriously have to question Western media coverage.
Japan on our mind – Sunday music
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Kovács and Kováts have finished work at the European Council Saturday morning at 4:30 am (meeting was over after 1 am, then came the press conferences and then writing our report to send back home).One big lesson we learned in the diplomatic world...
Higher than the Sun (the woes of Yen and Japanese exports)
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During the post-War years, Japanese business liked to make apocalyptic prophecies that the country would come to an end if the Yen rose beyond 300/200/150 yen (etc) against the Dollar. Well, Japan did pretty okay despite Yen crossing those barriers i...
Japan’s “Revolving Door”: Hello, Mr…whoever!
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“You say ‘good morning’ to one Prime Minister and ‘good afternoon’ to a different one!” (Luis Inacio Lula da Silva 2010) “it seems to be the era of karaoke politics in Japan, where in quick succession different members of the ruling e...
Assessing Japan’s Election: Is the Sun Setting or Rising on Reform?
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WASHINGTON – Ten months ago the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ended six decades of near-unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), ushering in a new political era. But on July 11, elections for Japan’s upper house rolled back DP...
True reason for resignation of Japanese Prime Minister unveiled
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Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has announced his resignation yesterday, after just eight months in office. The official reason is that Hatoyama decided to resign after failing to meet an election promise to move an unpopular US military bas...
85.6% of Japanese Public Supports Capital Punishment…Really?
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I have been assessing the extent to which the EU can try and urge Japan to change its accepted norms on human rights regarding capital punishment, and came across this article the other day: Japan Today (2010) “Record High 85.6% in Favor of Death P...
Defying Gravity In Japan
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Popular myth and, allegedly, the laws of aerodynamics have it that the bumblebee should not be able to take flight. Yet still, our good bumblebee refuses to be pulled down by such nit-picking details, and year after year it takes flight as if none of...
Can Japan cut public debt before it gets old?
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Today’s ratings downgrade by S&P for Japanese public debt has brought further attention to Japan’s huge and growing debt burden. Yet with each round of concern, there’s always a viable response that says “So what, yields...
Double Dip Alert In Japan
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Despite recent optimism about the apparent renaisance of growth in the Japanese economy, and the heightened sense of enthusiasm which surrounds the surge in economic activity right across the Asian continent there are considerable grounds for caution...
New Administration in Japan: Increasing Presence of the EU in Japan?
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It has been a while that Yukio Hatoyama, a new Prime Minister in Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), took his administration in September 2009 in Japan. Since Japan had four different Prime Ministers from 2007-09, I was not personally expecting much cha...
Asian Union Plans Attract Japan
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The plans for creating an Asian economic community grouping China, ASEAN and Japan have received an important boost recently. During his informal meeting in New York with Chinese president Hu Jintao, the new Japanese premier Mr. Hatoyama has proposed...
Japan Deserves Praise for Raising the Climate Stakes
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The newly elected Japanese candidate for prime minister has demonstrated political courage by raising Japanese climate targets for 2020. In his capacity as leader of the Democratic Party, he has indicated that Japan should reduce its C02 emissions by...
Fraternity Japanese Style
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Congratulations to the Democratic Party of Japan on their striking electoral win. As the world's second biggest economy - and a major investor in the UK - Japan matters a lot to us. As a concerned international citizen, Japan has also been determi...
That man again
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In a long line of EU summits with global counterparts, there is an EU-Japan summit on 4 May. As is customary, the European Council is represented by the presidency country which of course is the Czech Republic. And as is customary, the PM would l...
Japanese generosity
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Pakistan, a terrifyingly unstable nuclear state, is desparately short of cash. But at a donor's conference in Tokyo yesterday, over $5 bn was pledged to it over the next 2 years - a fifth of that from the Japanese hosts. Japan is facing an abysmal ec...
Japan’s Industry Reels Under The Slump In World Trade
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Japan’s economy certainly looks to be one of the worst case scenarios globally at the moment. Indeed, as Claus Vistesen puts it (in a very fine and thoroughly argued post - Engine Failure - that you can see here): “Final estimates from Q4...
Japan’s Exports Fall An Annual 49% In February
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Japan’s exports fell by a record 49.4 percent in February as deepening recessions in the U.S. and Europe, and a sharp slowdown in China hit demand for Japanese products around the globe. Shipments to the U.S., still Japan’s biggest market, dropp...
Japanese Land Prices Hit 1984 Level
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This from Bloomberg this morning: Japanese residential land prices fell to a 24-year low as job losses and wage cuts discouraged homebuyers, while tighter credit markets choked off funding for property developers. Residential land prices fell 3.2 pe...
Japan’s Industrial Slump Deepens In January
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Japanese manufacturing output fell in January by a record 10 per cent month-on-month while new job offers declined 18 per cent, reflecting the deepening recession in the world’s second biggest economy. Industrial production was down a whopping 30.8...
Japan’s “Unimaginable” Contraction
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Well, it isn’t only in Europe that we are having a hard time of things. Last week Kazuo Momma, head of the Bank of Japan’s research and statistics department, warned that Japan’s economy now faced an “unimaginable” contraction, and toda...
Japanese bloggers unite
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I met 100 Japanese bloggers tonight at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo to debate how the internet can fuel the drive to meet the challenge of climate change. The event will be at www.uknow.or.jp . The predominantly young audience d...
Global Perspectives focus on Japan-Africa Relations
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The June issue of the magazine 'Global Perspectives' focuses on the recent Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD).According to Ramesh Jaura (IPS), who reported from the conference, Japan's priorities in Africa are to boost econ...
