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The European Union-Japan political and international development dialogue is resurging through the Strategic Partnership Agreement recently agreed between the two actors. The current paper argues that in order for this agreement to deliver on its promises, the EU and Japan need to build on their similarities, but more importantly on their differences and lessons learnt through their distinct international experiences. While common values and norms have helped them to agree on such document, building on their differences will help both actors to make this bilateral dialogue more productive and strategic. Through the theoretical lenses of policy entrepreneurship used to consolidate knowledge for development on horizontal cooperation, the paper questions how sharing their experiences as international donors can be of strategic relevance for both the EU and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States with shared interests and values may form a collective identity to enact their vision and achieve security objectives against those they view as threats. Similarly, US-Japan relations have progressed for a long, not just due to the dangers posed by China and North Korea but because of their shared values of democracy, human rights, peace, and global prosperity. They share the vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific by forming bilateral and multilateral alliances. The US and Japan are also engaged in strategic partnerships for traditional and non-traditional security in the region, including maritime, cyber, space, and energy. This paper, therefore, focuses on East Asia due to its vulnerable security architecture and explores how the US and Japan's security cooperation strengthens regional security by sharing values and security concerns. It highlights that the potential of both states to form a collective identity may improve the security situation in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explain the culture-driven role and effects of social capital in Japanese-Western alliances. The authors move beyond narrow conceptualizations of relationship bonding (i.e. positive socio-psychological aspects such as trust and commitment) to explore the broader role of social capital (e.g. in destructive act recovery processes) in such alliances. Design/methodology/approach – The conceptual paper adopts a theory development approach. Findings – The authors advance a process model and propositions that explain the way social capital networks and processes influence relationship-based contracting and performance outcomes in alliances with the Japanese. Research limitations/implications – The study assists international marketers in their efforts to overcome cultural barriers to success in Japanese-Western alliance relationships. Practical implications – It can be argued that erosion of Japanese business culture potentially clouds the picture for implementing governance through social capital. The study furnishes managers with an understanding of how to take the cultural context of the partnership into account to build appropriate and productive social capital with Japanese partners. Originality/value – The study is novel in addressing the issue of how to implement relational bonding mechanisms in complex cultural situations. As a result of cultural erosion, different types of Japanese partner, eroded versus traditional, may require different alliance screening and management strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the differences in business continuity of Japanese and American small organizations during the Covid-19 pandemic since early 2020 in terms of organizational adaptation empowered by loans, grants, and aid and created through processes of visioning, and relationship building. The 28 Japanese and 21 American small organizations collected through snowball sampling were asked about their level of preparedness, the types of aid earned, the vision that an organization developed, and how they used their organization to advance community life. We used semi-structured interviews in the participants' native languages for 40 min to 1.5 h. Coding results identified 36 codes, nine subcategories, and three broad categories common among small organizations in Japan and the United States. A comparison of the coding results showed three results that we focus on in our comparative analysis. First, loans, grants, and aid provided by the government were effectively used as a business continuity resource in both countries. Second, visioning, a process of setting goals and understanding purpose, was observed in Japan and the United States. Lastly, Japanese organizations emphasized maintaining relationships with business partners, even providing monetary support to them. Conversely, in the United States, new relationships were observed but organizations did not provide as much mutual support. Thus, the study clarified two different types of resilience among small organizations: trust-based resilience seen frequently in Japan, which seeks to maintain relationships with employees and business partners rather than investing in the organization, and the change-based resilience in the United States, which aims to change the organization and build new relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the role of domestic politics in facilitating or constraining a government's decision to participate in free trade agreements ( FTAs)? This paper seeks to answer this question by focusing on the domestic politics in Japan over the Trans- Pacific Partnership Agreement ( TPP). In particular, we ask why the opposition to the TPP encompasses a much broader segment of society than is predicted by trade theorems. We show that a broader protectionist coalition can emerge through persuasion and policy campaigns by the elites, in particular, powerful protectionist interests expending resources to persuade the uncertain public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prospect of the United States continuing to reduce the size of its nuclear arsenal to “very low numbers” has raised questions in Japan and South Korea, where US extended deterrence guarantees are premised on the “nuclear umbrella.” In both countries, however, concerns focus less on numerical arsenal size than on the sufficiency of specific nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities to meet evolving threats and on the degree of broader US commitment to these alliances. This article assesses developments in US-Japan and US-South Korea relationships in response to the Obama administration's nuclear disarmament policies, focusing on how the evolutionary course of those relationships may in turn condition prospects for sustaining this US nuclear policy direction. The analysis finds that the challenges of deterrence credibility and allied reassurance are difficult and long-term, but also that US nuclear arsenal size is secondary to broader political, strategic, and military factors in meeting these challenges. The evaluation concludes that strong alliance relationships and strategic stability in East Asia can be maintained while the size of the US nuclear arsenal continues to decline, but also that deterioration of these relationships could imperil core US nuclear policy and nonproliferation objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This empirical note applies a simple and powerful nonlinear unit root proposed by Sollis (2009) to test the validity of long-run Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) for Japan's Real Exchange Rate (RER) vis-a-vis its eight trading partner countries. The empirical results indicate that PPP holds for Japan relative to her major trading partners, with the exception of Hong Kong and Thailand, and the adjustment towards PPP is nonlinear and in an asymmetric way. This result provides support for PPP for Japan relative to its major trading partner countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]