(April 26 th , “Japanese gov't passes 5-year basic plan on ocean policy,” http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/8223714.html 7/14)
TOKYO, April 26 (Xinhua) --
The Japanese government has passed during a cabinet meeting on Friday a five-year basic plan on ocean policy, which aims at promoting undersea resources development and enhancing surveillance capacity around its waters
. According to the plan,
Japan will promote its investigation on reserves of undersea resources such as seabed methane hydrate and rare earth in the coming three years
and develop technology for commercial production of methane gas from methane hydrate starting in 2018.
The plan also seeks to enhance Japan's maritime surveillance capability in its surrounding waters by reorganizing and outfitting planes and ships for
Japanese Coast Guard and Self- Defense Forces and realizing information sharing between the two forces.
(Hiroshi, OPRF, “Japan's Ocean Policymaking,” http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08920753.2012.652518, 7/13)
In regard to integrated ocean management and sustainable development, Japan has recently taken rapid, concrete steps to form its own comprehensive ocean policy
, with a Basic Act on Ocean
Policy proposal being adopted by the Diet after being submitted by MPs from a multi-partisan group. The background of this change is as follows. Although
Japan is surrounded by the ocean, has strong fishing and maritime industries, a long tradition of ocean research and development, and is entrusted with the world’s sixth largest EEZ/CS by UNCLOS
, its contributions to ocean governance under UNCLOS and Agenda 21 were uninspiring until the enactment of the Basic Act on Ocean Policy in 2007. Its government agencies were characterized by their vertically compartmentalized division of functions, making them particularly ill suited for addressing “the problems of ocean space [that] are closely interrelated and need to be considered as a whole.” There was neither a minister nor coordinating office for the oceans that could consider these problems in a comprehensive manner. These conditions were largely responsible for the ironic situation in which an ocean state like Japan could make so little progress in the development, use, conservation, and management of the vast ocean areas it had been entrusted with by UNCLOS, nor make significant contributions to the international cooperation and coordination indispensable to comprehensive ocean management.
The reason change is now starting to come about is that responses are being demanded to questions about the need for conservation and management of ocean resources, the need for more ocean anti-pollution measures, coordination of increasing and competing claims for ocean and coastal usage, and the need for guaranteeing safety and security in waters around Japan and for maritime transport
. The realization has finally come about, in both the public and private sectors, that a more comprehensive ocean policy is required. The main impetus behind this movement was the “Proposal for a 21st Century Ocean Policy,” prepared by the Ocean Policy Research
Foundation and presented to then Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe in November of 2005. This proposal was comprised of 35 concrete measures over eight fields of activity and urged the drafting and adoption of a National Ocean Policy, the enactment of a Basic
Ocean Law, establishment of a ministerial-level council for the ocean, and appointment of an ocean minister.
Subsequently,
OPRF, along with the Nippon Foundation, made a formal application to the then-ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) to consider the proposal. The LDP agreed to push for submission of the
Basic Ocean Law bill at the next Diet session, a great step forward for ocean policy in Japan.

Building on this, at the initiative of the LDP, it was decided to form a multi-partisan Basic Ocean Law Study
Group, which began meeting in April 2006
. The Study Group consisted of many political leaders, scholars and experts in various ocean fields, and observers from relevant government ministries and agencies. OPRF served as Secretariat for the
Group. The group met ten times, from April to December in 2006. Discussion at the meetings focused on the Guideline for Ocean
Policy and Basic Ocean Law, with presentations by Downloaded by [Gonzaga University Library] at 01:31 14 July 2014 176 H.
Terashima scholars and experts, policy statements by ministry representatives, and hearings from ocean-related business associations.
The Basic Ocean Law Study Group, after exhaustive discussion of ocean policy, the necessary systems for its promotion, and the contents of a Basic Ocean Law, succeeded finally in establishing a consensus on the Guideline for Ocean Policy and the Outline of a Basic Act on
Ocean Policy, setting out the goals and enunciating a guiding philosophy and, based on these, presented the general form and substance the Law would eventually take
. The text of the Basic Act on
Ocean Policy was then drafted, based on the Ocean Policy Guideline by the Study Group. The bill was presented to the Diet by MPs from the ruling and opposition parties in April 2007, passing in the Lower House on the third and the upper house on the twentieth of the same month. The Basic Act on Ocean Policy came into force in July 2007.
The whole collaborative process leading toward the law between lawmakers and a group comprised of ocean scholars and experts, representatives from government ministries and agencies, private stakeholders, and a think tank, represents a first for Japan.
.

(Clint, Associate Editor, The Diplomat, “Japan’s Summer of
Diplomacy”http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/japans-summer-of-diplomacy/ 6/20)
There has been quite a bit of Japanese diplomatic activity
over the last week. The biggest announcement has been the upcoming visit of Indian Prime Minister
Narendra
Modi
to Japan on July 3 and 4, which given his relationship with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has been highly anticipated since his election last month. Additionally,
Philippine President
Benigno
Aquino will visit Japan on June 24 for a meeting with Abe, in which recent Chinese actions in the South China Sea will likely feature prominently
. Going abroad, Japanese
Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida is finalizing the details of a planned trip to Ukraine in July, and Abe is also planning a diplomatic tour this summer with a trip through Latin America in late July.
The Japanese government appears intent on pushing forward with its foreign policy agenda over the next month
. Modi’s visit will be the most anticipated. Not only do the two leaders share an affinity for each other, their leadership styles, economic policies and nationalist tendencies have much in common. Beyond their similarities, there is much on the table to discuss between the two countries. As my colleague Ankit has pointed out, Abe sees large opportunities in an expanding relationship with India, and trade and cooperation in civil nuclear development are expected to be discussed during their talks. As Japan’s nuclear reactors remain offline, its nuclear power producers are eager to expand further into markets abroad in order to remain profitable. Japanese businesses have generally shown a recent trend toward growth this year, and record Japanese capital expenditures in the first quarter might entice India to open further to
FDI. Aquino’s visit next week will most likely focus on security related issues. His spokeswoman Abigail Valte said tension between the Philippines and China over territorial disputes in the South China Sea will “likely” feature during talks with Abe. The Philippines foreign ministry said, “The meeting is an opportunity for the two leaders to exchange views on recent regional developments and to discuss areas of cooperation to enhance the Philippines-Japan Strategic Partnership.” Japan is currently financing the Philippines’ purchase of 10 Japanese patrol boats for operations in “contested territories in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea),” as well as providing a grant of 1.15 billion yen for the installation of VSAT and Inmarsat communication systems to the Philippine Coast
Guard. Kishida’s visit to Ukraine will highlight Japan’s complex current relationship with Russia. Although the foreign ministry has yet to announce his itinerary, the Japan News was told Kishida will likely address the 150 billion yen in assistance Japan has pledged to stabilize Ukraine. He will also reinforce the Japanese stance that it does not allow attempts to “change the status quo by force,” a reference to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Despite Japan’s hope that a natural gas deal, or a resolution over the disputed Kuril
Islands/Northern Territories, might be struck with Russia, Japan’s fear of China unilaterally taking jurisdiction over the disputed
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has prompted it to take a harsher line with Russia in regard to Ukraine than it would otherwise. Right now, the culmination of this diplomatic offensive will be Abe’s reported visit to Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Trinidad and Tabago, and possibly
Peru or Colombia late next month. The government has said the aim of the trip is to secure support for a Japanese nonpermanent member seat on the U.N. Security Council next year. He will also be meeting with two or three of the prospective members of the future Trans-Pacific Partnership, while Mexico and Brazil are important trade and investment partners. This series of meetings is set to begin as the Abe administration rolls out its final phase of economic structural reforms, in an attempt to keep momentum behind both Japanese economic and international policy. However, the agenda of these visits is heavily skewed toward security matters, with the exception of Modi’s visit (which coincidentally, will occur just before India joins Japan and the U.S. in the Malabar naval exercises in the North Pacific in late July).
The Japanese government is showing a concerted effort to garner support amongst its allies in areas where it is likely to encounter friction with China.
Shoring up ties with Chinese protagonists like the Philippines and India addresses Japanese concerns in the South China Sea and supply chain issues in the larger Indo-Pacific region, while taking an opposing stance with Russia in Ukraine shows Japanese determination in the East
China Sea
. A seat on the U.N. Security Council (albeit as a nonpermanent member without veto power) would provide incremental leverage and an additional forum to raise Japanese concerns. These actions will not play out in a vacuum however, and resistance and countermoves from China (especially in the Security Council) should be expected.
, 2/18/
, WWF head urges stronger leadership from Japan on climate change

Leape noted that
Japanese officials have discussed halving global greenhouse gas emissions from present levels by 2050.
But he emphasized that
Japan must lead other industrialized nations in the setting of medium-term emissions reduction goals.
Japan has yet to
notably demonstrate
its leadership
''the way one would expect,'' Leape said.
''We have to start emissions reduction
from now
and get some serious reductions, 25 to 40 percent reductions by 2020,'' Leape said. ''What we are looking for
is real leadership from Japan ese government toward that end''
as chair of the G-8 summit, he said.
Taizo
, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Keio University,
, Japan's International Agenda: Technology and the Setting for Japan's Agenda, p. 78-79
If an argument based on soft resources is extended to the level of international politics, there emerges a new concept of "soft power." Joseph S. Nye. Jr.. writes. The changing nature of international politics has also made intangible forms of power more important....
Power is becoming less transferable, less coercive, and less tangible
.... Cooptive power is the ability of a country to structure a situation so that other countries develop preferences or define their interests in ways consistent with its own. This power tends to arise from such resources as cultural and ideological attraction as well as rules and institutions of international regimes. The United States has more cooptive power than other countries. 7 Whether the U.S. is a softpower giant is worth debating, but the importance of soft power itself is not questionable.
How can Japan gain soft power?
Currently.
Japan has neither an internationally acknowledged ideology nor a worldwidepenetrating culture.
But as Richard Rosecrance puts it.
Japan is a trading state.
Moreover, she is a technological state,
top, where two conspicuous technologies, namely manufacturing technology and environmental and/or energy-saving technology
, enjoy world preeminence. Among these three kinds of
Japanese preeminence, trading power and manufacturing power are classified as types of hard power, so that they would not help
Japan elevate its soft-power capability in the post-Cold War era. Therefore, let us focus on the third area. that is, environmental and/or energy saving technologies.
Today, environmental issues
such as deforestation, greenhouse effects, ozone holes, desertification, and the loss of biological diversity are becoming more
and more globalized.
As Jessica Tuchman Mathews puts it. The assumptions and institutions that have governed international relations in the postwar era are a poor fit with new realities.
Environmental strains that transcend national borders are already beginning to break down the sacred boundaries of national sovereignty
, previously rendered porous by the information and communication revolutions and the instantaneous global movement of financial capital.
The once sharp dividing line between foreign and domestic policy is blurred, forcing governments to grapple in international forums with issues that were contentious enough in the domestic arena.' Japan is a leading country in both environmental legislation and technology.
Admittedly. Japan is not a political superstate. But even as a political dwarf, Japan might be able to gain political leverage if it mote actively engages in the international politics of the global environment
, departing from hitherto passive attitudes of following a conservative course taken by the United States, the
United Kingdom, and other industrialized countries. It is quite noteworthy that Germany recently showed, at the 1990 Houston
Summit, a more assertive stance with respect to the global environment.
If Japan plays a major role in singlehandedlv giving her superior environmental and/or energy-saving technologies to countries who are seriously suffering from both security and economic threats caused bv deforestation, desertification, acid rain, etc.. Japan would be able to fulfill two prerequisites to becoming a "soft hegemon."
that is. a hegemon capable of exercising co-optive power.
Richard
, Director of the Center for International Studies at M.I.T., Autumn,
,
Japan’s Goldilocks Strategy, The Washington Quarterly 29.4

A third choice
, the one preferred by the middle-power internationalists, would be to achieve prestige by increasing prosperity.
Japan’s exposure to some of the more difficult vicissitudes of world politics would be reduced but only if some of the more ambitious assaults on the Yoshida Doctrine were reversed.
Japan would once again eschew the military shield in favor of the mercantile sword. It would bulk up the country’s considerable soft power in a concerted effort to knit East Asia together without generating new threats or becoming excessively vulnerable.
The Asianists in this group would aggressively embrace exclusive regional economic institutions to reduce Japan’s reliance on the U.S
They would not abrogate the military alliance but would resist U.S. exhortations for Japan to expand its roles and missions.
Open, regional economic institutions as a means to reduce the likelihood of abandonment by the United
States and would seek to maintain the United States’ protective embrace as cheaply and for as long as possible.
The final
, least likely choice would be to achieve autonomy through prosperity.
This is the choice of pacifists, many of whom today are active in civil society through nongovernmental organizations that are not affiliated with traditional political parties. Like the mercantile realists,
they would reduce Japan’s military posture, possibly even eliminate it.
Unlike the mercantile realists, they would reject the alliance as dangerously entangling.
They would eschew hard power for soft power, campaign to establish Northeast Asia as a nuclear-free zone, expand the defensive-defense concept to the region as a whole, negotiate a regional missile-control regime
, and rely on the Asian Regional Forum of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) for security. 19 Their manifest problem is that the Japanese public is unmoved by their prescriptions. In
March 2003, when millions took to the streets in Rome, London, and New York City to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only several thousand rallied in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park. 20 Pacifist ideas about prosperity and autonomy seem relics of an earlier, more idealistic time when Japan could not imagine, much less openly plan for, military contingencies.
Joseph
, Senior Associate and Director of Non-Proliferation Studies at the Carnegie
Endowment,
, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/experts/index.cfm?fa=expert_view&expert_id=10&prog=z gp&proj=znpp
The blocks would fall quickest and hardest in Asia, where proliferation pressures are already building
more quickly
than anywhere else in the world.
If a nuclear breakout takes place in Asia, then the international arms control agreements that have been
painstakingly negotiated over the past 40 years will crumble.
Moreover, the United States could find itself embroiled in its fourth war on the Asian continent in six decades
--a costly rebuke to those who seek the safety of Fortress America by hiding behind national missile defenses. Consider what is already happening:
North Korea continues to play guessing games with its nuclear and missile programs; South Korea wants its own missiles to match Pyongyang's;
India and Pakistan shoot across borders while running a slow-motion nuclear arms race; China modernizes its nuclear arsenal amid tensions with Taiwan and the United States;
Japan's vice defense minister is forced to resign after extolling the benefits of nuclear weapons; and Russia--whose Far East nuclear deployments alone make it the largest Asian nuclear power-
-struggles to maintain territorial coherence. Five of these states have nuclear weapons; the others are capable of constructing them. Like neutrons firing from a split atom, one nation's actions can trigger reactions throughout the region, which in turn, stimulate additional actions.
These nations form an interlocking Asian nuclear reaction chain that vibrates dangerously with each new development.
If the frequency and intensity of this reaction cycle increase, critical decisions taken by any one of these governments could cascade into the second great wave of nuclear-weapon proliferation, bringing regional and global economic and political instability and,
perhaps, the
first combat use of a nuclear weapon
since 1945.

( OECD, 2010, OECD, "OECD Environmental Performance Reviews: Japan
2010",www.oecd.org/japan/japan2010.htm, accessed 7-12-14, LAS)
Developments since the 2002 Review
Japan has managed to reduce some of the pressures on the environment, notably energy use, air emissions, water abstractions and municipal waste generation. However, greenhouse gas emissions and generation of non-municipal waste have grown, pressures on nature and biodiversity have intensified, and air and water pollution remain of concern in some areas.
Japan defined its own model of a sustainable society, based on a low-carbon economy, sound material cycle and biodiversity conservation
. Greening Growth Following a period of modest economic growth,
Japan’s economy was severely hit by the 2008-09 global economic downturn. The anti-crisis fiscal stimulus package included several environment-related measures. Reforming the tax system, expanding environmentally related taxes and removing environmentally harmful subsidies could help fiscal consolidation without hampering economic recovery. The long-term strategy to 2020 outlines a green growth path, and sees eco-innovation as the link between environmental improvement, economic growth and social progress.
Japan is a leader in environment and climate-related technologies and is promoting the development of green markets and employment. The declining and ageing population represents a new challenge for both economic and environmental policies. Implementation of environmental policies Japan uses a mix of environmental policy instruments, including regulatory, economic and information-based measures, with a strong emphasis on negotiated agreements
. However, its policy mix can gain in cost-effectiveness by expanding the use of market-based instruments and by further promoting wider participation of the public in environmental decision-making. The report also reviews progress in improving air management, in particular in urban areas, strengthening the management of inland and coastal waters and reducing impacts of chemicals on human health and the environment. International co-operation
Japan is an active player in international environmental co-operation. In a changing international economic and political context, Japan has given more importance to regional and bilateral co-operation in the Asian region, notably in such areas as transboundary air pollution, fisheries management and marine pollution. Environment is a prominent component of Japan’s development assistance.
Japan has also taken action, at home and internationally, to tackle environment-trade issues arising from multilateral environmental agreements, such as trade in ozone depleting substances and tropical timber, as well as safety and environmental impacts of ship-breaking.
(April 26 th , “Japanese gov't passes 5-year basic plan on ocean policy,” http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/8223714.html 7/14)
TOKYO, April 26 (Xinhua) --
The Japanese government has passed during a cabinet meeting on Friday a five-year basic plan on ocean policy, which aims at promoting undersea resources development and enhancing surveillance capacity around its waters
. According to the plan,
Japan will promote its investigation on reserves of undersea resources such as seabed methane hydrate and rare earth in the coming three years
and develop technology for commercial production of methane gas from methane hydrate starting in 2018.
The plan also seeks to enhance Japan's maritime surveillance capability in its surrounding waters by reorganizing and outfitting planes and ships for

Japanese Coast Guard and Self- Defense Forces and realizing information sharing between the two forces.
(Hiroshi, OPRF, “Japan's Ocean Policymaking,” http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08920753.2012.652518, 7/13)
In regard to integrated ocean management and sustainable development, Japan has recently taken rapid, concrete steps to form its own comprehensive ocean policy
, with a Basic Act on Ocean
Policy proposal being adopted by the Diet after being submitted by MPs from a multi-partisan group. The background of this change is as follows. Although
Japan is surrounded by the ocean, has strong fishing and maritime industries, a long tradition of ocean research and development, and is entrusted with the world’s sixth largest EEZ/CS by UNCLOS
, its contributions to ocean governance under UNCLOS and Agenda 21 were uninspiring until the enactment of the Basic Act on Ocean Policy in 2007. Its government agencies were characterized by their vertically compartmentalized division of functions, making them particularly ill suited for addressing “the problems of ocean space [that] are closely interrelated and need to be considered as a whole.” There was neither a minister nor coordinating office for the oceans that could consider these problems in a comprehensive manner. These conditions were largely responsible for the ironic situation in which an ocean state like Japan could make so little progress in the development, use, conservation, and management of the vast ocean areas it had been entrusted with by UNCLOS, nor make significant contributions to the international cooperation and coordination indispensable to comprehensive ocean management.
The reason change is now starting to come about is that responses are being demanded to questions about the need for conservation and management of ocean resources, the need for more ocean anti-pollution measures, coordination of increasing and competing claims for ocean and coastal usage, and the need for guaranteeing safety and security in waters around Japan and for maritime transport
. The realization has finally come about, in both the public and private sectors, that a more comprehensive ocean policy is required. The main impetus behind this movement was the “Proposal for a 21st Century Ocean Policy,” prepared by the Ocean Policy Research
Foundation and presented to then Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe in November of 2005. This proposal was comprised of 35 concrete measures over eight fields of activity and urged the drafting and adoption of a National Ocean Policy, the enactment of a Basic
Ocean Law, establishment of a ministerial-level council for the ocean, and appointment of an ocean minister.
Subsequently,
OPRF, along with the Nippon Foundation, made a formal application to the then-ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) to consider the proposal. The LDP agreed to push for submission of the
Basic Ocean Law bill at the next Diet session, a great step forward for ocean policy in Japan.
Building on this, at the initiative of the LDP, it was decided to form a multi-partisan Basic Ocean Law Study
Group, which began meeting in April 2006
. The Study Group consisted of many political leaders, scholars and experts in various ocean fields, and observers from relevant government ministries and agencies. OPRF served as Secretariat for the
Group. The group met ten times, from April to December in 2006. Discussion at the meetings focused on the Guideline for Ocean
Policy and Basic Ocean Law, with presentations by Downloaded by [Gonzaga University Library] at 01:31 14 July 2014 176 H.
Terashima scholars and experts, policy statements by ministry representatives, and hearings from ocean-related business associations.
The Basic Ocean Law Study Group, after exhaustive discussion of ocean policy, the necessary systems for its promotion, and the contents of a Basic Ocean Law, succeeded finally in establishing a consensus on the Guideline for Ocean Policy and the Outline of a Basic Act on
Ocean Policy, setting out the goals and enunciating a guiding philosophy and, based on these, presented the general form and substance the Law would eventually take
. The text of the Basic Act on
Ocean Policy was then drafted, based on the Ocean Policy Guideline by the Study Group. The bill was presented to the Diet by MPs from the ruling and opposition parties in April 2007, passing in the Lower House on the third and the upper house on the twentieth of the same month. The Basic Act on Ocean Policy came into force in July 2007.
The whole collaborative process leading toward the law between lawmakers and a group comprised of ocean scholars and experts, representatives from government ministries and agencies, private stakeholders, and a think tank, represents a first for Japan.

(Vicki L., April 1994, Association for Information and Image Management, “An Assessment of
Research and Development Leadership in Ocean Energy Technologies,” http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/10154003, 7/5/14, SM)
2.2 JAPAN ¶ Like the United Kingdom,
Japan has performed many studies on ocean energy technologies.
¶
Unlike the UK,
Japan has progressed to demonstrating several devices
, particularly for wave ¶ energy.
¶
The
Japanese have concentrated on
wave energy and
OTEC
. Japan has good resources in the
¶
Sea of Japan for wave energy. Ocean conditions around Japan have high amounts of potential
¶
energy created by winds blowing across the ocean. The
Japanese are primarily interested in the ¶ export potential of OTEC as the country has no suitable resources of its own for OTEC.
Japan ¶ has had an active wave energy R&D program for 30 years. The Japan Marine Science and ¶ Technology Center, began investigating offshore devices for wave energy in 1974. Its work
¶
has focused on the Kaimei, a floating ship that tested different pneumatic devices. The Kaimei ¶ is considered one of the more advanced large (approximately 125 kW) wave energy devices.
¶
Development of the Kaimei was an International Energy Agency project funded by the US, ¶ Canada, the UK and Ireland. ¶ The first commercial wave energy product, a navigation buoy, was developed by the Japanese
¶
in 1964-65. Navigation buoys powered by wave energy have been installed in various sites ¶ around the world.7 Approximately 1,200 buoys have been sold.
¶ ' R&D work in wave energy in Japan is performed by government/industry consortia. Members ¶ of the different consortia are identified for three demonstration projects currently underway[3]: ¶ • A 20 kW caisson-based "Pendulor System" at Mashike Harbor, located on the west ¶ coast of Hokkaido, operating since 1983. Developed by the Muroran Institute of ¶ Technology and Hitachi Zosen Corporation.
¶
• A 30 kW single-acting osculating water column at Kujukuri, on Honshu's east coast, ¶ operating since March 1988. Developed by
Takenaka Corporation and Kawasaki
¶
Steel Corporation.
¶
• A 60 kW caisson-based, double-acting oscillating water column at Sakata
Port, on i ¶ the Sea of Japan, operating since November 1989. Developed by the Ministry of ¶ Transport's Port and Harbor Research
Institute.
¶ Like wave energy R&D,
OTEC R&D is performed by government/industry consortia.
¶
Japanese
R&D work in OTEC began in 1970 by the Tokyo Electric Power Services Company
.
¶
It has developed and demonstrated a successful 100 kW closed-cycle OTEC plant for the island
¶ of
Nauru and is designing a 10 MW floating closed-cycle OTEC plant for use on this island.
¶ The Ministry of International Trade and
Industry is supporting this work.
The Japanese
¶
government is also supporting work on the design of a 1
MW floating closed-cycle OTEC
¶
plant. Other institutions engaged in OTEC R&D include Kyushu
Electric Power Company and
¶
the University of Saga.
¶
Ocean energy R&D in Japan has benefitted from consistent government support
, although the ¶ support has been at a low level. This has allowed
Japanese industry to advance from the
¶
research and development stage to the demonstration stage for several ocean energy devices.
¶
This has given the Japanese a "leg up" on their competition
, and as a result, e11nergy technologies will probably be commercialized sooner than ocean energy technologies
¶
from other countries.
(Shuichi, 6/20/10, Kazutaka Toyota, Yasutaka Imai, Institute of Ocean Energy at Saga University,
“Current R&D Status of Ocean Energy Utilization in Japan,” http://ebook.lib.sjtu.edu.cn/isope2010/data/papers/10YK-02Nagata.pdf, 7/5/14, SM)
OCEAN THERMAL ENERGY CONVERSION ¶ ¶
IOES (Institute of Ocean Energy, Saga University) has been
¶ studying
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (
OTEC
) System for the
¶
past thirty years
.
Ikegami
et al. (2009, 2010) carried out the
¶
experiments for the performance of a 30kW OTEC plant
in which a ¶ cycle using an ammonia/water mixture (AWM) as the working fluid is ¶ used as shown in Fig.21. Fig.22 shows the schematic diagram of cycle ¶ using an ammonia/water mixture.
They showed that the system was
¶
stable, and the turbine power and the revolution speed were almost
¶
constant on two weeks’ continuous operation of OTEC

plant
.
¶
A single OTEC plant will inject a large quantity of ocean water and
¶
discharge it at temperature about 2~3 ℃ below the intake temperature.
¶
This will change the local temperature of the ambient ocean water.
¶
Therefore, it is necessary to grasp the behavior of this discharged cool ¶ plume. Sakurazawa et al. (2005) carried out an experiment for a cool ¶ water jet discharged horizontally into a water channel with thermal ¶ stratification, in order to examine the influence of a discharging ¶ condition and thermal stratification on the penetration depth of the jet ¶ as shown in Fig.23. ¶
MARINO-FORUM 21, a subsidiary of
The Fisheries Agency of
¶
Japanese Government, established the budget of about USD 6 million
¶
and organized a research and development project
to create Ocean ¶ Nutrient Enhancer which upwells and discharges Deep Ocean Water ¶ (DOW) into the euphotic layer to increase primary production of the ¶ sea and make a fishing ground. The project started in April 2000, and
¶
the term has five years. This device which is called TAKUMI upwells
¶
DOW of
100,000m3 ¶ /day from 200m depth and discharges it into the ¶ euphotic layer with Diesel engine. This device was installed at the ¶ center of Sagami Bay in Japan. The function of this Density Current ¶ Generator makes average density water by mixing the lower and upper
¶
water and discharged it into the same density layer in the stratified
¶
water by a special impeller as shown in Fig.24
(Ouchi 2009).
(September 2003, Sumitomo Group Public Affairs Committee, “Working with Water, the Source of Life,” http://www.sumitomo.gr.jp/english/discoveries/special/94_03.html, 7/5/14, SM)
The technology’s underlying principle involves a “working fluid.” The liquid-state working fluid is boiled and the resulting vapor used to drive a turbine, thus generating electricity. Warm surface seawater is used to heat the working fluid, while cold deep seawater is used to cool the vapor as it comes off the turbine, returning it to its liquid state. This repeated cycle of thermal (heat) transfer from seawater to working fluid and then back to seawater, is the origin of the name of the process: ocean thermal energy conversion, or
OTEC for short.
¶
Associate Professor Yasuyuki Ikegami of the Institute of Ocean Energy at Saga
University
(IOES), the center of OTEC research in Japan, says: “Japan is at the forefront in this technology, and our know-how has been introduced in several countries. For example, Saga
University supported the design of a 1,000-kW demonstration plant that began operating in
India
in September 2003.
Japan’s OTEC research was started by Professor Haruo Uehara, currently at Saga University, who 30 years ago started work from a single miniature light bulb. Today, the world is looking to Saga University’s research as a source of environmentally friendly, clean energy.”
¶
Several different OTEC systems have been developed. The most promising variation is the Uehara Cycle, developed by Professor Uehara. It is characterized by use of an ammonia-water mixture high in ammonia content as its working fluid
, which allows low-temperature vaporization, and the achievement of high heat-transfer efficiency in its heat exchangers. Thirty years ago, the power generated was completely consumed just by the operation of the pump bringing up deep seawater; but today, researchers look forward to netting 50 to 80% of the output.
( Nadya Anscombe, 5-20-2013, Environmental Research Web, "Solar could replace nuclear power in japan",environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/53483, accessed 7-12-14,
LAS)
Researchers from the University of Texas in the US have calculated that if solar panels were installed on available roof space in the greater Tokyo area, the region could generate up to
26.5% of the electricity it received from nuclear power before the Fukushima disaster.
"That's a sizable fraction of the base load that used to be generated by nuclear power," said lead author Brady Stoll. "The reason this is possible is because Japan is in the unique position of already possessing the largest capacity of pumped hydroelectric storage in the world."
Stoll and her colleagues estimated the suitable rooftop area in the greater Tokyo region to be around 300 km2. Such an array would have an installed capacity of 43.1 GWp. The researchers used this information, together with the reported availability of pumped hydroelectric storage for the region – 7.28 GW – and daily average surface solar irradiances from a 34 year database,

to determine the level of base-load power that could be provided by the distributed photovoltaic system, as well as the overall amount of energy that could be expected per year.
The combined system was found capable of providing 4.8 GWe for 91% of the time. The team also estimated that a photovoltaic array of 1700 km2, coupled to 18.1 GW of storage capacity would be sufficient to replace the 2010 nuclear capacity of the Tokyo Electric Power Company.
"We have shown that, providing large-scale storage capacity is available, solar power can contribute to base load," said co-author Mark Deinert. "Japan has a long history of manufacturing solar cells, mainly for export, but our research has shown that the country could use this expertise to generate base-load electricity and replace some of the capacity that was lost after the Fukushima disaster."

(Makoto, 9/30/10, Akajima Marine Science Laboratory, “Degradation and restoration of coral reefs: Experience in Okinawa, Japan,” http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17451001003642317 7/5/14, SM)
Development of techniques for coral reef restoration became one of Japan’s fisheries national projects since 2006, and accordingly the Fishery Agency has established Akajima Coral
Hatchery
(ACH) at Akajima. As a part of the research there, a few large coral colonies were successfully transported from Okinotorishima, Japan’s southernmost island in the Pacific
, 1200 km south of
Okinawa, to ACH by boat. These colonies spawned in the tank in June 2007 and, using the techniques developed by AMSL, numerous coral propagules were produced in a land facility.
In April 2008, about 65,000 Acropora colonies were transplanted to the native coral reefs of
Okinotorishima
. It is hoped that the corals grow so well that habitat of fish resources will be increased and the tiny
Okinotorishima’s landmass will be reinforced by accumulating a thousand tons of coral sand. So far, humans have never tried to accelerate the natural island-building processes. Even if the most advanced civil engineering and coral culture and transplantation techniques are used, it will take some decades before the island becomes large enough to be useful. As a research project, however, it is an exciting challenge to consider the possibility of restoring the coral reefs of small reef islands in the tropics that are sinking underwater due to rising sea levels.
(Tatsuo, 2/15/97, International Coral Reef Research and Monitoring Center, “Sustainable use and conservation of coral reefs,” http://www.coremoc.go.jp/en/report/coralreefjapan/0401_conservation_and_management.pd
f, 7/5/14, SM)
4. Restoration technology
¶
Coral reef restoration projects are now beginning in Japan (Chapter
5). Law promoting reef restoration as established in 2001, in response to widespread damage to reefs by mass bleaching events. Hughes et al. (2003) invoked the possibility of technology to promote the establishment of bleaching-resistant symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) and coral
species, based on findings that some zooxanthellae are resistance to temperature and to other
environmental changes that cause coral bleaching. In view of the current state of coral reefs, the development of this technology and its practical application is very important. Japan, with its highly developed technological capabilities, could contribute to domestic and global coral reef conservation in this area.
(Martin, MS in Journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Tokyo correspondent @ Bloomberg, 4/14/09, The New York Times, “Coral Transplant Surgery
Prescribed for Japan,” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/world/asia/15coral.html?_r=0,
7/7/14, SM)

The result has been what marine biologists call one of the largest coral restoration projects in the world, begun four years ago. The goal, say biologists, is to perfect methods that could be used around the world to rescue reefs endangered by overfishing, pollution and global warming.
¶ They say they are using the Sekisei Lagoon Reef, which is named after the broad, shallow lagoon that it created, as a test bed for new techniques that they hope will one day make transplanting coral in the sea as routine as raising tree saplings on land.
¶ “
We have been replanting forests for 4,000 years, but we are only just now learning how to revive a coral reef,” said Mineo Okamoto, a marine biologist at Tokyo
University of Marine Science and Technology, who has led development of the palm-size ceramic discs. “ We finally have the technology
.” ¶ Critics, however, say the project might be wasted effort. They say transplanting is futile without addressing the problems that caused the reefs to deteriorate in the first place, like coastal redevelopment and chemical runoff from terrestrial agriculture. There is also the bigger problem of rising ocean water temperatures, for which there may be no easy fix.
¶
Here in the Sekisei Lagoon, which sits between the tropical islands of Ishigaki and
Iriomote, another problem also becomes apparent: the puny size of the efforts to save a reef that stretches as far as the eye can see in almost every direction.
¶ Since 2005, the project has planted around 13,000 pieces of coral, at a cost of some $2 million, said
Hajime Hirosawa, a preservation officer at the Environment Ministry who helps oversee the transplanting. This is a far cry, he admits, from the tens of millions of pieces that need to be transplanted in this reef alone, which stretches over an area of about 100 square miles.
¶ Worse, survival rates have been low, Mr. Hirosawa said. Only a third of the coral sprigs transplanted in 2005 have survived threats ranging from predators like the Crown-of-Thorns starfish to “bleaching,” an ultimately fatal condition caused when rising water temperatures turn coral a sickly white.
¶ “Saving the reef is not something that we can do in three to four years,” Mr.
Hirosawa said, “but more like 30 to 40 years.” ¶ Still, say Mr. Hirosawa and others, the techniques have steadily improved, lifting survival rates. One change was to shift from placing new coral on flat sea bottoms
, which proved vulnerable to typhoon-driven surface waves that broke off coral, to more protected vertical reef faces.
¶
Another advance was the ceramic discs, which are baked at 2,700 degrees until hardened, but whose surface contains tiny pores that allow coral larvae to take root
. Every spring, a team of a dozen divers has spent up to two weeks drilling holes and gluing in the discs.
¶ While labor intensive, this method offers a more secure footing for the young coral than previous methods, like attaching coral pieces with wire and nails
, Dr. Okamoto said.
¶ The improved transplanting methods have become promising enough that the Environment
Ministry says it plans to double the number of coral pieces planted next year, to 10,000.
¶ While the project’s main goal is environmental, there are also geopolitical motivations. Tokyo plans a much larger and more expensive coral transplantation to try to strengthen the reef protecting Okinotori, a tiny, remote islet that Japan uses to claim economic control of a vast swath of the Pacific
Ocean. The government wants to prevent a strong typhoon from wiping away the tiny outcropping, and with it the basis for Japan’s territorial claims, which have already been challenged by China.
¶ There is also a friendly race among global scientists trying to develop the best coral transplantation method. Competing ideas vary from creating coral habitat with large concrete “reef balls” to the use of mild electric current to speed coral growth.
¶ For now
, the most common transplanting technique involves breaking off pieces of adult coral and affixing them elsewhere on the reef. Besides damaging the host coral, this method
, while quick and easy, also means that most of the transplanted pieces share the host’s DNA, giving the reef a smaller and less healthy gene pool.
¶
In the
Japanese method, the discs are stacked underwater for 18 months near a healthy stretch of reef, allowing coral larvae released during spawning to naturally attach and grow on the ceramic surface. This ensures that each disc carries genetically distinct coral organisms
, more closely replicating the results of natural reproduction.
(Mineo, 7/9/13, The Fish Channel, “
Japanese Marine Biologist Uses Steel to Help Revive Coral Reefs,” http://www.fishchannel.com/fish-news/2013/07/japanese-marine-biologist-uses-steel-tocreate-coral-colonies.aspx, 7/7/14, SM)
The use of steel can help to revive coral reefs in Indonesia and elsewhere, according to a report in The Yomiuri Shimbun that covered the International Conference on Climate Change and Coral Reef Conservation held last month in Japan.
Mineo
Okamoto, a professor of marine environmental studies at Tokyo University has been cultivating coral frags in Indonesia using steel settlement devices with great success.
¶ According to

the report, Okamoto, who is leading the coral revitalization efforts using the steel settlements said that there are 80 species of coral growing in the Indonesia experimental area and that the revitalization of corals is progressing smoothly.
Okamoto said in March 2013 that the corals have attached themselves to the steel disk shaped coral settlement tools called "koma
" or tops, that he and his colleagues placed in the ocean just northeast of Indonesia's Sulawesi Island in 2012.
The koma are just 5 centimeters in diameter and are constructed of iron steel slag
, which is a byproduct of steel manufacturing.
It features grooves on the surface in which the corals can more easily adhere to
, Okamoto said. Okamoto, who has been perfecting the koma for the last 15 years said that if the discs are combined much like abacus beads and placed into the ocean pre-coral spawn, the coral larvae adhere to them and grow on them. After 18 months of growth, the koma are separated and implanted on rocks to create or expand a coral colony.
(Shuichi, 2/15/97, International Coral Reef Research and Monitoring Center, “Sustainable use and conservation of coral reefs,” http://www.coremoc.go.jp/en/report/coralreefjapan/0401_conservation_and_management.pd
f, 7/7/14, SM)
1. Progress and comparison of restoration techniques¶ The first case of coral transplantation in
Japan was probably in 1970 when the Kushimoto Marine Park Center in Wakayama Prefecture constructed an underwater observatory and transplanted coral colonies to restore the surrounding underwater landscape. This area contains corals that are typically distributed in
Honshu (mainland Japan), and a large tabular Acropora hyacinthus community. In transplantation experiments with this species, the corals grew to a size showing typical colony features within 1-2 years (Tatsuki 1977).
¶
As already stated, the development of restoration techniques has recently shifted to seedling production and larvae-settlement-inducing
techniques, using sexual reproduction. Such advances should eliminate the necessity of manipulating an existing community. Advances in coral restoration techniques are not only effective in restoring coral reefs and creating artificial reefs but will also reduce the damage
caused by the collection of existing colonies once ornamental corals can be cultured in aquaria.
If full-scale ‘coral farming’ becomes possible, Japanese aquaculture technologies, which lead
the world, should support progress in projects that transfer such restoration techniques to tropical countries, and contribute to the conservation of the marine environment worldwide.
Table 1 summarizes the progress, thus far, of research and development in coral reef restoration techniques; future advances are expected.
(2/22/13, Japan for Sustainability, “Japanese Research Institute Develops Coral Restoration
Technology,” http://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_id032606.html, 7/7/14, SM)
The Fisheries Research Agency in Japan announced
on November 1, 2012, that it has developed an improved method for restoring reef coral population. With this new method, coral juveniles just after settlement survived at more than 10 times in the field than that had reported so far
.
¶
In recent decades, an increasing number of coral communities around the world have been declined due to environmental stresses such as coral bleaching by the loss of algal symbionts, which result in a decrease of reef fish . The situation calls for urgent restoration and regeneration of the coral reefs. To date, transplanting coral fragments and seeding coral larvae had been challenged

for improving this situation, however, both approaches were difficult to realize large scale restoration due to low survival rates of the corals.
¶
To enhance the initial survival rate of coral juvenile, the Fisheries Research Agency developed an artificial settlement plate with grid structure. This new device improved larval seeding method by controlling the settlement density of coral larvae and arranging the plate structure in terms of the grid size.
The experiment was started from early summer in 2011, and demonstrated that the coral juveniles directly seeded underwater on the plates can survived with highest rate (18.1% on average) at 15 months later among the conventional cases (less than 1%).
¶ Their results suggest that the new method of stock enhancement in reef corals may make it possible to restore coral communities with low costs. The
Agency expects this finding will greatly contribute to the restoration of coral reefs that damaged by local anthropogenic impact.

(Vicky, Feb 14, Smithsonian Magazine, “Is Japan’s Offshore Solar Power Plant the Future of
Renewable Energy?” http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovations/Is-Japans-Offshore-Solar-
Power-Plant-the-Future-of-Renewable-Energy-180949453/, 7/7/14, SM)
Across Japan, 50 nuclear power plants sit idle, shut down in the aftermath of the 2011
Fukushima nuclear disaster
. Nobody is certain when government inspectors will certify that the plants are safe enough to be brought back online.
Anti-nuclear activists point to this energy crisis as evidence that Japan needs to rely more on renewables
.
One think tank has calculated that a national solar power initiative could generate electricity equivalent to ten nuclear plants
. But skeptics have asked where, in their crowded mountainous country, they could construct all those solar panels.
¶ One solution was unveiled this past November, when
Japan flipped the switch on its largest solar power plant to date, built offshore on reclaimed land jutting into the cerulean waters of Kagoshima Bay.
The
Kyocera Corporation’s Kagoshima
Nanatsujima Mega Solar
Power Plant is
as potent
as it is picturesque, generating enough electricity to power roughly 22,000 homes.

(Michael, 3/15/13, The Interpreter, “Whaling: Japan does conduct research,” http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/03/15/Whaling-Japan-does-conduct-research.aspx,
7/9/14, SM)
1. I'll begin by affording Mr Watson the same qualifier he graciously afforded me. That is, he has a right to his opinion like everyone else. His claim that Japan's scientific whaling is commercial and therefore in violation of the Southern Ocean Sanctuary is, in his opinion, 'as simple as simple gets'. But while I certainly agree that Mr Watson's interpretation is both an opinion he is entitled to and conveniently simple, that doesn't make it true under international law
.
¶
The IWC's convention clearly grants member states the right to run scientific whaling programs, and it is under this provision that
Japan legally takes a number of mostly minke whales in the Antarctic, since it is scientific and not commercial whaling.
¶
What Mr Watson does not acknowledge is that
Japanese scientists regularly present information on findings, methods and progress relating to this research (both lethal and non-lethal) to the IWC Scientific Committee
, where it is peer reviewed. Criticism of the research is made, as is normal with peer review, as are recommendations and also statements acknowledging the contribution it makes.
¶ Not surprisingly, given the controversial nature of whaling, opinions on the research and its contribution within the Scientific Committee have been and remain divided, particularly over the topic of lethal sampling (which a simple majority of the commission opposes).
But to claim, as Mr Watson does, that there is no research going on and that therefore Japan is breaking international law by whaling commercially is not a balanced representation of what has been happening (it's also worth noting that much of the
IWC's field research is made possible by Japan's provision of ships
).
¶ Moreover, Mr Watson is confusing two distinct questions.
First, are the Japanese producing scientific research from the their activities in the Antarctic? Clearly they are!
And second, does everyone agree that this research is useful? Clearly they don't, since the issue of killing whales for research purposes is controversial. But the question of whether or not killing whales in order to do this research is acceptable is a political, not a scientific, question.
(Brittany, 7/7/13, Ryot, "Japan offers impassioned defense of whaling practices,” http://www.ryot.org/japan-offers-impassioned-defense-of-whaling-practices/241517, 7/9/14,
SM)
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) —
Japan
launched an impassioned defense Tuesday of its harpooning of whales in the icy seas around Antarctica, insisting the hunt is legal because it gathers valuable scientific data that could pave the way to a resumption of sustainable whaling in the future.
¶
The country is arguing a case brought by Australia to the United Nations’ highest judicial organ that seeks to outlaw its annual killing of hundreds of whales in Antarctic waters.
¶
“
It is true that Japan takes and kills whales
,” the country’s deputy foreign minister, Koji Tsuruoka, told the International
Court of Justice, on the first day of arguments. “Should we be ashamed of it? Even if some people believe we should, that does not mean we are in breach of international law.”
¶
Tsuruoka implicitly accused Australia of launching the case to impose on Japan its cultural aversion to whaling rather than to right an international legal wrong.
¶ “It falls to the court to rule on the lawfulness of the acts undertaken by states, not on their morality or their ethical value,” he said. “For some people, whales are sacred animals like cows are for Hindus. Religions and cultures perceive animals in different fashions.”
¶
Under a 1946 treaty regulating whaling, nations can grant permits to kill whales for scientific research
.
¶ Lawyers for Australia argue that Japan’s scientific whaling program was set up simply to sidestep a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling. Meat from the whales ends up on plates in homes and restaurants across Japan, where the flesh is considered a delicacy.
¶ “No other nation, before or since, has found the need to engage in lethal scientific research on anything like this scale,” Australian Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson told the judges last week. Australia argues that such research can be carried out without killing whales.
¶ But Tsuruoka said the hunt is designed to provide the International Whaling Commission with valuable data that would allow it to grant a resumption of whaling in a sustainable way, unlike the mass carnage of

unregulated whaling that pushed many species of the giant marine mammals to the brink of extinction in the last century.
(Patrick, 5/22/10, Eureka, “Real Research or Shame Science? A Review of Japan’s Scientific
Whaling,” https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/eureka/article/view/7630/6482,
7/9/14, SM)
Discussion ¶
Japan recently completed an 18-year study in
¶
the southern ocean
(JARPA I) to improve cetacean
¶
management by gaining information on Antarctic
¶
Minke whale
(B. bonaerensis) stock structure, natural
¶
mortality rates, the effects of environmental changes
¶
on whales and the role of whales in the Antarctic
¶
ecosystem
(IWC 2009) The JARPA II study is ¶ ongoing, with the stated purpose of studying Antarctic ¶ Minke, Humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae), and ¶ Fin whales to examine the ecosystem, study
¶ interspecific competition, monitor changes in
¶
population structure, and enhance Minke
¶ management
. Likewise,
JARPN investigated Minke
¶
whale population structure in the North
Pacific. Now,
¶
Japan is on the second phase of the experiments
¶
looking at feeding ecology with special interest in
¶
competition between whales and commercial
¶
fisheries.
Japanese researchers have lethally sampled ¶ 10,579 whales under special permits since the ¶ moratorium was enacted (IWC 2009). This is
86% of
¶
the 12,309 whales taken by all IWC members for
¶
research since the moratorium took effect.

. His research focuses on
U.S.-Japanese relations and regional engagement, Japanese politics and security, and the private sector’s role in Japanese policymaking
(James L. 3/14, The Global Think Tank, "U.S.
Reassurance and Japanese Defense Reforms Can Improve Security in East Asia", carnegieendowment.org/2014/03/13/u.s.-reassurance-and-japanese-defense-reforms-canimprove-security-in-east-asia/h85m?reloadFlag=1, 7/5/14, aven)
It has been clear for some time that the regional security equation in Asia is tilting against
Japan. A variety of defense and foreign policy decisions by Tokyo in recent years reflect the government’s attempt to grapple with this slide into a “security deficit.”2 For Japan, the perception of vulnerability and growing threat (particularly vis-à-vis China but including North
Korea) is multifaceted and includes security, economic, and diplomatic concerns. It is not an immediate crisis, but for a country that prioritizes stability, openness and access in the region,
current trends do not bode well for the future.3
¶
Japan is a highly industrialized global trading power with relatively few indigenous natural resources, but a highly skilled workforce and a
strong technology knowledge base. Open and stable global trade is critical for Japan, as it relies on imports for about 92 percent of its primary energy supply and 64 percent of its calorie intake.4 National wealth is generated by adding value in the manufacturing and service sectors and thereby earning more through exports than is paid for imports, and investing the surplus domestically and overseas for productivity gains, investment return, manufacturing diversification, and risk mitigation. This strategy—which has worked so well for decades—has
been faltering recently. A weakening Yen and rising fossil fuel imports (to compensate for the shutdown of its nuclear energy industry) have pushed Japan into trade deficits.5
¶
Japan is the world’s third largest oil importing country (after the United States), the third largest oil consumer, and the fourth largest electricity consumer. While Japan’s population has increased by about 50 percent since 1950, its consumption of energy has soared by nearly 300 percent, underscoring the vital role that energy plays in Japan’s modern economy.6
¶
Japan has a strong position in terms of foreign currency reserves (over $1.2 trillion), but due to persistent fiscal deficits the country’s public debt is now 224 percent of GDP, and debt service consumes almost a quarter of the annual general account budget.7 The Japanese government faces significant fiscal constraints.
¶
Because the bulk of Japan’s trade is conducted by ship, freedom of
navigation is critical for Japan to sustain itself. Although Japan is a small country in terms of land area (ranked sixty-first globally), its recognized territorial waters and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) are the sixth largest in the world at nearly 4.5 million square kilometers, so it has a lot of area to both exploit and patrol.8 Maritime chokepoints outside of the EEZ, such as the Strait of Malacca and the Strait of Hormuz, are also strategically important to Japan. Any major disruptions there would quickly force time-consuming and expensive rerouting of vital
shipments.
¶
Although North Korea remains a significant and unpredictable security concern for
Japan, it is China’s growing military capabilities and willingness to brandish them to press claims and expand its influence in the East China Sea and beyond that are prompting a Japanese reaction.9 The situation is most acute around the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, which
Beijing insists belong to China, but it extends to disputed EEZ demarcations in the East China Sea

and claims to associated seabed resources. Japan’s sense of vulnerability is exacerbated by
elements of economic dependence (including extensive direct investments in China and dependence on certain imports such as rare earth metals and food products) and even exposure to drifting air pollution from China.

( US. Department of State, Office of the Historian, "Milestones:1899-1913, Japanese-American
Relations at the Turn of the Century", https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-
1913/japanese-relations, 7/7/14, aven)
In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the relationship between the United States and Japan was marked by increasing tension and corresponding attempts to use diplomacy to
reduce the threat of conflict. Each side had territory and interests in Asia that they were concerned the other might threaten. U.S. treatment of Japanese immigrants, and competition for economic and commercial opportunities in China also heightened tensions. At the same time, each country’s territorial claims in the Pacific formed the basis for several agreements between the two nations, as each government sought to protect its own strategic and economic interests.
¶
In the years that followed, however, tensions rose over Japanese actions
in northeast China and immigration to the United States. In 1905, the Japanese started to
establish more formal control over South Manchuria by forcing China to give Japan ownership
rights to the South Manchurian Railway. The Japanese used this opening to make further inroads into northeast China, causing the Roosevelt Administration concern that this violated
the ideals of free enterprise and the preservation of China’s territorial integrity.
Simultaneously, leading Japanese officials expressed frustration with the treatment of
Japanese immigrants in the United States. A U.S.-Japanese treaty signed in 1894 had guaranteed the Japanese the right to immigrate to the United States, and to enjoy the same
rights in the country as U.S. citizens. In 1906, however, the San Francisco Board of Education
enacted a measure to send Japanese and Chinese children to segregated schools. The
Government of Japan was outraged by this policy, claiming that it violated the 1894 treaty. In a series of notes exchanged between late 1907 and early 1908, known collectively as the
Gentlemen’s Agreement, the U.S. Government agreed to pressure the San Francisco authorities to withdraw the measure, and the Japanese Government promised to restrict the immigration of laborers to the United States.
¶
This series of agreements still did not resolve all of the outstanding issues. U.S. treatment of Japanese residents continued to cause tension between
the two nations. The Alien Land Act of 1913, for example, barred Japanese from owning or leasing land for longer than three years and adversely affected U.S.-Japanese relations in the years leading up to World War I. Economic competition in China, which the United States feared would result in increasing Japanese control, was another issue that increased tensions
between the two nations. In 1915, the Japanese issued its “Twenty-One Demands” of China, in which it asked that China recognize its territorial claims, prevent other powers from obtaining new concessions along its coast, and take a series of actions designed to benefit the Japanese economically. China turned to the United States for assistance, and U.S. officials responded with a declaration that they would not recognize any agreement that threatened the Open Door.
Although this was consistent with past policies, this announcement was of little use to the
Chinese. However, President Woodrow Wilson was not willing to take a stronger stand given his need for assistance in protecting U.S. interests in Asia, addressing the growing conflict in
Europe, and managing racial issues in California.
¶
Secretary of State Robert Lansing
¶
The potential for conflict between the United States and Japan, especially over China, led the two
governments to negotiate yet again. In the Ishii-Lansing Agreement of 1917, Secretary of State

Robert Lansing acknowledged that Manchuria was under Japanese control, while Japanese
Foreign Minister Ishii Kikujiro agreed not to place limitations on U.S. commercial opportunities elsewhere in China. The two powers also agreed not to take advantage of the war in Europe to
seek additional rights and privileges. Though non-binding, Lansing considered the agreement an important measure in promoting mutual interests in Asia, but it proved short-lived.
Ultimately, the two nations agreed to cancel the Ishii-Lansing Agreement after concluding the
Nine-Power Treaty, which they signed in 1922 at the Washington Conference.
¶
Japan and the
United States clashed again during the League of Nations negotiations in 1919. The United
States refused to accept the Japanese request for a racial equality clause or an admission of
the equality of the nations. In addition, the Versailles Treaty granted Japan control over valuable German concessions in Shandong, which led to an outcry in
This coupled with the growing fear of a militant Japan, contributed to the defeat of the League Covenant in the
U.S. Senate. The persistent issues preventing accommodation continued to be racial equality
(especially with regard to the treatment of Japanese immigrants in the United States) and differences in how to address expansion in Asia.
In spite of the many efforts to reach agreements on these points, by the early 1920s Japan and the United States were again at odds.
¶

( Stephen 5/19, EpochTimes,"Japan and US Continue to Clash On Market Access Issues; TPP
Talks Stall in Singapore", www.theepochtimes.com/n3/japan-and-us-continue-to-clash-onmarket-access-issues-tpp-talks-stall-in-singapore/, 7/7/14,aven)
Trade ministers resumed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade negotiations today in
Singapore. Ahead of the talks Akira Amari, Japan’s economic minister, and Michael Froman, US
Trade Representative, met to discuss a number of contentious issues. Despite meetings between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Barack Obama in April, disagreements between the US and Japan over market access issues has stalled the 12-nation trade negotiations from moving forward.
¶
A Japan-US trade breakthrough would also greatly benefit
Obama’s pivot to Asia. If Tokyo and Washington DC are able to come to an agreement, then TPP negotiations between all 12 participating countries can progress and potentially end in a timely manner (the Obama Administration set the end of 2014 as a soft deadline). Implementing TPP would greatly benefit the Obama Administration, as it would open key markets for American businesses, reaffirm US staying power, and legitimize the pivot to Asia.
¶
“The best thing Japan could do [for Obama’s pivot to Asia] is to come to an agreement on the TPP,” asserted former
White House adviser on Asia, Dr. Victor Cha. “The US has no other real demands of Japan other than that.”
¶
The clock is ticking for TPP. If it is not completed in a timely manner, then there is the potential for China to fill the void with its own regional economic initiative, the
Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Beijing, which isn’t participating in TPP negotiations, doesn’t want to be overshadowed by US-led trade negotiations in Asia.
¶
With more at stake than just the conclusion of a regional trade agreement, Froman is going to have to push his counterpart in Tokyo to make some meaningful progress on key market access
issues. If he is able to make a deal with Amari, then TPP talks could get a new lease on life. Let’s hope progress can be made in Singapore.

(Takakazu, Japan Review of International Affairs, “Challenges Foreign Policy Future,” http://www.simonmaxwell.eu/blog/review-of-influencing-tomorrow-future-challenges-forbritish-foreign-policy-by-douglas-alexander-and-ian-ns.html, summary page, aven )
In closing I would like to touch on three issues that will be of critical importance to Japanese foreign policy in the twenty-first century. First is Japan's relationship with the United States. From the standpoint of market democracies and the Asia-Pacific, the two sets of foreign policy coordinates, it is evident that
Japan's most important partner in the joint efforts to build a new international order will be the
United States
. In light of this, Japan will have to keep the strengthening of the bilateral relationship a prime goal of its policy.
The major problem in Japan's relationship with the United States, however, lies in the wide qap between the respective influence of the two partners.
It is difficult to maintain a healthy relationship with a country that wields great influence in every sphere.
It is easy for such a relationship to become one of subservience, which leads to a psychological backlash
in the mind of the junior partner, who wishes to become independent from its powerful counterpart.
In Japan's case in particular, this is a constant danger, given the country’s need to lean heavily on America for its security
.
(This need springs from the constraints placed on Japan by its history, a factor I will address shortly.)
The best way to avoid this kind of anti- America backlash is for Japan itself to strengthen its diplomatic and soft power and pursue a more proactive posture
.
This will lead to a more equal relationship between Japan and the United States, a close partnership for building an international order
.

(Joeseph, 8/2/2004, “The Benefits of Soft Power”, http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4290.html ,
7/5/14, SD)
Soft power has always been a key element of leadership. The power to attract—to get others to want what you want, to frame the issues, to set the agenda—has its roots in thousands of years of human experience.
Skillful leaders have always understood that attractiveness stems from credibility and legitimacy. Power has never flowed solely from the barrel of a gun; even the most brutal dictators have relied on attraction as well as fear.
¶
When the United States paid insufficient attention to issues of legitimacy and credibility in the way it went about its policy on Iraq,
polls showed a dramatic drop in American soft power.
That did not prevent the United States from entering Iraq, but it meant that it had to pay higher costs in the blood and treasure than would otherwise have been the case.
Similarly, if Yasser Arafat had chosen the soft power model of Gandhi or Martin Luther King rather than the hard power of terrorism, he could have attracted moderate Israelis and would have a Palestinian state by now. I said at the start that leadership is inextricably intertwined with power.
Leaders have to make crucial choices about the types of power that they use. Woe be to followers of those leaders who ignore or devalue the significance of soft power.

(Nicolas, April 12 th -14 th 2013, “Japan's soft power: the dissemination by the Japanese cultural industry of pop culture to South Korea”, http://www.academia.edu/3517815/Japans_soft_power_the_dissemination_by_the_Japanese_ cultural_industry_of_pop_culture_to_South_Korea , 7/5/14, SD)
11
¶ with critical judgement on the treatment of Japan of its colonialist and militarist past,especially in China and South Korea.The impact of soft power can also be in the economic realm. It can benefit acountry by increasing its trade. Based on the exportation of Japanese popular assets,
¶
Japan’s cultural industry has become one of the
¶ most successful export industry despite
¶
Japan’s economic stagnation. This contrast with another sluggish sectors of its industry
¶
(Daliot-Bul 2009: 247).
¶
Finally, Japan’s soft power in terms of the dissemination of
¶ its popular culturecan contribute to the emergence of an East Asian regional community in the culturalrealm (Katsumata 2012; Otmazgin 2005). This process being essentially consumer andmarket-driven, it may be not benefit directly Japanese governments.
¶
Japan and soft power
¶
The relevance of Jap
¶ an’s
¶ soft power
¶
Japan is a good example of a large and developed country which foreign policy is
¶
primarily based on soft power. Indeed, article 9 of its
Constitution, a legacy of Japan’s
¶ defeat and post-war occupation by the US, bans on the use and the threat of use force asa tool of its foreign policy. Facing such constraints, Japan has had to
focus largely oncooperation with other countries, a basis of soft power. One of the main instrument of cooperation that Japan has used in relation to East Asia has been ODA
(OverseasDevelopment Aid). During the 1980s and
¶
1990s, Japan was one of the world’s leading
¶ providers of foreign aid. For a short time, it granted more financial aid, in
absoluteterms, than any other country; a sum close to 9 billion dollars an year. In the beginning,
¶ ¶
12
¶
ODA was closely bound with Japanese commercial and bureaucratic interests.
However,
¶ since the promulgation of an ʻODA Charterʼ in 1994, the
¶ purpose of Japanese foreignaid has been to encourage the achievement of broader goals, for example the protectionof environment, disarmament, and the diffusion of democratic values. Japan also
usedforeign aid to improve its diplomatic relations with two keys neighbours, China andSouth
Korea. Japan provided these two countries with substantial sums of foreign aid asa substitute for war reparations. These bilateral aids were important to make easier thesigning of the 1965
Normalization Treaty with Seoul and the 1972 Treaty with China(Berger 2010: 573).
¶
ODA, used to increase Japan’s soft power, has been one ex
¶ pression of itseconomic power. Due to its rapid economic modernization in the end of the 19
¶ th
¶ century,Japan gained considerable prestige in
East Asia. It even translated its economic soft power into military hard power polices with the colonization of South Korea andTaiwan, as well with the Pacific War. After the end of World War
2, Japan achieved arapid and spectacular economic modernization. Being the first Asian state tosuccessfully modernize and industrialize, Japan gained again considerable prestige inthe rest
of Asia. In the 1980s, countries such as South Korea, Indonesia and Malaysiatried to emulate the
Japanese model of state-led industrialization. Not only in the 1980s
¶ this region admired Japan’s economic
¶
model, but it was also largely the case in Europeand the United States. However, at

the same time, Japan was harshly criticized,especially by the United States, for its economic threat (Berger 2010: 572)
Cooper, is Director-General for external relations and political-military affairs in the EU Council Secretariat, 4’
(Robert, 2004, “HARD POWER, SOFT POWER AND THE GOALS OF DIPLOMACY”, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/CooperarticleGoalsofdiplomacyweb.pdf ,
7/5/14)
An alternative approach to soft power would be to say that it consists in
¶ getting people to do what you want by getting them to want what you
¶
want. In this interpretation success itself represents a form of soft power
¶ since it encourages imitation. A striking example is the impact that
¶
Japan had on East and Southeast Asia. Sometime in the 1960s people
¶ noticed that
Japan was more of a success story than China and tried to
¶ imitate it. In fact they had quite a lot of success and some version of the
¶
Japanese model can be seen in a range of countries from South Korea
¶ through China, Malaysia and many others in Southeast Asia. This has
¶ created a more comfortable environment for Japan than if all its
¶ neighbours had taken up
Maoist ideas. Japan may not have been
¶ powerful in a conventional sense but it has had a powerful influence on
¶ its neighbours in a way that has produced desirable outcomes for Japan
¶ itself.
(Watanabe, Soft Power Superpowers, pg. 236 , SD)
First, soft power does help to achieve Japan’s foreign policy goals. The Japanese government consciously employs soft power in order to achieve its foreign policy objectives worldwide and
towards the United States. This is due partly to historical forces. Because Japan renounced the threat or use of force (an important element of hard power) as a means of resolving international disputes on its constitution, adopted in 1946, the government has had to resort more to soft power in pursuing its foreign policy goals over the past sixty years. This tradition continues.

(Seiko, 2014, “Japanese GNC and Soft Power – are they two sides of the same coin?”, http://www.creativetransformations.asia/2013/01/japanese-gnc-and-soft-power-are-they-twosides-of-the-same-coin/ , 7/7/14, SD)
¶
¶

(Kyle Mizokami, 7-02-11, The Diplomat, "Japans Soft Power
Chance",thediplomat.com/2011/07/japans-soft-power-chance/, accessed 7-12-14, LAS)
As naval support of the Tohoku emergency winds down, it’s a good time to consider how Japan might better address future disaster contingencies, as well as the country's role in the world.
Capitalizing on its recent experiences and those of other countries, Japan can build a pioneering fleet dedicated to disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, for both home and abroad. Such a fleet, under civilian control, would be a welcome sight both in Japan and abroad, in the aftermath of regional catastrophes and in regular visits to isolated Pacific communities that would welcome medical and technical assistance.
Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief missions are typically supported by naval vessels. The
March Tohoku emergency, as well as the January 2010 Haitian earthquake, saw multinational fleets sortieing to the assistance of island nations. In both instances, natural disasters disrupted local airports and port facilities, slowing the flow of relief into the disaster zone. The design of naval vessels, such as the USS Essex in Tohoku and the Italian aircraft carrier Cavour in Haiti, made them key to opening up affected areas. Self-sufficient in food and power, and designed to serve a large expeditionary force, such ships are designed to
project large amounts of military force abroad into less than ideal conditions. If one substitutes aid and assistance for force, the usefulness of naval designs is readily apparent. It’s no wonder then that Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief missions are typically carried out by naval vessels.
A large ship of a naval design would be an ideal platform for responding to Japan’s natural disasters. Japan is an archipelago of 6,852 islands, and more than a third of Japan’s population lives within ten kilometers of the coast. Although most islands are connected in one way or another, earthquakes and tsunamis can incapacitate those connections, damaging bridges and ferry docks. A disaster relief vessel could simply sail from one island to the next to provide assistance. Furthermore, Japan's terrain is mostly mountainous, with communities often connected by roads and railroads cutting through rugged terrain. While a disaster might close such routes to emergency traffic, a HA/DR vessel could simply sail around them.
A DR/HA vessel for Japan should have several qualities. First, the ship should have medical facilities on par with most hospitals. The USS Makin Island, an amphibious assault ship, is equipped with six operating rooms, 17 ICU wards, a CT scanner, ultrasound machine, an x-ray lab, and laboratories. Makin Island is also equipped with an advanced communications suite allowing its doctors to use telemedicine to consult with other doctors thousands of miles away.

(ELIAS,2011, ELIAS, “ Vision for Environmental Leadership Initiatives for Asian Sustainability”, https://edu.env.go.jp/asia/en/about/vision.html, accessed 7-12-14, LAS)
The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD) was proposed by then Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development, Johannesburg 2002. In the same year a resolution designating the years 2005 to 2014 as the UNDESD was unanimously adopted by the United Nations General
Assembly. Japan developed a UNDESD action plan in 2006. The action plan addresses the importance of implementing sustainable development programs at higher education institutions as a first step. In June 2007 the 21st Century Environmental Nation Strategy and
Innovation 25 was approved by the Japanese Cabinet. Both initiatives address the need for training future environmental leaders with the ability to meet environmental challenges both
in Japan and overseas. In the same year leaders from countries across Asia, meeting at the East
Asia Summit (EAS), high level meetings between China and Japan, and other meetings, agreed to work together toward developing environmental leadership in Asia.
The Ministry of the Environment set up a panel of experts from universities, companies, and nonprofit organizations to review the Vision for Environmental Leadership Initiatives for Asian
Sustainability in Higher Education (Environmental Leadership Vision) and that Vision was adopted in March 2008.
Who are Asia's Future Environmental Leaders?
Sustainable development initiatives in Asia
Asian countries are experiencing an escalating demand for natural resources, food and water on top of soaring pollution and health problems as well as increasing greenhouse gas emissions due to rapid economic expansion and population growth.
There is an urgent need in these countries to train future environmental leaders who will work to ensure sustainable development.

(Former Japanese Ambassador to the United States and Advisor to the Japanese Minister of
Foreign Affairs (Takakazu, Japan Review of International Affairs, “Challenges Foreign Policy
Future,” p218)
In closing I would like to touch on three issues that will be of critical importance to Japanese foreign policy in the twenty-first century. First is Japan's relationship with the United States. From the standpoint of market democracies and the Asia-Pacific, the two sets of foreign policy coordinates, it is evident that
Japan's most important partner in the joint efforts to build a new international order will be the
United States
. In light of this, Japan will have to keep the strengthening of the bilateral relationship a prime goal of its policy. The major problem
in Japan's relationship with the United States, however, lies in the wide qap between the respective influence of the two partners. It is difficult to maintain a healthy relationship with a country that wields great influence in every sphere.
It is easy for such a relationship to become one of subservience, which leads to a psychological backlash
in the mind of the junior partner, who wishes to become independent from its powerful counterpart.
In Japan's case in particular, this is a constant danger, given the country’s need to lean heavily on America for its security
. (This need springs from the constraints placed on Japan by its history, a factor I will address shortly.)
The best way to avoid this kind of anti- America backlash is for Japan itself to strengthen its diplomatic and soft power and pursue a more proactive posture
.
This will lead to a more equal relationship between Japan and the United States, a close partnership for building an international order
.
Rix 1989 (Alan, Pacific Affairs, University of British Columbia, “Japan’s Foreign Aid Policy: A Capacity for
Leadership?”
Japan’s actions do not suggest that transfer of hegemonic power will be necessarily straightforward or certain. Hegemony, if the preserve of a single state, is today a frayed and ragged authority.
Japanese observers have taken a variety of approaches to Japan’s emergence but the model of “cooperative hegemony” through a continuing U.S.-Japan linkage, is widely accepted
. Inoguchi foresees continued Japanese support for trilateralism and the U.S.-Japan security relationship but redefines Japan’s role in terms of what he calls a “supporter”— a cooperative partner of the hegemony but with wider options and greater power. Amaya Naohiro, a longtime observer of Japan’s world role, also foresees joint hegemony, but with a regional slant, which he dubs “Pax Pacifica.” Okita Saburo, with a slightly different view, sees
Japan still searching for a new and vibrant goal for its energies, content to remain as number two without assuming dominance of leadership
.

Omar Sanchez 2002 - "The Perils of a Trade-First US Foreign Policy" – Australian Journal of International Affairs p. 158-9
This article has argued that a US foreign policy based primarily on economic considerations is unwarranted and counterproductive.
It is unwarranted because opening markets abroad is
, to put it mildly, not the best way to promote
American economic prosperity.
It is counterproductive because an aggressive, self-serving stance in the world economic arena antagonises US allies and produces negative spillovers into broader political and security dimensions of American diplomacy.
A policy dear to the ‘economics-first’ school was in fact tried during the first Clinton administration.
Washington was not able to achieve most of its market-opening targets, while the negative repercussions it generated in other areas of the multifaceted US-Japan bilateral relationship were all too evident.
A fixation with correcting bilateral trade deficits, opening foreign markets, and achieving particular numerical targets generates a political backlash on the part of targeted nations, undermines the cause of multilateral trade liberalisation, and brings negligible or no economic returns.
As every nation participating in the international arena sooner or later discovers, once foreign policy goals have been set there remains the task of justifying them in the international arena. Nowhere is this truer than in trade relations—where a country’s policy stance directly impinges upon others—and particularly so for a nation-state that represents 20 percent of world trade and 25 percent of the world economy. What the managed trade experience showed was that a neomercantilist, arm-twisting economic agenda could never hope to gain justification in the international arena.

Tyson – 2k (Laura, former economic advisor to the Clinton Administration, Council on Foreign Relations, “Future
Directions for U.S. Economic Policy Toward Japan”)
The ongoing changes within Japan's economy provide both American policymakers and businesses with opportunities to craft a new economic relationship between Japan and the United States . Task Force members agree that this relationship must rest on the premise that a healthy Japanese economy serves
America's economic and geopolitical interests. Despite its decade-long stagnation, Japan remains the largest economy in Asia, America's third-largest trading partner, and its major ally in the Asia-Pacific region.
, Retired Federal Analyst for the U.S. Treasury Department, now a writer and consultant,
(Richad, June 14th, “"It's Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun," Global
Research, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5964)
Times of economic crisis produce international tension and politicians tend to go to war rather than face the economic music . The classic example is the worldwide depression of the 1930s leading to World War
II . Conditions in the coming years could be as bad as they were then. We could have a really big war if the
U.S. decides once and for all to haul off and let China, or whomever, have it in the chops. If they don't want our dollars or our debt any more, how about a few nukes?

David Leheny 6 – Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Beyond Japan: The
Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism,” Ed. Peter J.Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi. Chapter: “A Narrow Place to Cross
Swords”
<Although Japanese scholars of international relations doubtless knew of "soft power" shortly after Nye coined the term, few used it with regard to Japan until McGray's article appeared. Only the United States, in most eyes, had soft power. In 2001, before becoming finance minister, Takenaka-then a professor at Keio University-edited a volume on the possible development of soft power for Japan. Takenaka's introduction deals with soft power cautiously, arguing that, for historical and linguistic reasons, the United States has soft power resources that will likely remain elusive forJapan. But he also suggests that Japanese economic reform can pave the way toward a more vibrant economy that will once again shape other countries' plans and expectations (Takenaka 2001 a, 2001 b). Other authors in the collection address more straightforwardly the issue of popular culture and soft power. Kamiya Matake (2001) of
National Defense University takes seriously Nye sjudgrnent regarding the importance of shared values, and not just the spread of American commodities; he argues that Pokemon and other Japanese anime exports will not lead to greater soft power. Instead, he locates japan's likely soft power in its ability to reform its economy and then take a more active and open role in global politics. The renowned anthropologist Aoki Tamotsu (z oo i ] writes nearly with despair about the uselessness of pop culture in promoting soft power; even though European children watch Pokemon,Japanese studies centers are shrinking, andJapan seems not to be in vogue as a topic or a country.
>

David Leheny 6 – Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Beyond Japan: The
Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism,” Ed. Peter J.Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi. Chapter: “A Narrow Place to Cross
Swords”
< Japan's economic policymakers have seized on soft power as a crucial wedge for funding and supporting their efforts to promote Japan's "content industries," a term that refers largely to online content.
With the Internet revolution, virtually any cultural product-film, piece of music, artwork, and so forth-can be digitized and transmitted globally. Because the money in information technology now appears to lie largely in the content itself, and not necessarily in the infrastructure used to transmit it, there can be significant rewards for firms, individual artists, and perhaps even governments able to sell people what they want, or perhaps influence what they want. The old Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications11 began to commission reports on inIorrnation technologies in 1995, as did its research affiliate, the Posts and Ielecommunications Research Institute (Uehara 2003, 2). Although these focused primarily on the types of infrastructure involved, they presaged an era in which the government would start to consider the importance of government intervention in the content and not just existence of information.>
David Leheny 6 – Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Beyond Japan: The
Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism,” Ed. Peter J.Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi. Chapter: “A Narrow Place to Cross
Swords”
<This leaves open the question of how Japanese popular culture will ultimately matter in Asia , even if one starts
[rom the assumption that its entertainment industries will continue to grow and even dominate. In one possible view, consumers watchingJapanese video games, listening to.J-Pop songs, or displaying a poster of pop star
Matsuura Aya on their walls are cogs in the "culture industry " (see, e.g., Adorno 19~Jl). The spread of
Japanese convenience stores or fast-food chains like Hoka-Hoka Bento in Indonesia (iHainichi Shimbun 2004) prove nothing more than do the ubiquitous Kentucky Fried Chicken shops in the region. These examples represent little other than the ability of Japanese firms to sell their mass-produced icons and ditties to an increasingly and depressingly global market. This might be good for Japanese firms and, if properly managed, for the overall Japanese economy, but its political benefits for Japan are likely negligible .>

David Leheny 6 – Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Beyond Japan: The
Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism,” Ed. Peter J.Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi. Chapter: “A Narrow Place to Cross
Swords”
< The appeal of soft power is understandable-and very broad . F or japanese liberals, soft power represents a way for nonmilitary Japan to have an effect on global politics.
Tsujimoto Kiyomi , the now-disgraced former policy chief of the Social Democratic Party, emphasized that Iapan ' s security policy should begin with a downgrading of the Defense Agency's role and shift from hard power to soft power, primarily expressed through economic assistance ." For mainstream or more conservative observers, soft power can help Japan be seen as more "trustworthy," meaning that the global spread of Japanese popular culture can increase international friendship and trust. In this framework, soft power and support for the arts become a component of public diplomacy, thereby helping japan make more effective use of its hard power (Takashina, Fukukawa, and Fujii 2003, esp. comments by Fujii, 20, and Takashina, 22). Indeed, japan's recent expansion of its global security role in support of U.S. military activities in Afghanistan and Iraq would have been impossible without government efforts to build trust with its Asian neighbors (Midford 2(03).7 Because of its impressive elasticity, soft power appeals equally, though very differently, toJapanese policy- and lawmakers of virtually all stripes. Ii Moreover, soft power may represent to concerned Japanese what it did to concerned Americans-that reports of their country's demise are premature. >
David Leheny 6 – Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Beyond Japan: The
Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism,” Ed. Peter J.Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi. Chapter: “A Narrow Place to Cross
Swords”
<For this reason, the rapid increase in attention in Japan to soft power and Japan's cultural weight elsewhere probably has less value as a tool for evaluating Japan's regional importance than it does as a heuristic device for grasping how Japanese policymakers now see their regional role. And the motifs I have discussed-contemporary Japan's rise from the ashes of economic recession, the continuity between rebellious Japan's pop culture and earlier cultural traditions, and the political weight afforded by the wide acceptance of Japanese entertainment icons-figure prominently in contemporary understandings of
Japanese soft power. Whether one wants a nonmilitary and generousJapan or an assertive yet trustedJapan, the prescription is similar.japan needs to support the spread of its popular culture overseas in order for other countries to see what today's Japan really is . It is a changed country, a country of originality and even individuality, a country that remembers its traditions even as it boldly meets the challenges of modernity. It is a country that would not hurt a fly.
David Leheny 6 – Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Beyond Japan: The
Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism,” Ed. Peter J.Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi. Chapter: “A Narrow Place to Cross
Swords”

<For some, the idea that Japanese popular culture represents modernity to Asia would be highly attractive to Japanese policymakers . In one line of argument, Japan would be an especially appealing country for many around the globe, particularly in Asia , specifically because it has successfully negotiated between the demands of
economic and political liberalization, on the one hand, and the maintenance of a distinctive culture, on the other (Takashina, Fukukawa, and Fujii 200g, esp. Fujii, 2g). If countries aspire to be like Japan, perhaps that confers a kind of soft power-an ability to persuade rather than coerce.>

Richard
, Director of the Center for International Studies at M.I.T., Autumn,
,
Japan’s Goldilocks Strategy, The Washington Quarterly 29.4
A third choice
, the one preferred by the middle-power internationalists, would be to achieve prestige by increasing prosperity.
Japan’s exposure to some of the more difficult vicissitudes of world politics would be reduced but only if some of the more ambitious assaults on the Yoshida Doctrine were reversed.
Japan would once again eschew the military shield in favor of the mercantile sword. It would bulk up the country’s considerable soft power in a concerted effort to knit East Asia together without generating new threats or becoming excessively vulnerable.
The Asianists in this group would aggressively embrace exclusive regional economic institutions to reduce Japan’s reliance on the U.S
They would not abrogate the military alliance but would resist U.S. exhortations for Japan to expand its roles and missions.
Open, regional economic institutions as a means to reduce the likelihood of abandonment by the United
States and would seek to maintain the United States’ protective embrace as cheaply and for as long as possible.
The final
, least likely choice would be to achieve autonomy through prosperity.
This is the choice of pacifists, many of whom today are active in civil society through nongovernmental organizations that are not affiliated with traditional political parties. Like the mercantile realists,
they would reduce Japan’s military posture, possibly even eliminate it.
Unlike the mercantile realists, they would reject the alliance as dangerously entangling.
They would eschew hard power for soft power, campaign to establish Northeast Asia as a nuclear-free zone, expand the defensive-defense concept to the region as a whole, negotiate a regional missile-control regime
, and rely on the Asian Regional Forum of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) for security. 19 Their manifest problem is that the Japanese public is unmoved by their prescriptions. In
March 2003, when millions took to the streets in Rome, London, and New York City to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only several thousand rallied in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park. 20 Pacifist ideas about prosperity and autonomy seem relics of an earlier, more idealistic time when Japan could not imagine, much less openly plan for, military contingencies.
Joseph
, Senior Associate and Director of Non-Proliferation Studies at the Carnegie
Endowment,
, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/experts/index.cfm?fa=expert_view&expert_id=10&prog=z gp&proj=znpp
The blocks would fall quickest and hardest in Asia, where proliferation pressures are already building
more quickly
than anywhere else in the world.
If a nuclear breakout takes place in Asia, then the international arms control agreements that have been
painstakingly negotiated over the past 40 years will crumble.
Moreover, the United States could find itself embroiled in its fourth war on the Asian continent in six decades
--a costly rebuke to those who seek the safety of Fortress America by hiding behind national missile defenses. Consider what is already happening:
North Korea continues to play guessing games with its nuclear and missile programs; South Korea wants its own missiles to match Pyongyang's;
India and Pakistan shoot across borders while running a slow-motion nuclear arms race; China modernizes its nuclear arsenal amid tensions with Taiwan and the United States;
Japan's vice defense minister is forced to resign after extolling the benefits of nuclear weapons; and Russia--whose Far East nuclear deployments alone make it the largest Asian nuclear power-
-struggles to maintain territorial coherence. Five of these states have nuclear weapons; the others are capable of constructing them. Like neutrons firing from a split atom, one nation's actions can trigger reactions throughout the region, which in turn, stimulate additional actions.
These

nations form an interlocking Asian nuclear reaction chain that vibrates dangerously with each new development.
If the frequency and intensity of this reaction cycle increase, critical decisions taken by any one of these governments could cascade into the second great wave of nuclear-weapon proliferation, bringing regional and global economic and political instability and,
perhaps, the
first combat use of a nuclear weapon
since 1945.

¶
¶
es ¶ nor managing renewable resources so as to safeguard their reproduction. This awareness has been largely ¶ brought about by climate change, which is the number one challenge to our security and survival in the world
¶
today.
¶ ¶
It may be that, even at best, we have only a few decades time in which to adapt our behaviour to the exigencies ¶ of ecologically, socially and economically sustainable development. I ask you to bear this in mind, not only ¶ because our failure to adapt will make any deliberations on soft or hard power irrelevant in the long run, (this is
¶
meant in a more profound sense then Keynes' well-known reminder that, in the long run, we are all dead), but ¶ also because it is centrally relevant to arguments about the relative merits and efficiency of hard and soft power. ¶ ¶ I do not know, nor do I think anyone else can know for certain, whether we can achieve this sustainable balance
¶ in time to save the world or not.
¶
¶

( Bureau of East Asian And Pacific Affairs, US Department of State, "US Relations with Japan", www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/4142.htm, 7/12/14, aven)
Japan is one of Asia's most successful democracies and largest economies. The U.S.-Japan alliance is the cornerstone of U.S. security interests in Asia and is fundamental to regional
stability and prosperity. It is based on shared vital interests and values. These include stability in the Asia-Pacific region, the preservation and promotion of political and economic freedoms, support for human rights and democratic institutions, and securing of prosperity for the people of both countries and the international community as a whole.
¶
Japan provides bases as well as financial and material support to U.S. forward-deployed forces, which are essential for
maintaining stability in the region. Over the past decade the alliance has been strengthened through revised defense guidelines, which expand Japan's noncombatant role in a regional contingency, the renewal of the agreement on host nation support of U.S. forces stationed in
Japan, and an ongoing process called the Defense Policy Review Initiative (DPRI). The DPRI redefines roles, missions, and capabilities of alliance forces and outlines key realignment and transformation initiatives, including reducing the number of U.S. troops stationed in Okinawa, enhancing interoperability and communication between the two countries' respective commands, and broadening cooperation in the area of ballistic missile defense.
¶
Because of the two countries' combined economic and technological impact on the world, the U.S.-Japan relationship has become global in scope. The United States and Japan cooperate on a broad
range of global issues, including development assistance, combating communicable disease such as the spread of HIV/AIDS and avian influenza, and protecting the environment and natural resources. The countries also collaborate in science and technology in such areas as mapping the human genome, research on aging, and international space exploration.
(Xu, 7/12, CN News, "Hagel reiterates u.S- Japan alliance, news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2014-07/12/c_133478194.htm, 7/12/14, aven)
WASHINGTON, July 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Friday met with
Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera at Pentagon, reiterating importance and reinforcement of U. S.-Japan partnership and alliance.
¶
"We discussed in our meeting prior to this conference what the United States and Japan are doing together to modernize our
alliance and to ensure it's prepared this alliance to address emerging threats and challenges,"
Hagel said at a press briefing after his meeting with Onodera.
¶
As Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe has led efforts in Tokyo to reinterpret his country's constitution to allow for so called
" collective defense", U.S. and Japanese officials are therefore working on revising their defense relationship.
¶
As part of the initiative, Hagel said the U.S. is hoping Japan will be able to take a greater role in regional defense initiatives in Asia.
¶
"Japan's collective self-defense decision and

the revised defense guidelines will allow Japan to participate more actively in areas such as ballistic missile defense, counter-proliferation, counter-piracy, peacekeeping, and a wide range of military exercises," he said.
¶
The United States and Japan's treaty alliance has been a foundation for peace, prosperity, and stability in the Asia Pacific region for more than six decades, he noted, adding that they are committed to ensuring it remains that way for
decades to come.
(Victor, 7/2, Voice of America, "New Security Policy Fosters US-Japan Alliance", www.voanews.com/content/new-japan-security-policy-fosters-us-japan-alliance/1949130.html,
7/12/14, aven)
The United States has welcomed Japan’s decision to adopt a new policy of "collective self-
defense," allowing its military to engage in a wider range of operations. Despite criticism from
China and South Korea, a U.S. Defense Department spokesman sees the policy revision as fostering the U.S. "re-balance" to the Asia-Pacific region.
¶
U.S. State Department spokeswoman
Marie Harf Tuesday welcomed the new policy announcement, saying Washington has followed the extensive discussions within Japan in defending allies and participating in U.N. peacekeeping operations.
¶
"As you know, the U.S./Japan alliance is one of our most important security
partnerships. And, we value efforts by Japan to strengthen that security cooperation and also value Japan’s efforts to maintain openness and transparency throughout this decision-making process that’s left up to this new policy," said Harf.
¶
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called it an important step for Japan as it seeks to make a greater contribution to regional and global peace and security. The new policy, he said, also complements our ongoing efforts to modernize our alliance through the revision of bilateral guidelines for defense cooperation.

( Stephen Hesse, 11-26-08 , Japan Times, "Asia's first lady of the environment",www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2008/11/26/environment/asias-first-lady-of-theenvironment/#.U8GwPhYhTgU, accessed 7-12-14, LAS)
If Barak Obama is serious about developing proactive environmental policies that are
international is scope, he would do well to work closely with Japan.
But for the inside scoop on Japan’s most creative initiatives, I suggest he bypass the bureaucrats and the prime minister. The person to talk to is Junko Edahiro.
Edahiro is widely known in Japan as the translator of Al Gore’s book “An Inconvenient Truth,” but that’s just one tip of her professional iceberg.
Besides translation, Edahiro, 46, is perhaps Japan’s most dynamic and prolific environmental writer and speaker, and a valued adviser to top corporations, civic organizations, local and national bureaucrats and the prime minister. She is also Executive Director of Japan for
Sustainability (JFS), which oversees a network of more than 400 volunteers across Japan who search for environmental news and draft articles that are posted on the JFS Web site in
Japanese and English.
In an interview earlier this month, Edahiro explained that she sees herself as an agent for environmental and societal change, her goal being to share information and translate awareness into action, both nationally and internationally.
Last month, for example, she was in China to address government leaders on the history of
NGOs and civil society in Japan, but she also learned about encouraging changes taking place in Chinese environmental policy.
This week she is in Bhutan at the International Conference on Gross National Happiness (GNH), where participants are discussing alternative ways to quantify and measure economic activity, environmental health and human well-being, in contrast to the widely used, but myopic and outdated, Gross National Product (GNP).
Talking with Edahiro and Noriko Sakamoto, the JFS communications director, offers a refreshing glimpse of Japanese civil society. Too often in the past, Japanese NGOs have tended toward exclusiveness and self-absorption, hesitant to cooperate with others and more concerned about ideology than impact.
Edahiro and Sakamoto couldn’t be more different. Well aware of the daunting challenges facing
Japan and the planet, they dedicate long hours to their work; but they are also upbeat and outward looking, laugh easily, and are driven by an empowering combination of idealism and pragmatism.
I last spoke with Edahiro in 2003, so I asked her how things have changed since then.
“In recent years, especially last year, there have been many changes, and what is going on in
Japan is similar to what is going on in the world as a whole. Since the most recent U.N.-IPCC report on Climate Change was released, and following Al Gore’s movie (“An Inconvenient
Truth”), awareness among the general public and politicians is increasing,” she said.

(Fukuda Law Firm, N/A, Fukda Law Firm, "Japan Environmental
Laws",www.fukudalaw.com/Japan%20Environmental%20Laws.html, accessed 7-12-14,LAS)
Japan has reflected a tenuous balance between economic development policies and environmental protection policies. As one of the world's leading importers and consumers of non-renewable and renewable natural resources and one of the largest consumers of fossil fuels so that the Japanese government has international responsibility to conserve and protect the environment.¶ ¶ In the past several years, Japan has improved its environmental laws. Recently, Japan has become a leader in pollution control innovations. Japan now provides assistance to many other countries in environmental expertise.¶ ¶ The Japanese government improved environmental protection polices substantially compared to the era when economic development was pursued without concern over its environmental impact.
During the period of economic focus, many public health problems occurred such as minamata disease that arose from industrial emissions into the water. Japan still needs to address many environmental problems. Japan suffers from serious environmental problems in the usage of energy. For example, nuclear waste, auto congestion, air and water pollution and other environmental problems.
¶
Basic Environment Law
¶
Japan’s Basic Environment Law, was enacted and implemented in 1993. The Ministry of the Environment is primarily responsible for environmental matters. The MOE is responsible for coordinating policies and establishing environmental requirements. There are various other governmental bodies involved in environmental issues. These include the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, METI and the
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries.
¶
Unfortunately, another ministry mediates pollution concerns. The environmental regulatory process also involves the central government, prefectural and municipal authorities. The local authorities control environmental regulation and their regulations may be more stringent than those of the central government.
Unfortunately, the Basic Environment Law allocates responsibility for global issues like declining ozone and global warming to local authorities so there is
¶
Air Pollution
¶
Air pollution is a fundamental problem in Japan. The Air Pollution Control Law was passed in the late 1960’s and was amended several times, including in 1996. This law requires air quality monitoring in throughout Japan. These monitoring stations examine various pollutant levels relative to prescribed emissions standards. ¶ ¶ These standards were established by the Prime Minister.
Limits on various fuel emissions were amended in 1996. Automobiles constitute a major cause of air pollution in Japan. Vehicle emissions standards for various pollutants were established by the Air Pollution Control Law in 1992. That law only encompassed certain cities, towns and villages. In 2002, a related law was upgraded to include diesel emissions. These laws included

requirements targeted at reducing traffic congestion and pollution. Recently, the number of private autos has increased substantially resulting in too many autos on congested streets.
Now, companies must produce vehicles in compliance with emissions standards from 2003. In
2005, These require vehicles to adhere to substantially lowered CO and hydrocarbon emissions. ¶ ¶ Japan has succeeded in substantially lowering the concentration of certain
pollutants in the past few decades. However, other airborne pollutants have not been reduced largely because of the accelerating usage of vehicles. Japan regulated chemicals known as volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) in 2004. The new-car smell emanates from VOC’s which leach from glues, paints, vinyls and plastics in the passenger compartment. These fumes trigger headaches, sore throats, nausea and drowsiness in humans. Prolonged exposure to some of the chemicals may lead to cancer. Japan has the highest concentration of VOC’s among industrialized countries. ¶ Water Pollution¶ In Japan, Minamata disease was a serious
example of the human health degradation and losses as a result of environmental pollution.
The disease was discovered in 1956 near Minamata Bay and later in the Agano River of Niigata
Prefecture. After discovery of the disease, Japanese scientists determined the causes and the government stated its conclusion that Minamata disease originated from the consumption of fish and shellfish contaminated by methyl mercury discharged from a nearby chemical plant.
Minamata disease is a central nervous system disorder. It shows various symptoms including sensory and other problems. By the end of 2003, Japan identified almost 3,000 patients. As a result of the clinical and protective measures after the discovery of the disease, Minamata disease seems to have been eradicated.¶ ¶ Major efforts to reduce environmental pollution were made, including removal of contaminated sediments from the river bottom and constant monitoring of methyl mercury levels. A large-scale survey of health damage focused upon the extent of health damage. The government studied and identified the victims of Minamata disease. People who were determined to be victims of Minamata disease received compensation from the company responsible for the pollution. Since 1992, the government completed medical examinations of local residents and assisted those who were suffering from Minamata disease.¶ ¶ The government assisted the responsible company in the
payment of compensation and new research about Minamata disease. Pollution by toxic substances may result in health damage and destruction of the environment. In Japan,
Minamata disease establishes the principle that business activities must solve environment impacts that they generate. In the case of Minamata disease, the Japanese government made major efforts to resolve disagreements between victims and the responsible parties. Contrary to the American system of justice, the government controlled the settlement and compromise of suits between victims and the defendant companies in order to minimize conflict between the victims’ families and the defendants. On the other hand, this approach was not sufficient because many other people continued to suffer and die from the disease and others suffered from serious health problems from the same source.
¶ ¶
Japan learned many environmental lessons in the context of its powerful economic objectives. The government failed to give sufficient attention to environmental damages, particularly serious health injuries and death. It is possible to avoid similar problems in the future with great care and concern. From the economic standpoint, the measures to avoid similar damages will be extremely costly and very time consuming. Preventative pollution control actions would have been much less costly and disruptive.
¶
¶ After the experience of disastrous damage by pollution such as Minamata disease, measures to protect the environment have increased substantially. Japanese environmentalists are optimistic about environmental aquatic improvement and implementation of efforts required to prevent pollution to avoid disastrous future consequences.¶ ¶ Industrial water pollution has been reduced significantly in Japan. The MOE

recognizes that environmental quality standards for water pollution are not met in 1/3 of
Japan total water environment. In particular, rivers and streams in urban areas and inland lakes and reservoirs still do not need the mandated standards. ¶ ¶ Moreover, Japan’s water quality is affected by external forces. Oil tanker traffic in the Sea of Japan generated a number of spills. Several nations which border on the Sea of Japan have ineffective environmental laws governing oil tankers. There have been many oil spills recently which has caused coastal pollution in Japan. ¶ In 2003, the government increased fines for tanker spills. Also, the Sea of
Japan is polluted from neighboring countries. Russian coastal cities dump untreated sewage into the Sea of Japan.¶
(Nirav Patel, 12-7-07, World Politics Review, "The US-Japan Aliance Should Evolve to Encompass
Environmental Cooperation",www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/1420/the-u-s-japanalliance-should-evolve-to-encompass-environmental-cooperation, accessed 7-12-14, LAS)
This week, world leaders and scientists are meeting in Bali, Indonesia, to articulate a global strategy to deal with global warming. Even though it remains unlikely that major policy initiatives will be announced, the venue provides an important platform to increase U.S.-
Japanese leadership on global warming.
Historically, U.S.-Japan relations have benefited from multiple layers of bilateral cooperation. As the U.S.-Japan bilateral relationship evolves, traditional military and economic cooperation will prove insufficient to guard against malignant stresses in the alliance.
The recent meeting in Washington of Japanese Prime
Minister Yasuo Fukuda and President Bush provided the foundation for a new pillar of bilateral cooperation: one that is guided by mitigating nontraditional threats like global climate change.
Environmental cooperation has the potential to transcend traditional foundations of bilateral cooperation and guard against future schisms in America's most important Asian relationship.
Unfortunately, policymakers remain myopic in their understanding of global climate change as a security threat. Focus on "traditional" security issues -- the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, interstate warfare, and conventional arms races -- however necessary and justified, is undermining our capability to deal with the existential nightmares associated with global climate change.
Asia has the most to gain from countering the threats associated with global climate change. As dramatic economic growth and industrialization continue to sweep through Asia, policymakers must devise creative and pragmatic climate change mitigation policies that are palatable to nations seeking to become more prosperous and industrialized.
The promise of bringing billions of people out of poverty will continue to drive Asian nations to push for rapid industrialization, often at the expense of environmentally conscious policies. This is evidenced by the fact that 16 of the 20 most
polluted cities in the world are located in China, and all 20 are in Asia. Generating cooperative agreements to deal with the threat of rogue industrialization will continue to prove difficult as

nations prioritize a future of prosperity over ecological sustainability.
Recent reports from the
U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) project that if global warming continues at its current rate, the thinning of polar ice caps may increase sea levels by as much as or more than 1 meter. This could displace over 1 billion people in China, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, forcing them to relocate inland. The stress of mass relocation in the region has the potential to spark resource-based conflicts, and undermine international stability and regional security. This would exacerbate a contentious Asia-Pacific security environment, which already risks conflict on a scale not seen since World War II. 

 Asian environmental problems require Asian input and solutions. However, divergent interests mean consensus within Asia will be difficult to reach. Therefore, countries with extensive expertise on global climate change must lead. Japan can be such a leader, helping to create consensus and providing valuable expertise.
The benefits of greater U.S.-Japanese environmental collaboration would be significant. In particular, Japan's current leadership role on global climate change would be more effective if it had greater support from the United
States. Furthermore, greater U.S.-Japanese cooperation on environmental issues has the potential to increase America's influence in the region by showcasing its desire to assist in the responsible development and integration of Asian economies into the international order.
This would go a long way in countering many of China's "soft power" gains in recent years.
U.S.-Japanese environmental cooperation also would strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance by illustrating new benefits that result from it, such as an enhanced ability to meet future security challenges in the region. If not adequately dealt with, global climate change has the potential, especially in Asia, to undermine international peace, stability and security.

(Business Korea, 8/13/13, Business Korea, "Korea is 4.7 Years behind the US and 1.9 Years Ahead of China," http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/article/1256/competitiveness-science-andtechnology-korea-47-years-behind-us-and-19-years-ahead, 7/5/14, AF)
If the US’ technology level is 100%, then the order of the top
five countries work out to be the
US (100%), EU (94.5%), Japan (93.4%),
Korea (77.8%), and China (67%). Korea’s strategic technology with the highest level was electronics, information and communications (82.2%). It is 2.9 years behind the US, which is the smallest of all level differences. However, aviation and space sciences are at 66.8%, which is lower than China and shows the largest difference of 10.4 years compared to US. When categorizing the 120 national strategy technologies to five levels of best, leading, pursuing, delayed, and behind, 36 technologies are in the leading category and 83 are in the pursuing. Space surveillance system technology falls into the delayed category. Korea does not have any technology in the best category. Meanwhile, the US has 97, Japan has 14, and the EU has 10 in the best category. China had its “oriental medicine effectiveness and mechanism close examination” technology categorized as best.
The number
of domestic dissertations registered
compared to the entire number of dissertations registered in the world’s outstanding scholastic dissertation database related to the national strategic technologies
(national strategic technology dissertation market share) for the past 10 years
(2002-2012) was 3.5%, which ranked 5th, after the EU (23.5%), the US (19.2%), China (16.9%), and
Japan (6.8%).
As for the impact factor, showing dissertation quality
, the US ranked first (1.47) followed by the EU (1.16), Japan (0.86),
Korea (0.73), and China (0.35).
The average market share of national strategy technology patents for the past ten years turned out to be the US with
47.3%, the EU with 16.6%, Japan with 13.2%,
Korea with 8.5%, and China with 1.4%.
The patent impact factor ranking was the US at 1.29, Japan at 0.64
, the EU at 0.55, Korea at 0.49, and China at 0.34. The evaluation of technology level is held every 2 years in the following ten areas: electronics, information and communications; medical; biology; machinery; production and process; energy; resource and high technology; aviation and space; environment, earth and marine; nanotechnology and materials; construction and transportation; and disaster and catastrophe prevention and safety.
Doesn’t solve—Japan has shifted its focus away from R&D
Cowing 10
(Keith, trained as a biologist (M.A. and B.A. degrees) and has a multidisciplinary background with experience and expertise that ranges from spacecraft payload integration and biomedical peer review to freelance writing and website authoring itor and webmaster of the somewhat notorious NASA Watch, an online publication devoted to the free and uncensored exchange of information on space policy and NASA operations. This website is read regularly within NASA, Congress, and the global space community. Keith is also editor of SpaceRef.com an online space news and reference resource he runs with his business partner
Marc Boucher as well as the newly launched OnOrbit.com. Keith has appeared hundreds of times on television and radio including
ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox, NPR, CNN, PBS, CBC, CTV, Discovery Channel Canada, NHK, BBC, Travel Channel and has been quoted in a number of newspapers and magazines ranging from Wired and the Washington Post to the Economist and Pravda, among others,
“JAXA Wants (but can't attract) More Private Sector Funds,” NASA Watch, October 3, 2010)
"The
J apan
A erospace
E xploration
A gency has received few requests from private corporations
wanting to lease space in the research module Kibo on the International Space Station, with the high cost thought to be a major reason for the lack of interest. Under a pricing system introduced by JAXA in June last year, corporations can pay 5.5 million yen per hour to have astronauts from Japan, the United States or other nations carry out scientific experiments or other activities in Kibo.
JAXA expected to receive commissions for
10 to
30 hours per year, but orders have fallen well short of that
, the agency said. Since JAXA began leasing space in Kibo in September 2008, just four commercial operations have been conducted in the module." Japan Seeks To Reorient Space Spending, Space News "
The Japanese government wants to promote more private-sector space development by reorienting its spending away from its research focus
and toward commercially oriented programs and crafting a new law to permit commercial launch services,
Japanese government and industry officials said Sept. 28."

“Japan pins hopes on green power laws, risks abound”, 2011/08/23,
<http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201108220260.html>
Japan's fragmented grid
also has limited ability to absorb massive capacity from solar
and wind and is in need of investment
, said Hirofumi Kawachi, senior analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities. "The bills are halfbaked. The investment plan is there but financing is lacking -- there is no detailed roadmap to finance infrastructure investments needed to make the scheme work, such as setting up proper transmission networks
," he said. "
There is risk that stocks of solar and wind power
plants will build up but won't be utilized effectively
," he added. That would not hurt new suppliers given a preset return for a preset period but possibly clinch economic growth by boosting electricity bills for the sake of un-connected new facilities.

(Department of State, “US Climate Action Report 2010”, June 2010, RM, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/140636.pdf)
U
.S. Environmental Protection Agency
The
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (
EPA
) designs and implements innovative programs on a variety of international environmental challenges
, including efforts to make transportation cleaner, reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and improve local air quality. As a global leader in methane mitigation, EPA spearheads the Methane to Markets Partnership, an international effort that promotes methane recovery and use as a clean energy source. EPA is also working through international partnerships to retrofit diesel engines (Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles); bring energy efficiency labeling, like ENERGY STAR, to other countries; improve national GHG inventories; and reduce the impacts of buildings and vehicles on the environment. U.S. Department of Energy
In addition to providing funding support for such interagency activities as the Climate Change Technology Program, the
U.S.
Department of Energy (
DOE
) works with numerous foreign governments and institutions to promote dissemination of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean energy technologies and practices.
Since the 2006 U.S. Climate Action Report,
DOE has enhanced its international engagement on technology transfer
through such efforts as the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) and the MEF. DOE is participating in the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation and the International Renewable Energy Agency
(IRENA), and is working through the Global Bioenergy Partnership (GBEP) to reduce the climate change impacts of biofuel development. DOE has chaired the Climate Technology Initiative (CTI) that serves the UNFCCC, and is actively involved in the Private
Financing Advisory Network (PFAN), which is seeking and finding opportunities for private entities to invest in clean energy projects in developing countries. U.S. Department of State
The
U.S. Department of State (
DOS
) coordinates bilateral and multilateral diplomatic efforts related to climate change
, including the U.S. presence at the international climate negotiations hosted by the United Nations. DOS also deploys financial resources in support of key multilateral and bilateral priorities in adaptation, clean energy, and forestry and land use.
DOS is responsible for
U.S. government commitments to the LDCF and SCCF.
These multilateral funds provide financing to developing countries to help them adapt
to the impacts of climate change, with a specific focus on assisting the most urgent adaptation needs of least developed countries. In FY 2010, DOS will also invest funds in pilot approaches that better integrate climate change objectives into other U.S. government development activities. DOS, in coordination with other agencies, also funds clean energy programs in support of strategic bilateral diplomatic partnerships as well as multilateral efforts
. For example, working with DOE, DOS supports the MEF, which provides an avenue for supporting lowcarbon technology projects and programs of interest to key emerging economies, including China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, and Indonesia. DOS funds, in conjunction with EPA technical assistance, also support the Methane to Markets Partnership. In forestry and land use, DOS supports the World
Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, to help developing countries measure forest carbon stocks and design deforestation emission reduction strategies. In FY 2010, DOS will also invest funds to support capacity building for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) projects in key forested developing countries. U.S. Department of Agriculture The U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides a broad array of technical and financial assistance to help countries carry out agriculture- and forest-sector activities that support their efforts to mitigate or adapt to the impacts of climate change. USDA activities are coordinated through the Foreign Agricultural Service and and the U.S. Forest Service's (USFS's) International Program and draw on the technical capabilities of USDA’s research and conservation programs. Strong partnerships with land grant universities, environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sector make this work integrated and comprehensive.
Specific activities include developing methods and protocols for measuring GHG emissions from agricultural sources, and estimating carbon fluxes from forest and agricultural systems; designing and implementing agricultureand forest-sector components of national
GHG inventories; reducing GHG emissions through improved agricultural practices; increasing carbon sequestration through improved forest management (including forest conservation, sustainable forestry, and agroforestry); and encouraging sustainable and renewable bioenergy technology and use. In addition, USDA provides technical assistance to the USAID missions and host governments to incorporate climate change strategies into country plans and carry out country-led projects to adapt to and mitigate the effects of global climate change. The USDA Cochran and Borlaug Fellowship programs now offer training in areas related to global climate change, in response to country requests. In 2008, USFS completed a multiyear, multimillion-dollar program funded by
USAID, to integrate the Incident Command System (ICS) into India’s emergency response procedures, improving the country’s ability to effectively coordinate and respond to large-scale climaterelated disasters. A similar program was also completed in Sri Lanka. In recent years, cooperation has also occurred between USFS and partners in Mexico and China on technologies and methods related to forest carbon inventories. National Aeronautics and Space Administration The National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(
NASA
) advances scientific knowledge by
observing the Earth system from space; assimilating new observations into climate, weather, and other Earth system models; and developing new technologies, systems, and capabilities

for its observations, including those with the potential to improve future operational systems managed by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and others. NASA is a major participant in the U.S. Global Change Research Program and in U.S. activities to support the Group on Earth Observations (GEO).
NASA’s Earth observation data are openly available to all nations, organizations, and individuals, and the agency has many active partnerships with U.S. and international agencies to facilitate the use of its data in research and operational applications
. U.S. Department of Commerce
The
U.S. Department of Commerce (
DOC
) contributes to developing scientific data on climate change and facilitates the development and deployment of technology to mitigate and address the effects of climate change through its various agencies
: The Patent and
Trademark Office protects intellectual property rights that enable technological innovation. The National Institute of Standards and
Technology and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration provide research into developing a smart-grid infrastructure. The Economic and Statistics Administration works on identifying and quantifying “green jobs.”
The
International Trade Administration promotes the global deployment of U.S. climate mitigation technologies.
The Economic Development Administration (EDA) works to help U.S. communities develop sustainable economic development plans, projects, and activities. EDA’s Global Climate Change Mitigation Incentive Fund supports communities as they develop green projects, processes, and functions, helping to create new green jobs while simultaneously reducing global GHG emissions. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA, which is a
DOC agency
, plays a particularly critical role in international climate activities.
NOAA provides weather, water, and climate services; manages and protects fisheries and sensitive marine ecosystems; conducts atmospheric, climate, and ecosystem research; promotes efficient and environmentally safe commerce and transportation; supports emergency response; and provides vital information in support of decision making. NOAA’s climate mission is to: “Understand and describe climate variability and change to enhance society’s ability to plan and respond.” NOAA’s long-term climate efforts are designed to develop and deliver a predictive understanding of variability and change in the global climate system, and to advance the application of this information for decision making in climate-sensitive sectors through a suite of research, observations and modeling, and application and assessment activities. Millennium Challenge
Corporation Established in January 2004, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is a U.S. government corporation that works with some of the poorest countries in the world to reduce poverty through sustainable economic growth. MCC’s innovative development assistance is based on the principle that aid is most effective when it reinforces good governance, economic freedom, and investments in people. MCC recognizes that alleviating global poverty requires urgent attention to climate change and responsible environmental stewardship, and is committed to helping partner countries integrate climate change and other environmental and social considerations into their poverty reduction programs. To date, MCC has signed grant agreements with 20 countries totaling nearly $7.2 billion in assistance. Many of these compacts include funding for projects Chapter 7 | Financial
Resources and Technology Transfer 103 designed to help partner countries improve natural resource management, strengthen institutional capacity, and pursue lower-carbon growth strategies. For instance, in El Salvador, MCC is funding a $67-million community development project that includes approximately $1 million for the installation of 450 solar panel systems to serve more than 2,000 poor and isolated households in the country’s northern zone, and the development of watershed management plans to promote water conservation as part of a broader water supply and sanitation program. And in the Republic of Moldova, MCC is providing $2 million in assistance to promote improved watershed management as part of a larger agriculture and irrigation development program, which will contribute to climate change adaptation and increased food security. Looking ahead, MCC anticipates increasing opportunities to help developing countries incorporate climate change and other environmental issues into their poverty reduction programs. Future compact partners— such as Jordan, Malawi, Zambia, the Philippines, and Indonesia—face cross-cutting environmental challenges, like water scarcity, deforestation, and biodiversity loss, and are particularly vulnerable to climate risks, such as droughts and extreme weather events. MCC is actively working with these countries, as with all of its partners, to help them adapt to and mitigate these risks. Moreover, MCC is committed to working closely with other donors to harmonize efforts to integrate climate change and natural resource management into development assistance.

(Kenneth, Professor of Political Science and Professor of
Business Administration at the University of Michigan. For the 2008-09 academic year he is a
Visiting Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution. Dr. Lieberthal served as
Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Asia on the
National Security Council from August 1998 to October 2000. He has written and edited fourteen books and monographs and authored about seventy periodical articles and chapters in books. Dr. Lieberthal has a B.A. from Dartmouth College, and two M.A.’s and a Ph.D. in Political
Science from Columbia University. and David, Energy & Environment Scholar and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of Freedom from Oil: How the Next President Can
End the United States’ Oil Addiction (McGraw-Hill 2007). Mr. Sandalow has served as Assistant
Secretary of State for Oceans, Environment & Science; Senior Director for Environmental Affairs,
National Security Council; Associate Director for the Global Environment, White House Council on Environmental Quality. His opinion pieces and articles have appeared in the New York Times,
Washington Post, Washington Times, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Boston
Globe, Science and many other periodicals. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law
School (JD) and Yale College (BA Philosophy)., “Overcoming Obstacles to U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change,”)
China positions itself as a developing country in international relations.
As noted above, while retaining some merit, this positioning does not nearly capture the full reality of the PRC,
which both confronts the problems of developing countries and has many of the attributes of an industrialized nation.
China is now in a somewhat uncomfortable transition period, where the balance is shifting toward more explicit acceptance of its rights and obligations as a major power
but where the most comfortable and internationally acceptable posture is not yet clear.
This situation complicates China’s role during 2009 in addressing the global economic crisis, and it also has a complicating effect on China’s posture in climate change negotiations leading to Copenhagen and beyond
.
China is a leader in articulating
the three major framework issues that developing countries in general raise with the advanced industrial countries on climate change obligations. These are: • Countries should be held responsible not only for their current emissions but also for their cumulative historical emissions, given that greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere over many decades. • Metrics should not focus on total national emissions and neglect to account for per capita emissions in densely-populated countries. • Developed countries have already gone through high-emissions stages of development (such as building out their infrastructure), while developing countries still have much of this work to do. International agreements should recognize this fundamental reality. The above three issues have the intended effect of placing the major burden for global warming and its mitigation on the industrialized countries and of laying down a conceptual framework to permit ongoing increases in greenhouse gas emissions by developing countries even as industrialized countries assume cap and reduction obligations. China specifically points to provisions in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, reaffirmed in the 2007 Bali Roadmap, which obligate advanced industrial countries to aid the transfer of pertinent technologies and to provide financial support to developing countries to meet their climate obligations. The current international economic malaise makes the demand for financial support likely to be politically more difficult to achieve.
The
United States plays into the politics of addressing climate change in China in several palpable ways
. First, many Chinese, including
many among the leadership, are deeply suspicious of American motives. They believe that the United States is determined to find some set of measures that will knock China off its current trajectory
of rapid economic growth and increasing international influence because they regard America as simply too zero-sum in its outlook to comfortably contemplate the ongoing rise of China.
T hese Chinese suspect that American statements about the need for China to address global warming are simply the latest in a series of efforts to derail China’s growth machine,41 especially since they believe that nobody with a deep understanding of China’s stage of development could reasonably demand that China commit to firm targets for greenhouse gases during the coming decade.
China

sees the United States as the country most responsible for the greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere. Yet, it is
well
aware that the United States has rejected the Kyoto Protocol
and that the Bush Administration came very reluctantly to an acknowledgement that climate change is occurring and that human actions are contributing to it.
It recognizes that the Bush White House never moved significantly away from its deep antipathy to taking measures against climate change
beyond hoping for technological solutions developed primarily in the private sector.
The United States is enormously richer overall and per capita than China, has a far more developed scientific community, and enjoys far greater institutional capacity
.
It has already constructed most of its infrastructure and completed its urbanization and is now primarily a service economy
.
All these facts make it particularly galling
to the Chinese when the United States refuses to take on serious national obligations to con- front global climate change and explicitly bases that reluctance in part on the fact that China has not agreed to accept comparable obligations. In China
, the U.S. record thus provides strong cover for officials who prefer to maximize growth
and minimize international obligations to expend more effort to get onto a lower carbon path of development.
It weakens those who advocate more forwardleaning Chinese postures on these issues
. In sum,
Beijing harbors very serious concerns about the
United States on the climate change issue and distrusts American motives when Washington stresses the importance of greater Chinese efforts
.
The United States plays into China’s climate change/clean energy posture in another more subtle way.
Becoming a truly modern country is a core goal of almost all Chinese
, and
most Chinese view the United States as the world’s most modern society
.
There is
, therefore, a very strong tendency among the growing middle and wealthier classes in China to benchmark and emulate American lifestyles
.
If Americans were to shift from being profligate energy consumers
to instead reducing carbon emissions and becoming world leaders in clean energy technology, the ripple effects in Chinese popular perceptions could reduce some of the difficulties China’s leaders have in shifting their country onto a lowercarbon path of development.

(Tetsushi and Leika, 6/18/14, Reuters, "Japan exports disappoint, risks hitting economy hard," http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/18/us-japan-economy-tradeidUSKBN0ET06B20140618, 7/5/14, AF)
Japan's annual exports declined for the first time in 15 months in May
as shipments to Asia and the
United States fell, threatening to knock the economy hard at a time when domestic consumption is being crimped by a national sales tax increase.
The data backs expectations for additional stimulus from the Bank of Japan in coming months, particularly if market confidence takes a hit as external demand proves elusive. "If exports fail to pick up while domestic demand stagnates, that would heighten calls for the BOJ to act," said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at
Norinchukin Research Institute.
Total exports fell 2.7 percent May on the year, Ministry of Finance data showed on Wednesday, compared with a 1.2 percent drop seen by economists and a 5.1 percent rise in April. On a seasonally adjusted basis, exports fell 1.2 percent in May from the prior month.
The central bank is counting on exports growth to partially offset the impact of a sales tax hike to 8 percent from 5 percent
in April, but the
MOF data will be a worry for policy makers. Adding to the BOJ's concerns over soft exports to Asia is the surprising weakness in shipments to the United States - Japan's biggest export market - which suggests a recovery in advanced economies is slow to filter through to exporting firms. This was underscored in Singapore's exports for May, which unexpectedly fell on weak shipments to its key markets. The city-state's non-oil domestic exports to the United States fell 8.8 percent in May from a year earlier, compared with 11.7 percent growth in April. In South Korea, exports to the U.S. rose 5.5 percent on-year, but that was much slower than
April's 19.3 percent jump. The MOF data showed Japan's U.S.-bound exports fell 2.8 percent, the first drop in 17 months led by decline in car shipments, while exports to China rose 0.4 percent on-year. Exports to Asia, which account for more than half of
Japan's total exports, fell 3.4 percent in May from a year earlier, the first annual decline in 15 months. MISPLACED CONFIDENCE?
BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda last week said the timing of export recovery may have been delayed, but the bank has maintained that the economy is on track to meet its 2 percent inflation goal next year, shrugging off the need for additional stimulus.
[ID:nL4N0OU0JD] Minutes of the May 20-21 BOJ meeting released on Wednesday reinforced policymakers' confidence about the economic outlook. The central bank chief sees shipments eventually picking up as overseas markets, mainly advanced economies, recover. However, the latest data suggests external demand may not fire up nearly enough to help
Japan's economy cope with short term dips in growth
. Norinchukin Research's Minami believes that although market expectations for fresh BOJ easing steps have largely been pushed back to later this year, Kuroda may act by autumn to arrest a loss of momentum. The world's third-biggest economy picked up speed in the first quarter as consumers loaded up on goods ahead of the tax hike, but growth is expected to slump in the current quarter as the effects of the one-off consumption spike winds back. "In today’s world of very low US$-value export growth Abenomics could only count on export-led growth by taking market share," Capital Economics said in a note to clients. "It remains to be seen whether Abenomics can stimulate domestic spending sufficiently to offset weak export demand." DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION, EXPORT VOLUMES WEAK Indeed, the negative impact of the sales tax hike on consumption was highlighted in Japan's imports for May, which fell 3.6 percent on the year
, versus a 1.7 percent increase expected. The weaker imports helped the country's trade deficit narrow from a year earlier to 909.0 billion yen, but still marked a record run of 23 months in the red.
Japan's exports had grown at a double-digit pace in the second half of last year, but growth has slowed to below 10 percent this year
as the effects of a weak yen fade. More worryingly, the yen's fall has failed to shore up export volumes, which peaked in 2007 and have been falling for a third straight year in 2013.
Export volumes fell 3.4 percent in May from a year ago
, highlighting the plight of exporters as a weak yen has boosted import costs more than export income. BOJ's aggressive monetary stimulus helped weaken the yen by some 20 percent last year, boosting exporters' profits and share prices.
However, the yen has moved sideways this year versus the dollar, limiting gains in the value of exports.

(Aki Ito and Yuki Hagiwara, with the San Francisco Gate, “Remaking Japan Requires Breaking
Rules With Plan for Ground Zero,” October 14, 2011)
Yoshihiro
Murai, governor of Miyagi
, the prefecture that was the ground zero of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, stands before a gathering in Tokyo of 300 representatives of Japan's biggest companies and community organizations. It's his last stop of the day and his third visit to the capital in a month. He's 190 miles from home. Murai grips the microphone and apologizes in advance for the rapidity with which he's about to speak, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue. He then races through the high points of his 80-page plan to rebuild Miyagi, to raise it up from its devastation with the help of economic development. Suddenly, Murai, nothing if not an optimist, pauses. His face breaks into a grin. "We're coming up with a lot of benefits for businesses in Miyagi," he says. "So I hope you come before we run out of land." Murai, 51, has traveled to Tokyo on this day in late July to sell corporate Japan on his grand vision of remaking the ruined region. The one-time Self-Defense Forces (SDF) helicopter pilot says he's not drinking a drop of alcohol until the last of the 320,885 people who were evacuated from their coastal homes are able to move out of the prefecture's makeshift gymnasiums- turned-shelters. 'Japan Will Sink' Murai's eye is already on something much larger and more daunting, however: turning Miyagi's 120 miles (200 kilometers) of wrecked coastline into the country's most attractive investment spot.
Murai
says he wants to create a model economy in Miyagi that could be replicated in Japan's 46 other prefectures. Japan as a nation
, like Miyagi and the region that surrounds it, Tohoku
cannot afford to return to its pre- disaster trail of deflation and debt, he says in an interview during his Tokyo visit four months after the March 11 disaster. "
If things continue along the same path, Japan will sink
," he says.
The Japanese economy has been underwater for some time. The country's strongest recorded earthquake slammed the world's third-largest economy after two decades of stagnation that saw nominal gross domestic product repeatedly rise only to fall back down from 1991 to 2011. GDP, seasonally adjusted, stood at 462 trillion yen
($6 trillion) in the three months ended on June 30, down from 469 trillion yen exactly 20 years earlier.
Against that backdrop, policy makers long ago lost hope that domestic consumers and businesses would drive growth. Instead, the country banked on exporters such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Nintendo Co. to keep the economy ticking. Yoshihiko Noda, whose selection as prime minister was confirmed by Emperor Akihito on Sept. 2, has inherited those two lost decades, a yen that's surged about 50 percent against the dollar in the past four years and a benchmark interest rate that has long stood near zero percent.
Murai's prescription for Japan's malaise is in line with what many critics of government policy have recommended. For years, economists have urged the central government to transfer power and grant more autonomy to local authorities, ease regulations that stifle business, wrest control of the nation's farms and harbors from the powerful agriculture and fishery cooperatives and cut one of the world's highest corporate tax rates. Recipe for Rebirth Tailored to Miyagi,
Murai's recipe for rebirth is built around deregulation and tax incentives. He
says he wants to eliminate the barriers that have prevented bigger businesses from investing in agriculture and fishing industries
that because of regulation and tradition have been dominated by big cooperatives made up of independent fishers and farmers. He wants to create manufacturing hubs for cars and high- tech electronics and machinery by offering tax holidays and government subsidies. And he wants to ease about a dozen urban planning and environmental laws that he says currently stand in the way of building in a timely fashion factories that would create jobs.

David Leheny 6 – Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Beyond Japan: The
Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism,” Ed. Peter J.Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi. Chapter: “A Narrow Place to Cross
Swords”
<This means. that Gross National Cool and soft power are almost, certainly going to be politically consequential , though perhaps not in the way that the terms' users might suppose. If we think of soft power not as a category of power resources but rather as an idea-a component of a cultural and ideographical structure of governance-it can affect Japanese policy even if Japan does not really have soft power . Of course, whether
Japan has soft power or not is almost certainly impossible to tell, and is not in itself germane to policy .
After all, the term "soft power" became popular in the United States not only because of Nye's writings and his important position in international relations theory but also because it sat well with Americans' views of themselves.
Because American culture and values are constitutive of Americans, it is practically impossible for Americans to determine effectively whether their values are really shared or not. The same is likely true for Japanese.
>

IHT, 7-21-08 (Stanley Weiss – founding chairman of Business Executives for National Security, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, “AMERICA'S IMAGE: How to electrify the world,” 7-21-08, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/21/opinion/edweiss.php, AG)
There were familiar appeals: Don't attack Iran; improve relations with Russia and reduce nuclear weapons; embrace China and India as true partners; reform the United Nations with a more inclusive Security
Council.
Many called for a smarter approach to terrorism , like Dr. Zulkieflimansyah, an Indonesian parliamentarian
(who, like many Indonesians, uses one name and is more commonly known as Zul). He said the next president should build a "bridge of reason and understanding with the Islamic world."
One person suggested a presidential visit to a mosque outside the U.S. "He should use speeches and visits to emphasize the values that Muslims and Americans have in common," said Bijan Khajehpour, a Tehran-based analyst, "especially compassion, a core value in Islam."
There were the expected calls for a U.S. exit from Iraq , which Obama supports and McCain opposes, suggesting a
McCain presidency could have a harder time burnishing America's image. Likewise, many urged the next president to meet foreign adversaries , as Obama has expressed a willingness to do. "If Nixon could go to China and
Reagan to the Soviet Union," a European diplomat asked, "why can't the American president go to Iran?"
Others called for a more aggressive push for Arab-Israeli peace, including a more "even-handed" approach by Washington and stronger opposition to expanded Israeli settlements .
But the one piece of advice offered most often was something more basic: a return to multilateral diplomacy, including a new attitude by the president himself.
"The next president should take more account of the sentiments of other people, not just Americans," said Masaki
Orita, a former Japanese diplomat, echoing the sentiments of many.
"Restore global trust and confidence by working with and listening to others," said Gurdist Chansrichawla, a Thai venture capitalist, "and everything else will follow."
In other words, the next president will give America a public relations boost simply by not being George W. Bush.
Beyond that, the leaders I surveyed highlighted several areas where American action could win back hearts and minds.
Human rights . No U.S. president is likely to "cease support for all dictators," as urged by Syed Abida Hussain of Pakistan's Peoples Party. But closing the military prison at Guantánamo Bay and foreswearing torture would generate enormous international goodwill. America would again be seen as the "shield of freedoms, not their masked trampler," said Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist.

IHT, 7-21-08 (Stanley Weiss – founding chairman of Business Executives for National Security, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, “AMERICA'S IMAGE: How to electrify the world,” 7-21-08, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/21/opinion/edweiss.php, AG)
The environment and energy. With Americans consuming more oil, and spewing more greenhouse gases, than any other nation, U.S. leadership on energy and climate change is seen as indispensable.
A Europeanstyle cap-and trade system to reduce carbon emissions - which both Obama and McCain favor - would be a start, as would embracing the conventions of the Kyoto protocol. Shyam Saran, India's special envoy for climate change, suggests going further with "an American-led global effort on renewable energy along the lines of the 1950s
Atoms for Peace program" to share new technologies with other countries.

– LA times Staff Writer
(July 7, 2008 “G-8 summit gives Japan a green spotlight”)//CP
RUSUTSU, JAPAN — Even as most of the world struggles with soaring fuel and food prices, two major issues facing President Bush and seven other leaders meeting here this week, many in Japan see an opportunity to shine during these tough economic times because of this nation's long-running conservation programs.
Since the oil embargo crisis in
1973, Japan has done more than most nations to reduce its heavy reliance on crude oil and develop green technologies, whether battery-powered cars or solar panels. That means the world's second-largest economy is better able than many to withstand the latest oil shock.
Japan's efforts to go green also give its leaders, hosts of the Group of 8 major industrial nations summit beginning today, greater standing to push their agenda on global warming. As chairman of this year's G-8 summit, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has urged the group to agree to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2050. But at a news conference Sunday after bilateral meetings between leaders, Fukuda appeared to lower expectations that an agreement would be won, while Bush again said that
China and India, two major polluters, needed to be involved in any such accord. China and India are not members of the G-8, although they are invited as guests at the summit. The G-8 group comprises the U.S., Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia. The summit is being held in a remote mountaintop hotel on the island of Hokkaido, away from thousands of protesters gathered in Hokkaido prefecture's capital, Sapporo. At the news conference, Bush defended his decision to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics next month in Beijing, saying that it would be an "affront to the Chinese people" if he didn't. Some in
Congress have called on Bush to boycott the Games because of China's human rights record. The Japanese prime minister said for the first time that he would go to the opening event as well, noting that "there certainly may be problems with China, but even so, they are striving to improve things."
Although Japan, like other nations, is facing inflation from higher fuel prices and is struggling with weak consumer spending and slowing exports, its corporations have long benefited from their heavy investment in energy-saving technologies.
By some measures, Japanese companies use half as much energy per dollar of economic activity compared with the United States.
Even though Japan is decreasing incentives, the market is growing and the cost of electricity is cheap.
Lynch, 8 – Financial Consultant (J. Peter, “What America Needs Now – 2008,” 7-2-08, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/recolumnists/story?id=52929, AG)
In Japan, there is a similar set of government guarantees and incentives that have been in effect for a number of years (since 1992). They were dropped each year to reflect technical advancements and were eliminated in 2005. Despite the annual drops in incentives , the market is still growing at 20% plus per year and as a result, on-grid solar electricity in Japan is now CHEAPER than retail fossil fuel electricity . In short , Japan has moved forward quickly with a well-planned program, including incentives and widespread consumer education and in less than 10 years has made solar electricity a success in Japan and has made Japan the worldwide solar electricity leader.

– Bloomberg Staff Writer
(Shigeru Sato “Japan Energy Companies Form Carbon-Capture-and-Storage Venture” ) // CP
Tokyo Electric Power Co.
, Asia's biggest utility, and a unit of
Inpex Holdings Inc.
have joined 22 Japanese companies in forming a venture to research carbon- capture technology to be used in government-backed projects.
Japan
CCS Co. will also seek contracts to do research for private enterprises considering using the technology, in which carbon dioxide is collected in the air and stored underground, the venture said in a statement released in Tokyo today. The move follows an agreement this month by energy ministers of the Group of
Eight industrialized nations to jointly develop the technologies by 2020 and launch 20 large-scale demonstration projects by 2010 in a bid to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
The 24 investors include Japan's 10 regional power utilities and two oil refiners, Nippon Oil Corp. and Idemitsu Kosan Co., according to the statement. The venture is capitalized at 36 million yen ($341,653) and was formed last month. The International Energy Agency, the adviser to the U.S., the U.K. and 25 other rich nations, has also encouraged world leaders to develop the carbon-reducing technology. Last month, environment ministers of the eight rich nations pledged to cut emissions of the harmful gases by half by 2050, as a prelude to the leaders' summit next week in
Japan's northern island of Hokkaido. ``A target of 50 percent global reduction is about right,'' Elliot Morley, chairman of environmental lobby group
Globe International, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV today in Tokyo. ``Developed countries have to take a larger share of that to allow economic growth in developing countries.''

(Tokyo wants to have over 100 approved schools worldwide teaching Japanese language,
1/9/07 http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4235901222&forma t=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T4235901225&cisb=22_T4235901224&treeMax=tr ue&treeWidth=0&csi=144965&docNo=6) //HBG
TOKYO -
TO CATCH up with other world powers
, especially China,
Japan plans to have more than
100 approved schools worldwide teaching the Japanese language within the next few years.
There are now only 10 approved schools in 10 countries, all run by the Japan Foundation - a largely governmentfunded entity that promotes international exchange and the Japanese language abroad.
The 10 schools can take about 3,000 students in all. In comparison, foreigners around the world said to be studying Japanese number some 2.4 million, with 70 per cent of them in Asia. And the number is increasing each year. Japan's latest move, which was reported by the Tokyo Shimbun daily, is aimed at not only raising the quality of teaching but also increasing the number of foreigners studying Japanese. The move comes nearly three years after China embarked on a major project to establish a string of Confucius Institutes around the world to spread the teaching of the Chinese language. The
Confucius Institute, which aims to have 100 schools, has reportedly set up 78 so far, many of them in the form of courses launched jointly with local universities, as in the case of its four 'schools' in Japan.
For Japan, it may be a case of too little, too late. Former European colonial powers, such as Britain, France and Germany, have long considered the teaching of their respective languages to foreigners an important part of their soft power diplomacy and have set aside huge budgets for the purpose.
Germany's Goethe-
Institut has schools in some 70 countries, while France's Alliance Francaise is present in 130 countries. In terms of budget, the Japanese government's commitment to pursuing soft power diplomacy is still not convincing. The Japan Foundation has a budget of about 3.5 billion yen ($45S million) a year for its Japanese language programmes, compared to 30 billion yen for the Goethe-Institut, for example. The Japanese government has only now begun to recognise that soft power diplomacy could help it to spread its influence abroad, even though Japanese pop culture - movies, music, fashion, computer games and so on - already has a well-established foothold in many countries.
The Japanese Foreign Ministry
, which has jurisdiction over the Japan Foundation, signalled its intention to focus on soft power diplomacy last April
, in a speech by its minister Taro Aso, a diehard fan of Japanese comics. Speaking at a school in Tokyo specialising in teaching digital content, Mr Aso noted the dramatic increase in the number of foreigners studying Japanese in recent years. 'I got to thinking about what might account for that, and it occurred to me that the theme songs of anime shows on TV are in Japanese. Naturally, there would be an increase in children with an interest in the Japanese language as a result,' he said. 'This is where we need the Japan Foundation to step up to the plate.' Instead of setting up more of its own schools, however, the Japan Foundation will reportedly help foreign schools by training their teachers and developing curricula. Schools that satisfy the standards set by the foundation will be designated approved institutions for teaching Japanese.
The foundation's latest move also comes amid reports that the Japanese language is losing out in popularity to Chinese in some countries, such as Australia, as a second language in schools
.

China Daily, 05 (“China continues with steady foreign policy,” November 8, 2005, P: Access World News)
China has been successful in the past two to three weeks in the diplomatic stabilization of its ties, except with Japan, following Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's October 17 visit to the Yasukuni Shrine - his fifth visit since taking office - and the appointment two weeks later of a more conservative and hawkish cabinet than expected .Indeed, Beijing has actively sought diplomatic stabilization with its major partners and projected an active posture in its diplomacy, as befits a large nation. This was particularly and symbolically heralded by the successful return of Shenzhou VI to Earth on October 17, which, though called an "immense success and pride for all Chinese people," was also stressed by Premier Wen Jiabao as a "peaceful development and contribution of China to the world," whilst promising not to accelerate a military race in space.
China Daily, 07 (“Old history stymies new regional cooperation,” March 23, 2007, P: Access World News)
The modern history of East Asia can be seen as having two core components: first, from the 1894 China-Japan war to the end of World War II in 1945, the halfcentury is dominated by Japan's aggression with extreme violence, brutality and ferocity; second, the emergence and growth of other East Asian nations' modern nationalism, in which the experiences of opposing and resisting Japanese aggression and colonization more or less played the decisive role .As far as the first component is concerned, the basic problem today is that the majority of Japanese are inclined to forget, trivialize or even deny the country's history of aggression and brutality. This attitude has helped strengthen the mentality among at least the Chinese and Koreans to keep this chapter of history firmly in their hearts, repeatedly bringing it up.