America’s New Best Friend: The UK vs Japan

Prime Minister Abe of Japan returned to Tokyo on Sunday 12 February having sealed his country’s position as a principal ally of the United States of America, in the process potentially even ousting the United Kingdom from its long-treasured ‘Special Relationship’. Leaving aside, first of all, the question of whether the UK or Japan should wish to deepen relations with the USA, given the nature of the new administration, both Theresa May and Shinzo Abe – in their rush to be the first leaders to cross the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to meet with and congratulate President Trump for his ‘stunning election victory’ – have been keen to cement a special role for themselves and their country in the foreign policy of the world’s only superpower

Why Japan can't (or won't) stop using fossil fuels any time soon

The G7 leaders’ pledge to eliminate the use of fossil fuels as an energy source by century’s end could be the most significant outcome of the most recent meeting. It also reinforces German host Angela Merkel’s claim to be the “climate chancellor”. As is customary with such pledges, however, the announcement was short on specifics and it’s really not clear how reductions in fossil fuel usage can be achieved. After all, disasters at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 have made key G7 members considerably less enthusiastic about nuclear power, one obvious alternative

Fukushima - The Triple Disaster and Its Triple Lessons: What can be learned about regulation, planning, and communication in an unfolding emergency?

On 11 March, 2011 a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the North-eastern coast of the Japanese main island of Honshu. Although reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant shut down as expected, the 15m tsunami which followed caused a loss of power which disrupted the cooling systems. Over the next few days, four of the six reactors experienced catastrophic events, requiring the evacuation of plant personnel and residents of nearby villages in a 20km radius. Nuclear contamination has continued to hinder clean-up and reconstruction efforts in Fukushima prefecture, one of the three worst hit by the tsunami, and it is estimated that the plant itself could take up to 40 years to decommission. Moreover, subsequent investigations have revealed serious systemic issues in the regulation of nuclear power and in the mechanisms for provision of scientific advice to the public, policymakers, and to disaster response personnel, which has contributed to a considerable loss of public trust in both scientists and the Japanese government. Handling of the ‘triple disaster’, therefore, raises important questions for understanding the scale and extent of nuclear contamination after accidental release, but also about the need for realistic emergency planning and for consistency, accuracy and trust in the dissemination of useful information, not only during an unfolding disaster and immediate recovery period, but often for years, even decades, to come

Achieving the 21st Century ‘Depopulation Dividend’: Japan as the World’s Research Laboratory for a More Sustainable Future

Humanity is approaching an historic transformation. Towards the end of the 21st century the world’s population will very possibly begin to decline in number, and East Asia is in the vanguard. This is being achieved in nearly all countries not via coercion, but voluntarily, as female emancipation and education, urbanisation, and economic development spread across the world, lifestyles and life choices change, and medical knowledge and technologies advance

From outside-in to inside-out: The emergence of capitalist modernity in contemporary Japan

Japan's emergence into the mainstream of world history has been an extended transition between the ascriptive pre-modern Tokugawa settlement and a new global hybrid modernity that is now in the process of formation around the world. This period can be divided into two phases, with the Second World War as their divide

Does a Shrinking Population Help to Solve Climate Change?

We often hear it said that there are too many people on Earth, that ‘overpopulation’ is an existential threat, and that fewer people might consume proportionately less, resulting in some easy environmental gains such as less carbon output and fewer species extinctions. It’s a seductive logic, but is it true