Archives Japan - Page 11 of 13 - New Eastern Outlook

On April 9 and 23 of this year, that is, in two rounds, elections were held in Japan, which in the general electoral process of the country can be called “intermediate-local”. While the “main” element of it is the general parliamentary elections. These latter may be held at a certain interval or extraordinary. Because the Prime Minister of the country has the right to dissolve the lower house of parliament ahead of time and set a date for the election of a new parliament. As a matter of fact, the question of whether acting Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will exercise this right was perhaps the main intrigue of the just held elections. Usually, the head of the Japanese Cabinet resorts to such an opportunity…

This year Japan is hosting the annual meetings of the G7 group, which includes four leading Western European nations (Germany, the UK, France and Italy) plus the USA, Canada and Japan. This group, (sometimes incorrectly referred to as an “organization”) has been in place since the mid-1970s, and provides a forum in which the seven main nations of the so-called “collective West” (itself an increasingly meaningless term) attempt to develop a unified strategy in the face of current international challenges. For the USA, as the leader of the “collective West”…

Yoshimasa Hayashi, the foreign minister of Japan, paid a visit to China on April 1-2 of this year, and everything that went along with it ended up being rather indicative of the complex and contentious processes going on throughout the Indo-Pacific area as a whole, since during this visit, the complicated relationship between two of the many important participants…