Japan’s voters endorsed more of the same in this weekend’s snap elections—but Abe’s enlarged mandate could spell big changes for the constitution.

Wei Te-Sheng’s films illuminate Asia’s under-appreciated success story.

Obama’s America and Abe’s Japan: two countries trying to get “back to normalcy”—but from opposite directions.

Japan is worried by America’s “strategic ambiguity” and uncertain about its own future.

Is Japan drifting to the right? The ongoing dispute between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea (known in China as the Diaoyu Islands) has triggered a debate about the trajectory of Japanese politics, and the return to power of the old guard Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has further enlivened it. […]

“All the balls are in our court now,” quipped one Japanese pundit. Rightly so. Now that U.S. President Barak Obama has been reelected, he says, all the alliance issues, including the stalled plan to relocate a U.S. Marine Corps base in Okinawa and delayed participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks, must be taken off […]

Japan’s August 30 election, which swept the ruling Liberal Democratic Party out of power, changes everything—perhaps.

What are the sources of the American image around the world? How has it changed in recent years? And what, if anything, can the U.S. government do to shape that image? The American Interest posed these questions to a distinguished group of international observers. Their answers reflect diverse histories and circumstances, and offer some useful […]