Advanced search

Legacies of Abe Shinzo

How will the assassinated Abe Shinzo be remembered? Portrait of a ruling-class politician who re-enforced the crumbling citadel of Japan’s post-war order—and the murky connections with the far-right 'new religion' that led to his death.

East and West

The chaotic Anglo-American reactions to COVID–19 contrasted with the seemingly more successful East Asian regimes, in all their variation.

Privilege Preserved

The first major economy to pass through the sequence of financial implosion and electoral upset, Japan is also ahead of the West in stabilizing its political order. But is the stasis of the elite mirrored in the society it sits atop? Renewed deflation and the dwindling of the seishain as backdrop to Abe’s third term.

On Shinzo Abe’s Japan

Headline-grabbing economic and monetary reforms read as smokescreens for a hardening of Japanese foreign policy, with Washington’s partial support. Incompatible mythologies of legitimation in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing, presaging insoluble tensions for the region.

Bubblenomics

R Taggart Murphy on Graham Turner, The Credit Crunch. Origins of the financial crisis in the global squeeze on labour, and the example of Japan’s lost decade.

East Asia’s Dollars

Discussions of the sustainability of the US current-account deficit—trending upward from $800bn—rarely plumb the long-term motives of its creditors. Taggart Murphy analyses the historical roots of Tokyo’s post-1868 geofinancial support for the ruling superpower, London or Washington, and the implications of China’s rise for Japanese strategy.

Japan’s Economic Crisis

The 20th century’s most dynamic economy has fallen into prolonged paralysis. What are the causes of Japanese stagnation, and why have the country’s rulers reacted so phlegmatically to it? Taggart Murphy highlights the potentially explosive interdependency between Japanese recession and the American bull market.