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1021. Japanese Entrepreneurship: Can the Silicon Valley Model Be Applied to Japan?

Author:
Katsuhiro Nakagawa
Publication Date:
12-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Since 1992, the Japanese economy has been utterly stagnant, with signs of weak performance at every turn. Since 1997, Japan's economy has experienced negative growth, a situation unprecedented in the postwar era. Most large Japanese corporations have engaged in extensive restructuring during this period, which has in turn contributed to 4.8 percent unemployment—higher than rates in the United States. Further, in 1998, the closure rate of small companies (3.8 percent) exceeded the start-up rate of new business ventures (3.7 percent).
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Asia

1022. Containment by Stealth: Chinese Views of and Policies toward America's Alliances with Japan and Korea after the Cold War

Author:
Yu Bin
Publication Date:
09-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
At the height of the Cold War, the dominant Western theories of alliance building in interstate relations argued that alliances tend to be motivated more by an external need to confront a clearly defined common adversary than by the domestic attributes of alliance partners. The newly reinvigorated U.S.-Japan alliance, however, together with the newly expanded NATO, seems to depart from the conventional pattern by emphasizing shared democratic values and by maintaining a high degree of ambiguity regarding the goals and targets of the alliance. Although these new features of American-led military alliances provide an anchor in an other- wise highly fluid situation in the post–Cold War world, many Chinese foreign-and defense-policy analysts believe that U.S. alliances with Asian countries, particularly with Japan, pose a serious, long-term challenge, if not a threat, to China's national security, national unification, and modernization. The ambiguity of the revised U.S.-Japan security alliance means that it is at best searching for targets and at worst aiming at China.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, Asia, and Korea

1023. Crisis and Aftermath: The Prospects for Institutional Change in Japan

Author:
Rafiq Dossani
Publication Date:
08-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Impelled in large part by the nearly decade-long stagnation of the Japanese economy, institutions in Japan are undergoing fundamental changes. When Professors Masahiko Aoki, of the Stanford University Department of Economics, and Henry Rowen, director of the Asia/Pacific Research Center, were talking about these changes, they realized that an international conference on the subject would be useful and informative. With funding from the Asia/ Pacific Research Center and the Institute for International Studies, a distinguished group of speakers, commentators, and participants was brought together for a one-day conference to look at institutional changes in three distinct sectors of Japanese society: the political system, the bureaucracy, and corporations.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Asia

1024. China and the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korea Alliances in a Changing Northeast Asia

Author:
Chu Shulong
Publication Date:
06-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The American security alliances with Japan and South Korea have been a major concern of China's foreign and defense policies. China's position toward the alliances is determined by its foreign policy and security theories, doctrines, and principles; by its approach to a regional security mechanism in the Asia-Pacific region; by its bilateral relations with countries in Northeast Asia; and by incidental issues such as territorial disputes in Asia in which it is involved.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Asia, and Korea

1025. Japan-ROK Security Relations: An American Perspective

Author:
Michael J. Green
Publication Date:
03-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This monograph explores contemporary Japan-ROK security relations from the perspective of U.S. strategic interests in Asia. Japan and the Republic of Korea have been aligned but not allied since the beginning of the Cold War, and the United States has long been frustrated in its desire to strengthen the Japan-ROK leg of its network of bilateral alliances in Asia. The United States abandoned the goal of encouraging a formal U.S.-Japan-ROK alliance early on in the Cold War, and in the current strategic environment a trilateral alliance would probably be counterproductive. At the same time, however, the fluidity of East Asian security relations today has heightened the dangers of leaving the Japan-ROK security relationship in an ambiguous state. Closer Japan-ROK security cooperation will enhance U.S. efforts to maintain forward presence, manage diplomacy and potential crises on the Korean Peninsula, and integrate China as a cooperative partner in the region. In contrast, distant Japan-ROK relations would complicate all of these U.S. objectives. Hostile Japan-ROK relations, particularly in the context of Korean reunification, would have a spillover effect on Sino-U.S. relations and could return the region to the great-power rivalry of the last century.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Asia, and Korea

1026. Asian Alliances and American Politics

Author:
Michael H. Armacost
Publication Date:
02-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The domestic politics of our Asian alliances is like the story of the dog that didn't bark. Though our defense ties with Japan and Korea were forged in the Cold War, nearly ten years after the Berlin Wall came down, few voices are being raised to amend, let alone terminate, either the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security with Japan or the U.S.-Korea Mutual Defense Treaty. Although large numbers of U.S. troops remain in both countries, congressional criticisms of allied “free riding” are rarely heard. Our alliances with Japan and Korea provoke little discernible opposition from the Congress, the press, or the general public. Polling data suggests that public support for the alliances and for forward deployments in both countries remains high. And no prominent leaders of the Congress are threatening to link security concerns to outstanding economic issues with the Japanese or South Koreans—a tactic frequently utilized a decade ago.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, Asia, and Korea

1027. Climate Change and the Transformation of World Energy Supply

Author:
Steve Fetter
Publication Date:
05-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University
Abstract:
In December 1997, world attention turned to Kyoto, Japan, where parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) negotiated a protocol to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions of the industrialized countries by 5 percent below 1990 levels over the next ten to fifteen years. The agreement has been attacked from both sides. Environmental groups assert that much deeper reductions are urgently needed. Opponents claim that the proposed reductions are either unnecessary or premature, would curtail economic growth, or would be unfair or ineffective without similar commitments by developing countries.
Topic:
Economics, Energy Policy, Environment, International Cooperation, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Japan

1028. Hollywood and Europe: A Case of Trade in Cultural Industries, the 1993 GATT Dispute

Author:
Luc Veron
Publication Date:
03-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
The heated dispute that erupted at the end of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) negotiations between the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) on audio-visual services is fairly representative of the cultural argument in trade. Culture is often proclaimed to oppose full liberalisation of international exchanges of goods and services. In 1989, after the liberalisation of US film import in Korea, angry Koreans directors in some Seoul theatres showing US movies released poisonous snakes Japan traditionally opposed rice imports on the basis that it would endanger Japanese culture. The United States claimed that the "potato-potato-potato rhythm at idle and the staccato beat at cruising speeds" of a Harley-Davidson was part of the American culture with the obvious aim to ridicule any notion of culture, or more precisely of national culture. German director Wim Wenders replied to the latter by provocatively reminding that the essence of US national culture being trade the Americans have no sense of any possible contradiction between trade and culture. When, to justify the remarkable work of the Australian Film Commission, experts came up with a tentative definition of Australian culture, the simple evocation of Crocodile Dundee generated outrage, especially among the feminists. It is uneasy to find an acceptable and workable definition of national culture to analyse its impact on trade.
Topic:
Globalization, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, Europe, Germany, Australia, and Korea

1029. Japan's Preference toward Bilateral Dispute Settlement Mechanisms with the United States

Author:
Young Jong Choi
Publication Date:
03-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Studies Association
Abstract:
Japan's preference toward regional institutions has received a great attention in recent years in relation to the development of regional institutions in Asia (exclusively East Asia) and the Pacific (the broader Asia-Pacific region). Japan's policy toward Asia and the Pacific has often been characterized by "hegemonic defection" and Japan as a "reactive state". The former indicates the absence of Japan's leadership in regional institution building (Mack and Ravenhill 1995: 8). The latter portrays Japan as incapable of pursuing pro-active policies in regional affairs because of its consensus-oriented culture, historical legacy of colonialism, domestic political gridlock and most of all extreme dependence upon the U.S. security umbrella (Calder 1988; Hellmann 1988; Pyle 1992; Curtis 1993).
Topic:
Diplomacy
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, East Asia, and Asia

1030. The Economic Crisis of South Korea and Its Political Impact

Author:
Hang Yul Rhee
Publication Date:
09-1998
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
The spectacular performance, until recently, of East Asia's emerging economies, popularly known as the Asian tigers, has fueled wild speculation in the West about the so-called "Asian Century." "Never before in world history," noted the Economist in March 1997, "has any region sustained such rapid growth for so long." The GDP per capita of Taiwan ($13,200) and South Korea ($11,900) were already impressive enough in 1997 to place them at the gate of the advanced industrialized nations of the world. Japan, of course, has long been an acknowledged super-economy, often said to have led the flock of economic "flying geese" before they turned into what Chung-In Moon ten years ago called the "swarming sparrows" in Asia. Then suddenly last summer, seemingly as if from the blue, came the financial crisis in Pacific Asia. In reality, however, it followed what had been a decade-long period of sclerosis in the Japanese economy.
Political Geography:
Japan, East Asia, Asia, and South Korea