In April 2020, the Japanese government issued its first state of emergency over the COVID-19 pandemic. When the then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lifted it the next month, Abe attributed Japan’s success in keeping infections and deaths lower than in other major industrialized countries to what he called the “Japan model” of dealing with the crisis. The “Japan model,” however, can properly be declared a model only if its efforts to bring infections under control work in tandem with its efforts to stabilize the economy. In consideration of this, during the first half of 2020, what were the effects of Japan’s countermeasures? Which policies did not work? What remains uncertain? To review Japan’s preparedness and response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Asia Pacific Initiative (API), an independent global think tank, launched the “Independent Investigation Commission on the Japanese Government’s Response to COVID-19 (API/ICJC).” API originally published the Japanese-language version and submitted it to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on October 8, 2020. The commission conducted 102 interviews with 84 government officials and experts, including PM Abe; PM Suga, who was chief cabinet secretary prior to becoming prime minister; Katsunobu Kato, who was health minister prior to becoming chief cabinet secretary; as well as numerous other senior government officials who provided insight on the background of the events.

The Kwangtung Army’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 was a clear demonstration of the military’s independence and the Japanese foreign policy establishment’s impotence and irrelevance. For the next 14 years, diplomats and others who sought to avert war on the Asian mainland and with the Western powers saw their efforts sidelined and undercut. Such is not, however, to imply such toilers-in-the-dark did not exist. They did, and this ambitious history chronicles that difficult time focusing on the lives of Shigemitsu Mamoru and Togo Shigenori. A career diplomat who brokered a ceasefire between the Imperial Japanese Army and the Chinese Kuomintang Army in 1932 and then a settlement of the Russo-Japanese border at Changkufeng Hill in 1938, Shigemitsu was aghast at the 1940 tripartite Pact (among Japan, Germany, and Italy) and its implications for Japan’s relations with the UK and the US. Despite―or perhaps because of―his opposition to the militarists’ policies, he was appointed Foreign Minister midway through the Pacific War, and it was in that capacity that he was caught up in the charade of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Much of Shigemitsu’s work was complemented by Togo’s, including efforts to better relations with the Soviet Union. Marginalized though he was, Togo had the distinction of being Foreign Minister both at the outbreak and at the end of the Pacific War, albeit with a long hiatus in the middle, and it was this distinction that brought him to the International Tribunal’s attention. Belying the standard image of a hundred million hearts beating as one, Japan had many distinguished figures who remained true to their principles even as they served the state during the long war years. This is thus both a history of personal turmoil and an insightful window on the Japan of that era.

The Constitution of Japan is often described as a pacifist constitution for its Article 9 renouncing war and foreswearing war potential. Although this is usually attributed to starry-eyed idealists and steely-eyed realists in the occupation, both of which wanted to ensure Japan did not again challenge America’s position, there is also a cast to be made for crediting Shidehara Kijuro (1872-1951). Indeed, the case becomes even stronger if we think of the Constitution not so much as pacifist but more as internationalist―as evidenced in the Preamble’s trusting in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world and its belief that no nation is responsible to itself alone. For it was Shidehara who was the ultimate internationalist. Born to a middle-class family four years after the Meiji Restoration, he went to Tokyo Imperial University and from there to the civil service, ending up at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From there, history took him to a number of foreign capitals and historic international conferences on his way to the foreign ministership and after he became foreign minister. Serving as foreign minister under a succession of prime ministers, he developed and staunchly promoted what came to be called Shidehara diplomacy―a foreign policy stance of not intervening in China, respecting the Anglo-Japanese alliance, and adhering to what were put forward as universal values. Yet despite his steadfast championship, this internationalist stance was weakened by widespread discrimination against Japanese (e.g., in America’s immigration laws) and fatally wounded by the Kwangtung Army’s rogue aggression in China. He resigned as foreign minister in 1931, while retaining his seat in the House of Peers, and was tapped by the occupation to be Japan’s first postwar prime minister, putting him in a position to influence the Constitution’s drafting. Shidehara’s was a principled life engagingly recounted in this informative biography by one of Japan’s foremost diplomat-turned-historians.

Focusing on the significance of the Greater East Asia policies promoted by Prime Minister SHIGEMITSU Mamoru during World War II-including the issues of approving independence for Burma and the Philippines as well as the liberation of French Indochina-Prof. HATANO Sumio sheds light on the formation and evolution of Japan's diplomacy in Asia. He then goes on to verify the meaning of what was held to be Japan's war aim-liberation of the people of Asia-and its impact on policies.

The year was 2002- the 30th anniversary of the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations but also a time when relations grew sharply frostier over the prime minister's visit to Yasukuni Shrine. Into this fray dropped Ma Licheng's “New Thinking on Relations with Japan＂, triggering a storm of debate in both China and Japan. Even now, more than a decade after the essay's publication, the New Thinking continues to have a major influence on policy discussions. While Sino-Japanese relations hit new turbulence over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in 2012,the author remains optimistic that the bilateral issues can be resolved rationally and peacefully. Referencing the durability of the postwar peace between France an Germany, he argues that - for their own and the international community's sake, China and Japan can and must find ways to overcome their antagonisms and live in peace as complementary neighbors.

Sino-Japanese relations were seriously rattled in September 2010 when a Chinese fishing boat rammed a Japanese Coast Guard patrol ship in Japanese waters off the Senkaku Islands. This was compounded in April 2012 when Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro announced that he planned to buy the islands and added, “if this means war with China, so be it.” Alarmed at the prospect of Ishihara owning the islands, Democratic Party of Japan prime minister Noda Yoshihiko moved to see if there was some way the government could buy them instead, even knowing this would be seen as nationalization. Top officials in foreign policy, defense, and other areas met at Kantei (officially the Prime Minister’s Official Residence, but actually his offices) to find an out that would pre-empt Ishihara without provoking China (which also claimed the islands). This book tells the gripping story of what happened and why.