Japan
On the trail of the Pope in Japan
Pope Francis visited Japan between 23 and 26 November. It was a busy time that followed directly on from the Pope’s equally busy visit to Thailand. He toured Nagasaki, Hiroshima,…
Connecting the dots on the Blue Dot Network
The US, Australia, and Japan have joined together to establish a trilateral “Blue Dot Network” to help develop infrastructure “in the Indo-Pacific and around the world”. The plan…
How Africa is breaking China’s neo-colonial shackles
If there’s any indication of how Africa is moving up on everyone’s agenda, look no further than the first edition of the Russia-Africa Summit, which saw 43 African heads of…
Soft power, hard weather: Japanese resilience
Typhoon Hagibis was the most powerful typhoon to hit Japan in decades. The storm’s ferocity was extraordinary, and the level of destruction immense. At least 78 people have been…
Finally, some plain talk on the Quad
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a foreign policy speech to the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. Australia’s foreign policy analysts can be very grateful for these candid…
Dispatches from the front (row)
Only last week The Interpreter featured an article about the pitfalls of importing a major international sporting event into a country that didn’t have enough domestic interest or…
The underappreciated value of Japanese aid in the Pacific
In the varied debates about influence in the Pacific, rarely does Japan’s position in the region feature prominently. On the off chance that Japan’s presence in the Pacific is…
Abe’s new cabinet includes a rising star and putative Prime Minister
Last week, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his cabinet after his Liberal Democratic Party’s healthy electoral success in the July upper house election. Abe said he…
Korea-Japan tensions, as seen in the suburbs of Brisbane
On the weekend of 24–25 August, the Brisbane City Council painted over a freshly-completed mural of a Korean statue on a traffic signal box. The mural had been approved…
China’s Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands ploy to undercut the US-Japan alliance
Between April and June this year, Chinese Coast Guard ships entered the contiguous zone around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea for a record 64…