J Update

According to the top leader of Japan, the country is going to lead the world with a concept of “new capitalism.” In his annual policy speech to the National Diet on Monday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida required the people to join his challenge for economic and social change, to which he believed the world to be stepping forward. However, his challenge looks to be relatively leaning on traditional growth-oriented policies, lacking strong momentum for wealth distribution to every corner of Japanese society.      Kishida tried to sell his new capitalism as the key to economic revitalization. He listed various hazards the world was encountering; wider gap and poverty brought by dependence on market economy without fair distribution, shortage of mid- or long-term investment caused by putting priority on efficiency of competitive market, losing sustainability, arial gap between the urban and the rural, serious climate change with pressure on the nature, and crisis of healthy de...

  In the new year ministerial online meeting, Japan and United States resolved to work together to deal with various challenges by China. In the Joint Statement of the Security Consultative Committee, or “2+2,” the ministers of both government, US Secretaries of State and Defense and Japanese Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense, expressed their concerns on Beijing’s efforts, which were recognized as undermining the rule-based order in Indo-Pacific region and the world. On possible countermeasures, however, there still is a possibility of constitutional dispute in Japan over the principle of exclusively defensive security policy. The ministers referred to their concern about China’s activities in the East and the West China Sea. They reaffirmed to apply Article V of US-Japan Treaty of mutual Cooperation and Security to the Senkaku Islands, and strongly objected to China’s unlawful maritime claims, militarization and coercive activities in the South China Sea. They did not forge...

In the annual press conference after visiting Ise Jingu shrine on January 4 th , Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that he would revise current COVID-19 policy of accepting all the patients into hospitals and recommend them to stay home except in crucial condition. In the explosive infectious season last summer to fall, known as the fifth wave, a number of patients lost their lives at home without necessary treatment in the hospitals. While Kishida’s decision is supposed to be based on the notion that Omicron variant of the virus may not cause so severe consequences as other variants, his political power can decline as we saw in previous administrations, if high transmissibility of the virus brings social panic and economic downturn. According to the current governmental guideline, the COVID-19 positives have to go into hospitals and “the close contacts” have to stay in registered facilities like hotels. “Local governments with sudden expansion of infection can, by their own decis...