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June 30, 2026
 

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Stephen R. Nagy

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Stephen R. Nagy
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi holds talks with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in Nara on Jan. 13. Once a central diplomatic actor, Japan is increasingly absent as global power rivalries intensify.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 30, 2026
The cost of silence: Japan’s diminishing relevance
This diplomatic fade is more than a temporary slump. Japan is experiencing a crisis of international relevance at precisely the moment when the rules-based order is fracturing.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 22, 2026
‘Carney Doctrine’ seeks refuge in Beijing’s embrace
Ottawa is fixated on immediate Chinese accommodation rather than engaging in the harder work of building alternative coalitions.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s China visit before securing Japan and South Korea’s support weakens Canada’s leverage in dealings with Beijing.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 14, 2026
Canada undermines its own China engagement
Carney’s decision reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how middle powers must engage with Beijing in an era of intensifying great power competition.
Rusting anti-invasion barricades on Taiwan’s Lieyu Island, Kinmen County, sit across from the city of Xiamen on China’s southeastern coast, one of the closest points between the two sides, in September 2015.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 6, 2026
Trump’s Venezuela coup, Taiwan and lessons for China
Even if unification is successful, “China would have gained Taiwan but sacrificed its larger ambition of becoming a global superpower.”
Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force amphibious troops take part in a military drill observed by U.S. Marines on the uninhabited island of Irisuna near Okinawa in November 2023. Such exercises highlight Japan’s growing military focus, even as public understanding lags in what can be called the country’s “security autism.” 
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 30, 2025
Memo to liberal democracies: Beware ‘security autism’
Japan’s variant is different but equally dangerous, a society so fragmented in its security perceptions that it cannot form coherent responses to existential threats.
Although the Year of the Wood Snake promised subtlety and adaptation, the U.S., China and Japan delivered strategic blundering, authoritarian overreach and geopolitical instability instead.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 26, 2025
Good riddance to the year of the serpent that roared
As 2025 comes to a close, the Indo-Pacific’s three great powers have delivered the exact opposite: strategic blundering, diplomatic bombast and economic turbulence.
U.S. President Donald Trump reviews an honor guard with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi during his October visit to Tokyo. Japan must create strategic conditions in which the U.S. cannot abandon the Indo-Pacific without abandoning its own core interests.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 18, 2025
Tokyo’s Musashi moment: Become America’s indispensable ally
How can Japan can make itself indispensable to a U.S. focused on its own hemisphere while facing a China that possesses sufficient economic mass to dominate the Indo-Pacific.
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Busan, South Korea, on Oct 30.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 11, 2025
Survival in Trump, Xi and Putin’s ‘great power’ world
Japan and other middle powers must help shape the new order — or risk becoming subject to it.
After Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi warned that a Taiwan conflict could pose an existential threat to the nation, China responded with coordinated economic, cultural and information campaigns of coercion — pressure that Japan should not yield to.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 4, 2025
Why Takaichi must stand up to Beijing’s bullying
This wasn’t spontaneous outrage; it was calculated coercion — a playbook Beijing has refined over years of punishing those who dare speak uncomfortable truths.
The Museum of the Communist Party of China in Beijing. Confronting China’s manipulation of the truth will require patience and strategy.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 26, 2025
The Chinese Communist Party’s ‘Inverted World’
The inverted world thrives on intimidation, isolation and information control. It collapses when confronted with facts, genuine dialogue and the stubborn reality of truth.
China holds a military parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, in Beijing on Sept. 3. 
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 18, 2025
Beware of China’s strategic distortion of reality
The ancient strategy resurfaced after Prime Minister Takaichi said Japan might need to respond militarily if China forced Taiwan’s unification.
China's "wolf warrior" diplomacy is like a relentless chess match, putting democracies like Japan on the defensive, forcing them to counter Beijing's aggressive moves and deceptive feints while executing a strong, coordinated defense.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 13, 2025
How Takaichi should navigate Beijing’s diplomatic threats
These incidents reveal a consistent pattern in Beijing’s diplomatic arsenal, the weaponization of progressive language, the inversion of victim and aggressor narratives.
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 30. Tokyo's strategic positioning between Beijing and Washington is central to countering China’s economic and geopolitical influence.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 5, 2025
What the U.S.-China summit means for Japan
China’s willingness to weaponize commercial dependencies rather than projecting strength exposed the fragility of its economic statecraft.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his ministers sit across from U.S. leaders at the Gimhae Air Base in Busan, South Korea, on Thursday.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 30, 2025
China is winning the global ‘narrative war’
The future of the international order may depend less on missiles and trade deals than on who controls the story of what that order means and whom it serves.
Much of the current media coverage is skewing the portrayal of Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, using inflammatory labels that distort public understanding and amplify foreign disinformation.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 24, 2025
When media distortion threatens democratic stability
Systematic bias — employing loaded terminology and decontextualized narratives — undermines informed democratic discourse
Liberal Democratic Party President Sanae Takaichi and other lawmakers prepare to cast their votes for Japan's new prime minister in the Lower House of parliament on Tuesday.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 21, 2025
Takaichi’s choice: revolution, reform or regression
Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi stands at a crossroads. Her choices will define not only her legacy but the nation’s trajectory.
Yuichiro Tamaki, leader of the Democratic Party for the People, holds a news conference at the Diet on Oct. 7. The collapse of the LDP-Komeito coalition highlights the risks of an opposition more focused on obstruction than solutions. 
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 14, 2025
Japan’s opposition coalition is a recipe for paralysis, not progress
The collapse of the LDP-Komeito coalition highlights the risks of an opposition more focused on obstruction than solutions.
Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister if appointed, will have her work cut out for her and face key diplomatic challenges with the U.S., China and South Korea, as well as persistent economic and demographic issues.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 8, 2025
Will Takaichi become the prime minister Japan needs?
An admirer of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Takaichi is an adherent to Shinzo Abe’s pragmatic yet conservative vision.
Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya meets with his counterparts from India, Australia and the United States during talks of “the Quad” grouping in Washington in July. The meeting reflected Japan’s strategy of building flexible minilateral partnerships to navigate growing tensions with China and shifting U.S. priorities.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 23, 2025
Japan’s foreign policy faces uncharted waters
Japan’s challenge lies in maintaining strategic alignment while accommodating American transactionalism.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets with Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi, Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong at the State Department in January.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 17, 2025
Japan and India must anchor America in the Indo-Pacific
Neither Japan or India possess the military strength to counter China independently.
Uruguay federation reportedly cancels charter flight after World Cup exit
Uruguay's Jose Maria Gimenez reacts after the team's loss against Spain at the 2026 FIFA World Cup on Friday.
Inside Japan’s rigid adoption system, a British family finds a way
James Benstead, his wife, Jesse, and their three children. Their adopted son is in the rear stroller.
India’s gig workers pay the price for exposure to New Delhi’s hazardous air
Rohit Kushwaha waits for a customer as he delivers his last parcel of the day, in New Delhi in January. His work as a delivery driver has helped pay the family’s bills, but has had a significant impact on his health.
Chinese and Russian bombers and fighter jets stage joint patrol near Japan
A Chinese Air Force H-6 bomber is seen during a joint patrol with Russian military aircraft on Saturday.
U.S. missile moves in Japan send China clear message: A new era has arrived
Soldiers conduct the first Typhon midrange capability live-fire exercise outside of the continental United States, firing an SM-6 missile in July last year in Australia's Northern Territory during Exercise Talisman Sabre.
Japan’s fertility system offers few safe paths for same-sex couples
A Tokyo Pride parade participant holds a sign that says "we want to be a married couple, not a couple."
Inside Japan’s rigid adoption system, a British family finds a way
James Benstead, his wife, Jesse, and their three children. Their adopted son is in the rear stroller.
A French ship with close ties to Japan combines arts and sciences on the high seas
Romain Troublé, the executive director of Tara Ocean Foundation, speaks to visitors aboard the Tara during a rare port call in Tokyo in April.
In Kyushu’s far south, Senti.U sparks a culinary destination
Chef Yasuhiko Uchida was born in Saga Prefecture but has made his home in Kanoya, Kagoshima Prefecture, since 2012.
‘The colors speak for themselves’: How Japan’s chroma bible went global
“A Dictionary of Color Combinations” is meant to function as a quick-reference guide for artists, designers and anyone with a passing interest in aesthetics as a quantifiable pursuit.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
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What Yokoze can teach Japan about rural revival
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