Vitality Of Japan

In this volume the reader will find interesting forms of analysis on Japan just as it was embarking on potentially the most important changes in its political system since 1955, when the Liberal Democratic Party was created through a merger of Japan's two dominant conservative parties of that era. With the old Cold War verities no longer in place, new challenges arose for the Japanese government and Japanese corporations. The challenges of the 1990s include a protracted domestic economic downturn, and the need to begin redefining Japan's international profile in the face of an increasingly powerful China, an ever more desperate North Korea, and shifts in the shared responsibility built into the US-Japan security treaty.

In this volume the reader will find interesting forms of analysis on Japan just as it was embarking on potentially the most important changes in its political system since 1955, when the Liberal Democratic Party was created through a merger of Japan's two dominant conservative parties of that era. With the old Cold War verities no longer in place, new challenges arose for the Japanese government and Japanese corporations. The challenges of the 1990s include a protracted domestic economic downturn, and the need to begin redefining Japan's international profile in the face of an increasingly powerful China, an ever more desperate North Korea, and shifts in the shared responsibility built into the US-Japan security treaty.

Armand Cleese is Director of the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies. He was a special Counsellor to the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg Jacques Santer. He was a visiting Professor at Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Max-Planck Institut, Starnberg, at the University of Saarbrucken, as well as Lecturer at the University of Trier. He has published and edited various books on European and international affairs. He is President of the Luxembourg-Harvard Association, and has organised various academic conferences in cooperation with Harvard University. He is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London.