Ellis Krauss on Possibility of Shinzo Abe Winning Premiership
Who’ll Get Thrown Off the Island
10/15/2012
Ethan Epstein,
The Weekly Standard
Relations between China and Japan, never particularly placid, have reached bona fide crisis proportions over the past several months—and could get worse.
The trouble began earlier this year, when Tokyo’s governor announced his intention to purchase the uninhabited and fiercely disputed Senkaku Islands (which the Chinese call the Diaoyu) from their private owner. This swiftly became Japanese national policy. And because in East Asia an uninhabited island is never just an uninhabited island, China had a national temper tantrum.
Riots broke out in dozens of Chinese cities, with tacit government approval. Scores of Japanese-owned businesses, factories, and cars were torched. A Japanese consulate was attacked. Protesters marched with banners calling for genocide, and businesses posted signs declaring, “No Japanese Allowed!” An editorial in the People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist party’s newspaper of record, lauded the rioters’ “patriotism.”
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Ellis Krauss is a leading expert on Japanese politics, U.S.-Japan relations, and Japan's political economy. In 2010 Cornell University Press will publish his latest book, co-authored with Robert Pekkanen of the University of Washington, The Rise and Fall of Japan's LDP: Political Party Organizations as Institutions.
He can provide commentary on domestic politics in Japan, the Japanese mass media, U.S.-Japan relations and Japan's foreign policy and role in Asia.
