Yoichi Funabashi

The DPJ's rise to power is a historic opportunity for Japan to launch major reforms. But can the party overcome the Japanese bureaucracy and the country's internal tensions?

The Bush legacy in Asia is positive and the next admistration can continue this trend by continuing multilateral engagement with Japan and China.

Japan faces its biggest foreign policy challenges since World War II. Its leaders must snap out of their deep funk to confront a rising China, a nuclear South Asia, a United States increasingly prone to Japan-bashing, and a world in economic free fall. Instead of sulking over the growing closeness of U.S.-China ties, Tokyo should take the initiative and propose trilateral dialogues with Beijing and Washington on a range of issues, especially Asian security, nuclear disarmament, and macroeconomic policy. Japan's pessimism threatens the world's prosperity. If Tokyo stays on the sidelines, the world will pass it by.

"Ironically, as Japan's international power has advanced, the underpinnings of its political and economic systems have been called into question". An examination of Japan's constitutional and political fitness to assume a first-rank diplomatic identity: "Japan's own political constraints affect its pursuit of a dynamic foreign policy... Japan must thus examine its own political and decision-making structures... The structural weaknesses of its leadership -- highly personalized political allegiances among factions and parties, and the predominance of pork-barrel politics -- characterize Japanese political culture and limit the projection of its foreign policy".