Volume 02, Number 25.

Click here for the audio file for this program.

Click here for a transcript of this program.

Thanks for tuning in again this week. Lots to cover. I had hoped to include comments on DPJ Leader Ichiro Ozawa's visit to Mainland China, and on the significance of the recent Shiga Prefecture gubernatorial election. But that will have to wait until next week. The North Korean missile crisis took all of our time for this program.

Useful material here this week, however. Including a long Skype phone interview with Dr. Michael Green, currently Japan Chair and Senior Adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., and an associate professor at Georgetown University. Prior to that he spent five years in the White House, serving from April 2001 to January 2004 as Director of Asian Affairs for both Japan and Korea. And from January 2004 to December 2005 as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and the NSC’s Senior Director for Asian Affairs. So he knows the subject well.

Also a brief e-mailed comment from Dr. Robert Orr, president of Boeing Japan, and one of the best informed observers of Japan's politics and international relations going. See his Japan Considered interview by clicking here.

So, give a listen, or a read, and visit the Japan Considered website at www.JapanConsidered.org for more background material on these and other subjects.