May 11, 2007. Volume 03, Number 17

Click here for the audio file of this program.

Click here for a transcript of this program.

Welcome back to you long-time listeners, and a hearty South Carolina welcome to those of you who've found the program for the first time. I'm Robert Angel, creator and maintainer of the Japan Considered Project. And creator and host of this podcast.

Each week at this time we consider a few recent events that seem to have the greatest longer-term significance for Japan's domestic politics and conduct of international relations. Click on over to the Japan Considered website where you'll find all sorts of useful information. Including interviews with well-known contributors to American scholarship on political Japan. And an archive of sound files and transcripts of these podcasts. Which goes clear back to November of 2005.

This week we begin with an interview with Dr. Ed Lincoln, Director of the Japan-U.S. Center at New York University's Stern School of Business. Ed helps us sort through the significance of the recent spate of FTA agreements Japan and other countries have been negotiating of late.

Then we turn to Japan's domestic politics. I set the stage for more in-depth consideration of the changes in Japan's domestic political environment during the past fifteen or twenty years. We'll continue on this theme next week as well, and then consider the current state of the major competitors in Japan's Diet: the LDP and DPJ.

Don't miss the incredible bluegrass clip at the end. It'll warm your heart all week!