Marie Söderberg

In this article, Patrik Ström, Marie Söderberg, and Åsa Malmström Rognes discuss the importance of Strategic Partnership Agreements (SPA). With COVID-19 and tensions between China and the USA, SPAs can play an important role to foster creativity and innovation. Focusing on the SPA between the EU and Japan, the authors highlight three critical innovation areas – connectivity, health, and multilateral collaboration. By using COVID-19 as a catalyst, strengthening collaboration between countries, but also between state and private organizations can help to drive innovation and economic prosperity.

In the famous article "Datsu-A," written in 1885 by Fukuzawa Yukichi, he argued that Japan should shift its focus from Asia to the West. At that time, it might have been a winning concept, but eventually it led Japan into war and created memories that still haunt the country and its development today. Japan’s relations with its Asian neighbors have been complex, not least due to World War II. Since the 1960s, development cooperation has been a powerful tool for Japan in dealing with its neighbors. Foreign direct investment and trade are other important pillars. Japan should build solid and constructive relationships with various international actors. Asia is in the center and Japan has moved a long way from "Datsu-A." Development cooperation is a political tool that carries significance as an "investment for the future" and where Japan has had significant experience during the last 60 years-a fact that it should not underestimate, but use wisely to build in both the present and the future, its Asian connections.

International observers of Japan’s struggles and achievements in the post-Bubble era alternatively marvel at the country’s resilience and wonder about its ability to find its feet in an era of unrelenting socio-economic change and technological transformation. In December 2016, an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars gathered in Narita, Japan, to address a simple question: does the twenty-first century need a reimagining and reconfiguration of the country on the scale and with the intensity of the late nineteenth-century Meiji Restoration. In the introduction to this collection of essays, this chapter reflects on the nature of contemporary challenges facing Japan, contemplates the earlier lessons from Meiji and argues that there will be no clear or simple path forward for the country, due both to the strengths and weaknesses of Japan and the complexities and diverse changes of the contemporary world. © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Ken Coates, Kimie Hara, Carin Holroyd and Marie Söderberg; individual chapters, the contributors.