APARC_Japan_Program_Publications

Two events - the U.S. airstrike on an airbase in Syria following the regime's chemical weapons attack and the leaked reports about tensions between White House staff - shifted the agenda of the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and sidelined, at least for now, talk of a trade war between China and the United States.

In recent years, "innovation" has become increasingly important for Japan. Developing innovative businesses that are separate from the traditional Japanese business sphere is becoming increasingly crucial for sustained economic growth. In this report, Asakura focuses on some emerging companies that have the potential to drive innovation, and provide some reflections on the Japanese entrepreneurial environment.

Scholars at Stanford's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies assess the strategic situation in East Asia to be unsettled, unstable, and drifting in ways unfavorable for American interests. These developments are worrisome to countries in the region, most of which want the United States to reduce uncertainty about American intentions by taking early and effective steps to clarify and solidify U.S. engagement. In the absence of such steps, they will seek to reduce uncertainty and protect their own interests in ways that reduce U.S.

In an op-ed for The Diplomat, Stanford assistant professor Phillip Y. Lipscy says the Trump presidency offers Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe an opportunity to realize his vision of a more prominent Japan, yet the depth of the bilateral relationship and ability to deliver hinge on how much the two leaders can compromise on economic and security interests.

If you want to understand the trade and industrial policy that President Donald Trump is now going to pursue, simply jump into a DeLorean time machine with Marty McFly and go back to 1985. As the title of that iconic film, released that year, proclaimed – it is Back to the Future, Sneider writes.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has apparently decided to hold an urgent meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in New York, on his way to the Asia Pacific Economic summit in Peru. It is far from clear what the Prime Minister hopes to accomplish, or whether such a meeting will even be a good idea, so early in the transition process. But one thing is surely true – the Prime Minister needs to go into that meeting with a clear understanding of what has happened in the U.S. and what it could mean for U.S.-Japan relations, Sneider writes.

The inaugural U.S.-Japan security workshop, held in Tokyo, Japan, on May 19, 2016, convened senior Japanese and American policymakers, scholars and regional experts to discuss Japan's security policy and alliance between Japan and the United States, hosted by Stanford's U.S.-Asia Security Initiative at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

The digital transition of the world economy is now entering a phase of broad and deep societal impact. While there is one overall transition, there are many different sectoral transformations, from health and legal services to tax reports and taxi rides, as well as a rising number of transversal trends and policy issues, from widespread precarious employment and privacy concerns to market monopoly and cybercrime. This Research Handbook offers a rich and interdisciplinary synthesis of some of the recent research on the digital transformations currently under way.

It is tempting to characterize the recent round of North Korea missile and nuclear tests as only the latest example of the provocative behavior of its brash young leader, Kim Jong Un. A simultaneous launch of three medium-range missiles, mounted on mobile launchers, was defiantly timed to coincide with China’s hosting of the G20 summit in Hangzhou. And the latest nuclear test, the fifth carried out by North Korea, seemed designed to assert its status as a nuclear weapons power ahead of the U.S. presidential vote, Sneider writes.

アルゴリズム革命とは、
情報処理能力の飛躍的向上により、
あらゆる人間活動が計測され
機械によって代替される流れのこと。
Fintech
IoT
Cloud
Computing
AIなど、
シリコンバレーの最先端の動きと
これから日本で起こることを、
スタンフォード大学の研究員がわかりやすく解説。

――目次――
【CHAPTER 1】アルゴリズム革命とAIのインパクト
●シリコンバレーは世界の姿を一変させる
●アルゴリズムで人間の活動を置き換える
●人工知能は人の仕事を奪うのか
●スケールしないビジネスは生き残れない
●次に破壊されるのはどの業界か
★シリコンバレーの強さの秘密1――循環する人材

【CHAPTER 2】クラウド・コンピューティングの本質とは
●クラウドで人類の情報処理能力が豊富なリソースへ
●クラウドは巨大な設備投資で実現
●インフラとしてのクラウドの可能性
●クラウドは安全なのか
●豊富な情報処理能力はコモディティ化の波を作る
●大企業がクラウドを使いこなす日

This paper asks the following: what does Japan's startup ecosystem look like now, how did it develop, and where it is headed? These are critical questions because high-growth startup firms are now recognized as potential drivers or growth, innovation, and productivity gains for advanced industrialized countries (Gornall and Strebulaev, 2015; Wiens and Jackson, 2015).

In this three-part NBR Special Report, experts from the United States, South Korea, and Japan offer critical insights into both the past and future of trilateral cooperation and provide recommendations for leaders in all three nations to move the relationship forward.

No nation is free from the charge that it has a less-than-complete view of the past. History is not simply about recording past events—it is often contested, negotiated, and reshaped over time. The debate over the history of World War II in Asia remains surprisingly intense, and Divergent Memories examines the opinions of powerful individuals to pinpoint the sources of conflict: from Japanese colonialism in Korea and atrocities in China to the American decision to use atomic weapons against Japan.

The history of human civilization has been about managing information, from hunting and gathering through contemporary times. In modern societies, information flows are central to how individuals and societies interact with governments, economies, and other countries. Despite this centrality of information, information governance—how information flows are managed—has not been a central concern of scholarship. We argue that it should be, especially now that digitization has dramatically altered the amount of information generated, how it can be transmitted, and how it can be used.

An analysis of the foundations and future of the trilateral relationship from a U.S. perspective, highlighting the critical role the United States has played in mediating tensions between the Republic of Korea and Japan.

The essay is also part of an expanded NBR Special Report with co-authors Yul Sohn and Yoshihide Soeya that offers insights into both the past and future of trilateral cooperation and provides recommendations for leaders in all three nations to move relations foward.

Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia is the first attempt to explore how the tumultuous years between 1931 and 1953 have been recreated and renegotiated in cinema. This period saw traumatic conflicts such as the Sino-Japanese War, the Pacific War, and the Korean War, and pivotal events such as the Rape of Nanjing, Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Iwo Jima, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all of which left a lasting imprint on East Asia and the world.

The breakthrough agreement on the comfort women issue between Japan and South Korea on Dec. 28, 2015, was the culmination of at least four years of negotiations between the two governments. South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushed for the agreement; the Obama administration provided persistent pressure while resisting a mediation role.

Chapter 4 of this book "Services with Everything: The ICT-Enabled Digital Transformation of Services" was written by John Zysman, Stuart Feldman, Kenji E. Kushida, Jonathan Murray, and Niels Christian Nielsen. The book is edited by Dan Breznitz and John Zysman.

This report provides an overview of the Silicon Valley ecosystem. It draws upon existing scholarship and original insights to derive a picture that is only partially well-known in Japan. Characteristics such as the critical role of large firms for the startup firm ecosystem, the role of Japanese firms in creating the US firms’ “open innovation” paradigm, and the severe lack of local government coordination in providing public transportation creating opportunities for disruptive startups such as Uber, are all aspects of Silicon Valley that are not well-known in Japan.

This paper is examines the evolution of Japan’s capital markets and the related regulatory reforms after the Global Financial Crisis. We start by looking at the importance of capital markets in the Japanese financial system. We study how the size of financial flows through capital markets relative to those through the banking sector changed since the 1980s in Section 2. Then, in Section 3, we look at how Japan’s financial system responded to the Global Financial Crisis. We find that the disruption of the financial system in Japan was small.

This paper examines the evolution of Japan’s capital markets and the related regulatory reforms after the Global Financial Crisis. We start by looking at the importance of capital markets in the Japanese financial system. We study how the size of financial flows through capital markets relative to those through the banking sector changed since the 1980s in Section 2. Then, in Section 3, we look at how Japan’s financial system responded to the Global Financial Crisis. We find that the disruption of the financial system in Japan was small.

Writing for the National Bureau of Asian Research, Daniel Sneider examines Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s recent attempts to revise Japan’s defense guidelines. He considers how these attempts may affect the Japanese domestic political landscape and the implications that Abe’s actions may have for key issues in the U.S.-Japan alliance, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership and U.S. military interests in Okinawa.

Drawing on twenty-four years of experience in government, Michael H. Armacost explores how the contours of the U.S. presidential election system influence the content and conduct of American foreign policy. He examines how the nomination battle impels candidates to express deference to the foreign policy DNA of their party and may force an incumbent to make wholesale policy adjustments to fend off an intra-party challenge for the nomination.

Improving the environment for business is an important part of the growth strategy of Abenomics. As the goal for this effort, the Abe Administration aims to improve Japan’s rank in the World Bank Doing Business Ranking to one of the top three among OECD. This paper clarifies what it takes for Japan to achieve the goal. By looking at details of the World Bank Doing Business ranking, we identify various reforms that Japan could implement to improve the ranking.

Innovation is essential for the growth of a matured economy like Japan. This report examines the institutional foundations of innovation-based economic growth and explores the role of Japanese government in encouraging innovation by Japanese companies and entrepreneurs. We start by summarizing eleven elements that characterize the ecosystem of Silicon Valley, which is often considered to be the best example of innovation-based economy. We then discuss how those elements fit with six institutional foundations that support the innovation-based economic growth.