This book presents a comprehensive overview of EU-Japan relations from 1970 to the present. It charts developments over the period, analyses key specific areas of importance to the relationship, and concludes by assessing how the relationship is likely to develop going forward. Throughout, the book discusses the factors on both sides which motivate the relationship, including Japan’s concern to secure markets for its advanced industrial products, and the factors motivating current negotiations for a deeper and more comprehensive economic and cooperative partnership.

Relations between the EU and East Asia have consistently expanded in recent years, particularly between the EU and Japan. Against the background of negotiations on an economic and strategic partnership agreement, the EU–Japan relationship is set to become the single most comprehensive ‘region-to-state’ relationship the world has known today, accounting for more than a third of world GDP and a combined population of more than 600 million people. This book addresses the potential role of the EU, in cooperation with Japan, to craft a stable and prosperous mode of governance in the Asian region. In today’s globalized world seemingly defined by waxing Chinese power and waning American power, the book reflects the lack of appreciation for an EU-Japan concert in maintaining and developing multilateral principles. It aims towards fortifying this relationship by acknowledging that in order to enhance the credibility and capabilities of such an alliance, it is necessary to take stock of where the partnership stands today, what kind of obstacles still need to be overcome and which options have been left untouched. By introducing state-of-the-art empirical research in multiple fields, this book will be of key interest to students and scholars of international relations, comparative regionalism, the European Union and Japanese politics.

This book assesses EU-Japan security relations, examining how they have developed in individual security sectors and how they could be affected by international developments. The conclusions of the Economic Partnership Agreement and the Strategic Partnership Agreement in 2017 demonstrate the steady growth in EU-Japan political relations. Since the 1990s, dialogues between the EU and Japan have benefitted from extensive trade and investment ties and shared liberal values. Based on collaborative research by European and Japanese scholars, this book provides an in-depth, systematic and comparative analysis of the extent to which the EU and Japan have achieved concrete actions in the pursuance of security cooperation across a range of key areas such as nuclear proliferation, regional security, international terrorism, and energy and climate security. Further, it seeks to explain why some security sectors (such as economic and cybersecurity) have resulted in more extensive EU-Japan cooperation, while others lag behind (such as military and regional security). Common declarations and actions of shared interest and concerns have often led to only modest levels of security collaboration, and the book highlights factors that may be seen as intervening between intention and action, such as the role of external actors, for instance China and the US, and the constraints of internal EU and domestic Japanese politics. This book will be of much interest to students of European security, Japanese politics, diplomacy studies and international relations.

This timely book explores the relationship between Japan and the European Union as they work increasingly closely together in many areas of global governance. It discusses the most salient areas of such cooperation from a range of perspectives, while examining not just convergences but also differences, in light of the recent EU–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement and Strategic Partnership Agreement.