As the US seeks to widen the coalition to confront China, Europe (i.e., the EU and affiliated states and the UK, almost all of them NATO members), with a GDP about four times that of Japan, plays an important role when it comes to export and investment controls, supply chain "de-risking," and countering PRC influence worldwide in areas such as development assistance. European military power-projection capabilities in East Asia are very limited but have important diplomatic and symbolic contributions. Moreover, if the US is to deploy more forces around China, it needs European NATO states to be more active in other theatres, principally Europe and Southwest Asia. Alain Frachon and Robert Dujarric will discuss these issues and then open the session for Q&A from the audience.

In this talk, three project members will present the report’s key findings and policy recommendations regarding economics, security, and transnational challenges.

Ran Zwigenber's manuscript explores how the Atomic bomb’s psychological impact on survivors was understood before the invention/ discovery of the concept of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Professor Zwigenberg argues that psychological and psychiatric research on Hiroshima and Nagasaki rarely referred to trauma or similar categories.

We are living in a golden era of digital gurus from YouTube influencers to techno monks and podcast pundits. Their rise has been facilitated with a revived and increasingly influential interest in conspiracy theories, particularly notable in the online world and among populist politicians. Charismatic figures such as Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, and Russell Brand now spread their prophetic and conspiratorial messages to millions of digital followers. This talk explores how these very modern gurus have adapted a traditional charismatic and performative role to suit a contemporary context, offering a comforting antidote to the alienating complexities of modern life. Based on a multi-year deep analysis of their content, partly documented on the Decoding the Gurus podcast, this talk will explore the psychological and rhetorical techniques these gurus leverage to grow their audiences and position themselves at the forefront of public discourse.

Located at the boundaries of several tectonic plates, the Japanese islands are among the most seismically active regions on earth. From the late nineteenth century to the present, scientists and governments have endeavored to monitor this seismicity, understand it, and develop strategies for mitigation its potential to cause natural disasters. Some strategies have proven to be expensive failures and others have been highly effective. In this presentation, we examine several major earthquakes and earthquake-tsunami combinations with respect to their effect on scientific thinking and public policy: 1891 Nōbi (Mino-Owari); 1896 Meiji Sanriku; 1923 Great Kantō; 1933 Shōwa Sanriku; 1995 Great Hanshin (Kōbe); and 2011 Tōhoku. One overall argument is that spending resources on attempts to predict earthquakes, or even forecast them in a general way, has been ineffective, whereas infrastructure improvements and better building codes have been highly effective.

In the past months, the United States and several of its allies have imposed restrictions on the use of TikTok on government devices. Some American politicians have sought an outright ban of the application in the United States. Concern that the Chinese authorities might gain access to valuable personal data, and that TikTok algorithms might be Trojan horses for CCP propaganda are at the root of what is becoming one of the most visible conflicts between China and the West.  To help us understand this issue, Graham Webster, editor in chief of the DigiChina Project at the Stanford University Cyber Policy Center, will lead a discussion at TUJ on 26 June 2023 at 17:00.

A theoretical Framework on Inflation and Retirement: Improvements in longevity as well as declining fertility rates have led to an aging demographic across developed nations. These tendencies, alongside several decades of low inflation have led to shifts in pension and retirement policies across developed nations. It goes without saying that Retirement security remains a shared concern, one that has heightened as inflation has returned to the global landscape, adding further uncertainty to the financial security of retirees...

In this book, Florentine Koppenborg argues that the regulatory reforms taken up in the wake of the Fukushima disaster on March 11, 2011, directly and indirectly raised the costs of nuclear power in Japan. The new Nuclear Regulation Authority resisted capture by the nuclear industry and fundamentally altered the environment for nuclear policy implementation. Independent safety regulation changed state-business relations in the nuclear power domain from regulatory capture to top-down safety regulation, which raised technical safety costs for electric utilities...

Democratizing Luxury: Name Brands, Advertising, and Consumption in Modern Japan (forthcoming, University of Hawaii Press) explores interconnections between advertising and consumption in modern Japan by investigating how Japanese companies at key historical moments assigned value, or "luxury," to mass-produced products as an important business model. The first comprehensive 150-year history of iconic Japanese name brand luxury and accessibility in modern Japan and elsewhere, Democratizing Luxury explores company histories and strategies leading domestic and global customers to consume commodities conferring affordable, high-quality status...