European Union and Japan

The EU and Japan have one of the most important trade relationships in the world. Fittingly this book presents a detailed analysis of their bilateral regulatory environment and negotiation processes. Moreover the two polities have also co-operated extensively in bilateral and multilateral contexts on a range of global governance issues. Nevertheless the relationship is widely acknowledged to have significant untapped potential. Deploying the concept of civilian power the book takes a fresh honest and provocative look at this important relationship in a post-Fukushima post-sovereign debt crisis world. First the book analyses the place of EU-Japan relations within the worldviews of the Japanese and European bodies politic. Subsequently three thematic sections evaluate their cooperation on such issues as trade energy security environmental politics development human rights post-conflict reconstruction health and biosecurity. The eminent scholars of the EU-Japan relationship gathered in this book offer informed empirically rich and policy-relevant insights into the present and future prospects for the relationship.