Developing Eu-japan Relations in a Changing Regional Context ― A Focus on Security, Law and Policies

A collaborative volume on EU-Japan relations consisting of two parts: the first addresses the potential role of the European Union, in cooperation with Japan, to craft a stable and prosperous mode of governance in the Asian region; the second advances the current body of EU-Japan studies by introducing state-of-the-art empirical research in multiple fields with the aim of fortifying this relationship amidst the global search for multilateral norms and standards.

Within this general context, each section is driven by a specific observation. In today’s globalized world seemingly defined by waxing Chinese power and waning American power, the first part reflects the lack of appreciation for an EU-Japan concert in maintaining and developing multilateral principles; the second part acknowledges that in order to enhance the credibility and capabilities of such an alliance, it is first and foremost 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.

Dimitri Vanoverbeke lectures in Japanese Studies at the department of Area Studies at Leuven University, Belgium. He is director of the Research Unit (Department) of Area Studies and also coordinates the ‘Europe–Asia: Interactions and Comparisons’ module of the Master of Arts in European Studies: Transnational and Global Perspectives (MAES) at the KU Leuven. He is the Executive Director of the Double Degree EU–Japan Multidisciplinary Master (EU–JAMM) program involving four Japanese and six European universities. He is a guest professor at the university of Lyon III (Jean Moulin), has been a guest professor at Tokyo University's Social Science Institute and is regularly lecturing and conducting research at Kyushu University and Kobe University.

Ueta Takako is Professor of International Christian University in Japan. She was visiting professor of ULB (Brussels), the Graduate School of the University of Tokyo, visiting research fellow of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva (HEI) and the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP). She worked for the Embassy of Japan to Belgium, special advisor on NATO and European security, and was Ambassador, Deputy Chief of the Mission of Japan to the EU.

Takao Suami?is currently Professor of Law at Waseda University Law School, Japan,?and serves as the President of the Japanese Association of EU Studies.?He was a visiting professor at Duke Law School (USA) and is responsible for the Tokyo Module in the master’s program of the University of St. Gallen.

Frederik Ponjaert is Researcher and Lecturer at the Institute for European Studies at Universite libre de Bruxelles and the KU Leuven, Belgium,?and Associate Lecturer in Comparative Regionalism at SciencesPo, Paris.?He is also the scientific coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus GEM-Ph.D. School and the manager of the GEM Routledge book series on ‘Globalisation, Europe and Multilateralism’.