Saori N. Katada - Japans New Regional Reality

I have observed and analyzed Japan and its foreign policy from many vantage points as a scholar, teacher, and Japanese national living outside the country. Now is an exciting time, with Japan facing a new regional reality in the Asia-Pacific as China rises and the U.S. commitment continues to slip. The Japanese government must see a vast opening and step up its regional engagement so that it can keep the regional economic order intact. This is the new challenge that has given rise to Japans geoeconomic strategy.

When a book project takes as long as this one has taken, the debts the author incurs accumulate so much that there is no way either to repay all of them or to cover everyone in a few pages of acknowledgment. Nonetheless, I would first like to thank all the mentors who have guided me on this project and others over many years. I am especially grateful to Laurie Brand, Jerry Cohen, Ellen Frost, Masahiro Kawai, Tim McKeown, T. J. Pempel, Barbara Stallings, and Shu Urata.

It is probably impossible to list all the brilliant and dedicated scholars, researchers, government officials, journalists, and experts from international organizations, businesses, and NGOs who have given their valuable time to share their insights with me. In particular, I am grateful to Izumi Ohno, Junichi Sugawara, and Akihiko Tamura, who have always been my go-to people when I have questions on Japanese foreign economic policy.

During the writing stage, many of my academic colleagues were kind enough to read my manuscript at various points. In a manuscript review workshop hosted by the Center for International Studies in 2016, discussants Miles Kahler and William Grimes gave me valuable comments. I also thank all the workshop participants for their critiques. As I worked to revise the manuscript, several more people generously provided insightful suggestions; I thank in particular Mireya Sols and Gene Park. Not only are they generous scholars who spent hours reading the manuscript, they are also both my dear coauthors, who make my usually solitary scholars life much more enjoyable. In addition, I am grateful for the advice of Hyoung-kyu Chey, Jacques Hymans, and Harukata Takenaka, each of whom read some of the chapters. I also benefited greatly from the thorough and constructive suggestions from the two anonymous reviewers at Columbia University Press. I thank the presss editor, Caelyn Cobb, and the series editors, Dave Kang and Victor Cha.