PREFACE - Hahm Chaibong INTRODUCTION - T.J. Pempel PART I: STARTING WITH FUKUSHIMA 1. The Fukushima Nuclear Crisis and Its Political and Social Implications; Masakatsu Ota PART II: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SLOW GROWTH 2. Japan's Economic Crisis: More Chronic than Acute - So Far; Gregory W. Noble 3. Japan's Fiscal Challenge: The Political Economy of Reform; William W. Grimes PART III: HURDLING POLITICAL OBSTACLES 4. Governance Crisis in Japan: Return to the Basic Building Blocks of Democracy; Tetsundo Iwakuni 5. The Ghost of the Second Republic? The Structural Weakness of Parliamentary Bicameralism in Japan; Jun Saito PART IV: TOWARD A MULTICULTURAL SOLUTION? 6. Embracing Asia: Japan's Expat Politics; Kim Mikyoung PART V: IMPROVING RELATIONS WITH THE ASIA-PACIFIC NEIGHBORS 7. What Will It Take for Japan to Rise Again? Vision, Regional Initiative, and Japan-Korea Relations; Kazuhiko Togo 8. Regional Situation Awareness as a Basis for Northeast Asian Regional Cooperation in Dealing with Transnational Nuclear Disasters; Kim Sok Chul 9. The US-Japan Alliance and Japan's Future; Michael Auslin 10. An Economic Step toward Revitalizing Japan and US-Japan Ties; T.J. Pempel INDEX

This volume, stemming from the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, observes that for Japan to 'rise again' would mean recovery not only from the triple disaster-the March, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown-but from 20-plus years of economic stagnation, political fumbling, and deterioration in Japan's regional and global influence.

William W. Grimes has taught in the IR Department at Boston University since 1996. Before becoming department chair in 2010, he helped to found BU Center for the Study of Asia and served as its first director from 2008-10. Previously, he spent time as a post-doctoral researcher and as a visiting assistant professor at Harvard University.
Tetsundo Iwakuni - prominent Japanese politician who, until 2009, represented Democratic Party of Japan, as a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet (national legislature). HA native of Osaka and graduate of the University of Tokyo, he was elected to be the mayor of Izumo, Shimane in 1989. After running unsuccessfully for the governorship of Tokyo in 1995, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1996. He served as the Director-General of the International Department of the Democratic Party of Japan until 2009, when he decided to step down from politics. He has also served as vice president of the DPJ. Iwakuni now serves as Senior Adviser to GR Japan, a government relations consultancy, and teaches at several universities in Japan, Korea, and the U.S. Iwakuni made it to the news in June 2010 when his appointment as senior adviser to Liberal Democratic Party was announced
Jun Saito - Assistant Professor at Yale University, USA
Kim Mikyoung - Ph.D. in Sociology, University of Georgia, USA
MA in Women's Studies, University of Georgia, USA (Graduate Certificate)
MA in Sociology, University of Georgia, USA
MA in Political Science, Graduate Institute for Peace Studies, Kyunghee University, Seoul, Korea
BA in English Literature, Pusan National University, Pusan, Korea
Kazuhiko Togo, Lecturer and Research fellow, East Asian Studies, Princeton University, USA
Kim Sok Chul
Michael Auslin, AEI's director of Japan Studies