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.

Introduction; I: Japan, the EU and Civilian Power Relations; 1: Japan as a 'Proactive Civilian Power'? Domestic Constraints and Competing Priorities; 2: The EU in a Changing Global Order; 3: The EU through the Eyes of Japan; II: Enhancing Trade Relations and Regulatory Standards; 4: Three Balancing Acts; 5: The Political and Institutional Significance of an EU-Japan Trade and Partnership Agreement; 6: Food Fights or a Recipe for Cooperation? EU-Japan Relations and the Development of Norms in Food Safety Policy 1; III: Promoting Environmental, Economic and Energy Security; 7: Environmental and Energy Policy; 8: Sympathy or Self-Interest? The Development Agendas of the European Union and Japan in the 2000s; 9: Saving the Kyoto Protocol; IV: Protecting Political, Food and Health Security; 10: EU-Japan Relations; 11: The EU, Japan and the Balkans; 12: Global Governance of Dual Use in Biomedical Research; 13: Accountability and the Governance of Food Safety Policy in the EU and Japan