Japan’s Quiet Leadership: Reshaping the Indo-Pacific

Mireya Solís will discuss key findings from her latest book Japan’s Quiet Leadership: Reshaping the Indo-Pacific which offers a comprehensive look at Japan’s economic and political evolution, its experience with globalization and track record of economic statecraft, and the array of geopolitical challenges that have triggered a gradual but substantial shift in Japan’s security profile. It underscores Japan’s hidden strengths in its democratic resilience, social stability, and proactive diplomacy, while reckoning with the profound challenges the nation faces (demographics, rising inequality, and deteriorating geopolitical environment). She will address how Japan has positioned itself as a champion of the rules-based international order and become an important ally for the United States in addressing the China challenge.

 

Mireya Solís is Director of the Center for Asia Policy Studies (CAPS), Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies, and senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Prior to her arrival at Brookings, Dr. Solís was a tenured associate professor at American University’s School of International Service.

 

Dr. Solís is an expert on Japanese foreign economic policy, economic security, and U.S. economic statecraft in Asia. Her most recent book “Japan’s Quiet Leadership Reshaping the Indo-Pacific" was published in September 2023 by Brookings Press. The Japanese edition ネットワークパワー日本の台頭 ―「失われた30 年」論を超えて was published by Nikkei Press in July 2024.

Her book, “Dilemmas of a Trading Nation Japan and the United States in the Evolving Asia-Pacific Order” (Brookings Press, 2017) received the 2018 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Award and the Japanese edition 貿易国家のジレンマ：日本・アメリカとアジア太平洋秩序の構築 was published by Nikkei Press in October 2019. She is the author of "Banking on Multinationals: Public Credit and the Export of Japanese Sunset Industries" (Stanford University Press, 2004) and co-editor of "Cross-Regional Trade Agreements: Understanding Permeated Regionalism in East Asia" (Springer, 2008) and "Competitive Regionalism: FTA Diffusion in the Pacific Rim" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

 

Solís has offered expert commentary to The New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Politico, The New Yorker, Nikkei, Kyodo News, Asahi Shimbun, Jiji Press, Japan Times, NHK World, Bloomberg, CNN, and BBC, among others.

 

Solís earned a doctorate in government and a master's in East Asian studies from Harvard University, and a bachelor's in international relations from El Colegio de México.  

 

Organized by the Centre for the Study of Global Japan, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto.