In early December, yours truly spent a few interesting days in Tokyo. Technically, I was in Japan for a conference, but I could not resist the temptation and made a number of appointments with Japanese journalists, academics, analysts and diplomats, all of whom are people related to Korean affairs. These meetings, about a dozen of them, helped me to get some understanding of what’s going on in the relations between Korea (especially, North Korea) and Japan. This is important since Japan has been, to be frank, sidelined during the recent flurry of the diplomatic activity.

As usual, the opportunity to see things on the ground was useful, and many assumptions, which I have held before my trip, have been proven wrong. So, it might make sense to introduce the readers to the Japanese impressions. Understandably, no names are going to be mentioned, but it will suffice to say that I have had an opportunity to talk to a number of prominent Korea studies experts, both inside and outside the government and academia.