Here are five political leaders from around the world who are emerging as significant talents and possible contenders for influence in 2017 and beyond.
Japanese-American internees.
US Department of the Interior via Wikimedia Commons
Australia looks set to continue to confront its core foreign policy dilemma: balancing relations between its largest trading partner, China, and its key security partners, the US and Japan.
So strong is public opposition to his miltarist policies that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, having ignored the popular will, faces questions about democratic representation.
AAP Image/Newzulu/Munesuke Yamamoto
Shinzo Abe’s government (now in its second term) has consistently been vocal about Japan’s national defence.
Through reinterpreting the constitution and bidding to build Australia’s submarines, Shinzo Abe is leading Japan towards a more assertive strategic posture.
EPA/Kimimasa Mayama
What is it about northeast Asia? Why is it that a part of the world that is a byword for unparalleled economic development and astounding social transformation can’t come to terms with its past and develop…
Japan’s neighbours will interpret whatever Shinzo Abe says about his nation’s wartime aggression in the light of his government’s shift to more hawkish policies.
Reuters/Toru Hana
In the West, it is often forgotten that 1945 marks the end of not only the second world war but also of a much longer period of political and social upheaval in Asia.
Tomiko Matsumoto, an 83-year-old A-bomb survivor, at the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima.
EPA/Kimimasa Mayama
Japan has spent decades proudly staying out of military matters, but China’s maritime belligerence has changed all that.
Powerful waves of nationalist sentiment have endured since the second world war and continue to pose difficulties for the leaders of Japan and China.
EPA/Kim Kyung-Hoon
The fog of the second world war and the murkiness of the post-war settlement laid the contours of Asia’s complex and uncertain strategic landscape.
The Genbaku Dome at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial has long been the focus of remembrance and now also serves as a site for reconciliation between former enemies.
Saleem H. Ali
The horrific murder of Japanese nationals by Islamic State (IS) terrorists in early February has sparked a pensive debate about whether the pacifist Japanese constitution is an anachronism. Article 9 of…
University Lecturer in Biogeography and Biodiversity; Academic Director of Oxford's MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management, University of Oxford