‘Beyond the Galapagos Syndrome’: Mapping the Future of UK-Japan Economic Cooperation Luke Cavanaugh (ed.), Olivia Bisbee, Owain Cooke, Kezzie Florin-Sefton, Elizabeth Steel
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY One of the first exhibitions that one sees upon entering the Japan collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum is a 2019 version of Ishii Toru’s ‘Going Work War’, depicting Japanese neo-Samurai businessmen fleeing the uncertainty of a Brexit Britain for Tokyo. In the face of Britain’s changing role in the world, it seems to point to Japan’s vision of its would-be partner as weakened, volatile, and isolated.
And yet, a ‘Japan-UK Joint Vision Statement’ delivered in 2017 after the Brexit vote, declared that: Japan and the UK are global strategic partners, sharing common interests as outward-looking and free trading island nations with a global reach, committed to the rules-based international system.1 This quotation makes a number of telling claims as to the commonalities between the UK and Japan: ● The rules-based international order - The UK has entered a post-Brexit landscape with a strong position in many of the world’s leading multilateral organisations, from the UN Security Council to the G7 and G20. 2021 saw it assume G7 presidency and host COP26. For Japan, whose geographical proximity includes the geopolitical 1
Cited in ‘UK-Japan comprehensive economic partnership: the view from both sides’, Chatham House (5 February 2021) https://www.chathamhouse.org/events/all/research-event/uk-japan-comprehens ive-economic-partnership-view-both-sides accessed 17 October 2021
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