This volume examines four periods since the 1980s and covers views of China, Japan, the Korean peninsula, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and regionalism. With an emphasis on Northeast Asia the geographical chapters provide a look at how foreign policy toward separate areas has been guided.

This collection of essays by leading scholars from Japan, China, South Korea, and the United States examines how and why bitter historical memories have resurfaced in recent years as freshly virulent and contentious issues between Japan and its neighbors—especially China and South Korea. Moreover, it seeks to identify what set of conditions and what sequence of measures will enable these modern nations to manage, palliate, and exorcise the wrongs of the past in a spirit of reconciliation, so that the dangerous growth of nationalist resentments and revanchism can be checked. Comfort women … the Yasukuni Shrine … the history textbook controversies … The single sorest issue confronting East Asia today is the growing animosity and conflict between Japan and its neighbors—especially China and South Korea—over their respective and collective memories of Japan's pre-1945 militaristic aggression, oppression, and atrocities. Even as East Asia has established itself as one of the most vibrant economic regions of the world, the strident nationalisms that have emerged here in the post-Cold War period have exacerbated historical grievances and heightened the international tensions that separate Japan from China and South Korea, blocking the development of an international system based on comity and cooperation.

The book explains the Putin era's ambivalent approach to Asia and finds lessons from earlier approaches worthy of further attention. The overview compares how strategic thinking evolved, while reflecting on factors that shaped it.