ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the principal economic and geopolitical events to have influenced the EC/EU and Japan as international actors throughout the post-war decades. The ending of the war in both Asia and Europe left war-torn states, demolished infrastructure, political uncertainties, and economic desolation, and created the opportunity for the United States to become the central foreign policy alliance for both Japan and the EC/EU. The chapter focuses on their respective relationships with the United States, as well as analysing the ways in which the rise of China and changes within Russian foreign policy have influenced and shaped their own behaviours. The underpinning motifs of the chapter are the forging of alliances and normative trajectories, on the one hand, and greater connectivity, or the start of ‘globalisation,’ on the other. The paths upon which Japan–EU relations have become dependent need to be understood as deriving in (large) part from such contextual transformations.
