From Mutual Fascination to Strategic Cooperation: Italy and Japan in the Face of the 21st Century's Global Transformations

As members of the G7 group, Italy and Japan are today among the world’s largest economies and most industrialized countries. Aware of their long history of interactions, dating well before the two countries emerged as modern nation-states in the late 19th century, they share several commonalities with regards to their respective postwar institutional and economic development. First, both have been key US allies in their respective regions, hosting, for instance, US military bases on their national territories. Second, both countries still uphold their postwar constitutional arrangements (and will do so probably for a few more years, despite reinterpretations and revisionist legislation) that nominally bar governments from military resurgence. Third, after exhibiting extraordinary economic growth rates for two decades, from the 1960s to the 1980s, they have established themselves as economic powerhouses and export giants. Fourth, despite frequent leadership reshuffles, both countries have long been ruled by conservative parties (the Christian democrats in Italy until the early 1990s, and the Liberal democrats in Japan, until 2009 and then from 2012 to the present day), which have pursued long-term strategies and contributed to laying the foundation of political and business relations since the early 1950s. Despite rarely producing any relevant benefit for the two national economies or, by and large, for third countries’ development initiatives, 1 this effort has nevertheless resulted in a strong fascination for the other country’s culture, resulting in the popularity of the study of Japanese and Italian and in a thriving cultural exchange. Finally, as important powers, they are in search of new diplomatic arrangements, particularly concerning trade, comprehensive security and transcontinental connectivity.