Japan, China, and A Pile of Rocks

摘要

In early September, Yoshihlko Noda passed the one-year mark as Japanese prime minister. That's no small accom-plishment-the country is on its sixth premier since 2006. Noda has seen his approval rating drop to 34 percent after doubling a sales tax to 10 percent, however, and he has reshuffled his Cabinet three times. If he's going to make it another year, he'll need to defuse a tricky foreign policy crisis: Japan and China's quarrel over ownership of a group of uninhabited islands in a potentially energy-rich section of the East China Sea.