This book has three axes of transversal analysis. The first one addresses the experience of economic development in Japan, which went from a model of sustained high growth to a pattern of lower performance, but with a great internationalization of its productive schemes and capital flows.

The second vector analyses the foreign policy responses that the Japanese government has had to the changes in the commercial and financial architecture in the Asia-Pacific, especially to the rise of China as an economic power but also to the emerging schemes for the search for a comprehensive regional economic liberalization process, which the first step, undoubtedly, is represented by the 12-country negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (better known by its acronym TPP).

The third and last one focuses on taking a balance of the initiative called "Abenomics" presented by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, as a mechanism to deal with the long cycle of low growth and attend the emerging challenges of Japanese society. The ten co-authors who participate in the work converge on the idea of reflecting on how Japan has gone through and faced the hasty changes within the contemporary international economy –now more globalized– in the last seven decades that have witnessed the deepest and intense transformations that the world has undergone since the modern era.

In this sense, it is clear that for the Japanese government, both the Abenomics and the TPP possibly represent the most viable responses, but not the only ones to gradually restore economic health and contain the erosion of the social welfare pact to which the Japanese people were able to enjoy in the post-war period. That is the great challenge that the Shinzō Abe government faces at the domestic and international levels.