The Japan-Korea reconciliation is good news for both countries, the USA and the free world, and bad news for China, whose aggressive and threatening behaviour and wolf warrior diplomacy helped catalyse the process. Strengthening the trilateral security and military cooperation between the USA, Japan and Korea is definitely not something Beijing wanted to achieve with its aggressive posture. What we can expect from Beijing is now to try to drive a wedge between the newly found friends.

Low birth-rates and decreasing populations are not new problems in Japan or in other East Asian countries, most remarkably in South Korea or China. But this year, the situation has started turning really tragic in Japan. In 2022, first time in modern history, the number of births fell below 800,000.