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'Is Japan an absentee power? Or is it that Japan exists but its existence goes largely unnoticed? Given that its Gross National Product is second only to the United States', such questions seem strange. It is as if the Japanese state did not exist but the Japanese market existed as part of the global market. When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was abruptly hospitalized for two weeks in September 2007 without having designated an acting prime minister, the Financial Times wondered whether the Japanese government might be able to function without a prime minister altogether.'Takashi Inoguchi is Professor at Chuo University. Executive Director of the Japanese Journal of Political Science, he is the author of more than seventy books.