Axel Berkofsky is Senior Lecturer at the University of Pavia, Italy, Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Milan-based Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI) and Research Affiliate at the European Centre for Japanese Studies at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden.

Christopher W. Hughes is Professor of International Politics and Japanese Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. He is the author of Japan's Foreign and Security Policy under the 'Abe Doctrine' (2015), and co-editor of The Pacific Review.

Paul Midford is Professor of Political Science and Director of the NTNU Japan Program at the

Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. He is the author of Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism? (2011).

Marie Söderberg is a Professor and Director of the European Institute of Japanese Studies at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden. She is also the chairperson of the European Japan Advanced Research Network executive committee.

1. Introduction: now or never, Marie Söderberg, Axel Berkofsky, Christopher W. Hughes and Paul Midford Part I Political and Security Cooperation 2. The Strategic Partnership Agreement: new and better or more the same EU-Japan security cooperation? Axel Berkofsky 3. Abe's Pro-active pacifism, values diplomacy, China, and EU-Japan political and security cooperation, Paul Midford 4. Ordinary/Civilian, not Normative/Post-modern: lessons from the EU for Japanese security policy, Paul Bacon and Hidetoshi Nakamura 5. The Japan and EU Nexus defence production cooperation: a strategically important but nascent relationship, Christopher W. Hughes 6. EU-Japan relations in the age of competitive economic governance in Asia, Maaike Okano-Heijmans and Terada Takashi Part II Political Economy, Development, and Normative Issues 7. Taking the lead in current and future trade relationships, Patricia Nelson 8. Negative interest rate policy by the Bank of Japan from the perspective of monetary policy in Europe, Markus Heckel 9. EU and Japanese Aid and Trade: legitimising "Chinese Democrary" in ASEAN, André Asplund 10. Japan and the EU: SDGs and changing patterns of development cooperation, Marie Söderberg Part III. Reflections by the Two Superpowers 11. The Evolution of America's implicit support of EU-Japan security relations, Jeffrey W. Hornung 12. From "Wider West" to "Strategic alliance": an Assessment of China's influence in EU-Japan Relations, Lilei Song and Liang Gai 13. Conclusions: the way forward