Abstract. While Japanese economy keeps growing, the effect of government’s policy to encourage expansion is weakening as negative factors acquire more weight. Both domestic and external constraints to growth are accumulating, thus strengthening the need to revise social policy priorities and encourage structural changes in the economy. Political stability, bordering on stagnation, makes it easier for the current administration to pursue its socio-economic course, but makes it difficult to timely identify the sources of problems and find effective solutions. Within socio-political agenda, the importance of the problems in foreign relations is growing. Finding adequate response to these problems becomes a priority for the Japanese political elite.