Beyond oil: Why UAE-Japan ties matter more than ever

After the rain, the mountains of Ras Al Khaimah briefly turn green — an unlikely softness in an otherwise rugged landscape. I recently drove through them with my two young sons in a Japanese four-wheel-drive, its quiet reliability carrying us across wet, uneven ground. It is a small, ordinary scene. Yet it captures something essential about the relationship between the United Arab Emirates and Japan, especially in this time of uncertainty and military conflict: UAE-Japan relations are understated, dependable and so deeply embedded in daily life that it often goes unnoticed. For decades, that relationship was defined by a simple…