Japanese Foreign Policy At The Crossroads

The post–World War II paradigm that ensured security and prosperity for the Japanese people has lost much of its effectiveness. The current generation has become increasingly resentful of the prolonged economic stagnation and feels a sense of drift and uncertainty about the future of Japan's foreign policy. In J apanese Foreign Policy at the Crossroads, Yutaka Kawashima clarifies some of the defining parameters of Japan's past foreign policy and examines the challenges it currently faces, including the quagmire on the Korean Peninsula, the future of the U.S.-Japan alliance, the management of Japan-China relations, and Japan's relation with Southeast Asia. Kawashima—who, as vice minister of foreign affairs, was Japan's highest-ranking foreign service official—cautions Japan against attempts to ensure its own security and well-being outside of an international framework. He believes it is crucial that Japan work with as many like-minded countries as possible to construct a regional and international order based on shared interests and shared values. In an era of globalization, he cautions, such efforts will be crucial to maintaining global world order and ensuring civilized interaction among all states.

Japan at the Crossroads explains how massive protests in Japan against the US-Japan alliance in 1960 produced enduring transformations in Japanese politics, society, and culture, as well as in US-Japan relations and the Cold War international system. The protests were the largest popular protests in Japan's modern history, lasting more than a year and reaching a violent climax in June 1960, when thousands of radical activists stormed the National Legislature, precipitating a battle with police and yakuza thugs which injured thousands. Although the protests ultimately failed to prevent passage of the Security Treaty, which remains in force to this day, they did shock the nation and the world, leading to the cancelation of a greatly anticipated visit to Japan by US president Eisenhower, the resignation of Japanese prime minister Kishi Nobusuke, and ultimately, the reformulation of US-Japan diplomacy and Japanese political and social relations.--

In this provocative interpretation of New Deal diplomacy, Howard Jablon challenges the view that the State Department was wiser and more expert at international maneuver than was President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the early years of his presidency. These were years of growing world tension, with the preliminary shots of World War II being fired as Japan took over Manchuria, Italy made Ethiopia an extension of its new Roman Empire, and all the European great powers tried out their new weaponry in Spain. The author argues that the department's advice in this period actually led to unfortunate decisions which later had a considerable impact on events leading to World War II. Former Secretary of State Cordell Hull wrote in his memoirs that the United States was at the "oriental crossroads of decision" in 1934. Hull and his colleagues in the State Department did not suggest blocking the Japanese. Instead, they recommended continuing the ineffective nonrecognition policy. Consequently, the roads taken by American diplomacy at this and other junctures were equally unfortunate. To date no one has criticized the influence of the State Department on New Deal diplomacy. Crossroads of Decision represents a timely and important contribution to our understanding of both the State Department and foreign policy in this interwar period of rapid change, when diplomatic courses were set that allowed for no turning back.

This text tells the story of Hawaii's role in the emergence of Japanese cultural and political internationalism during the interwar period. It explores US-Japanese conflict and cooperation in Hawaii.

Hawai‘i at the Crossroads tells the story of Hawai‘i’s role in the emergence of Japanese cultural and political internationalism during the interwar period. Following World War I, Japan became an important global power and Hawai‘i Japanese represented its largest and most significant emigrant group. During the 1920s and 1930s, Hawai‘i’s Japanese American population provided Japan with a welcome opportunity to expand its international and intercultural contacts. This volume, based on papers presented at the 2001 Crossroads Conference by scholars from the U.S., Japan, and Australia, explores U.S.–Japanese conflict and cooperation in Hawai‘i—truly the crossroads of relations between the two countries prior to the Pacific War. From the 1880s to 1924, 180,000 Japanese emigrants arrived in the U.S. A little less than half of those original arrivals settled in Hawai‘i; by 1900 they constituted the largest ethnic group in the Islands, making them of special interest to Tokyo. Even after its withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933, Japan viewed Hawai‘i as a largely sympathetic and supportive ally. Through its influential international conferences, Hawai‘i’s Institute of Pacific Relations conducted a program that was arguably the only informal diplomatic channel of consequence left to Japan following its withdrawal from the League. The Islands represented Japan’s best opportunity to explain itself to the U.S.; here American and Japanese diplomats, official and unofficial, could work to resolve the growing tension between their two countries. College exchange programs and substantial trade and business opportunities continued between Japan and Hawai‘i right up until December 1941. While hopes on both sides of the Pacific were shattered by the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japan-Hawai‘i connection underlying not a few of them remains important, informative, and above all compelling. Its further exploration provided the rationale for the Crossroads Conference and the essays compiled here. Contributors: Tomoko Akami, Jon Davidann, Masako Gavin, Paul Hooper, Michiko Itò, Nobuo Katagiri, Hiromi Monobe, Moriya Tomoe, Shimada Noriko, Mariko Takagi-Kitayama, Eileen H. Tamura.

In 1960, when Japan revised the postwar treaty that allows a U.S. military presence in Japan, the popular backlash changed the evolution of Japan’s politics and culture, and its global role. Nick Kapur’s analysis helps resolve Japan’s essential paradox as being innovative yet regressive, flexible yet resistant, imaginative yet wedded to tradition.

This book discusses Japan's international relations prior to 1945 with its focus on war and after 1945 during the Cold War era with its focus on globalization and also examines Japan's international relations as an academic discipline. Part I describes and analyzes (1) how modern Japan coped with the coerced opening of the country, (2) how major powers aspired and alternated their hegemonic positions in East Asia in the extended twentieth century and (3) how global politics has been evolving with the three distinctive paradigms: the Westphalian, Philadelphian and Anti-Utopian. Part II describes and analyzes (1) how Japan foresees the future on the eve of the Cold War: the metamorphosis from Pax Americana Phase II to Pax Consortis, (2) how Japan envisages regionalism in Asia with sub-nationally and functionally articulated ideas for East and Southeast Asia, (3) Japan's 21st century manifesto of foreign policy is presented as the best mix of classical realism, transformative pragmatism and liberal internationalism and (4) Japan's manifesto as an Asian state is to deploy manufacturing/technological statecraft on the basis of East Asian peace. Part III focuses on theorizings of international relations from various angles. In light of hyperglobalization, theorizing global politics (as distinguished from international politics) is called for with two latest studies on global quasi-legislative politics and typology of Asian societies given as examples.