Temporal Identities And Security Policy In Postwar Japan

Through a discourse analysis of Japanese parliamentary debates, this book explores how different understandings of Japan’s history have led to sharply divergent security policies in the postwar period, whilst providing an explanation for the much-debated security policy changes under Abe Shinzō. Analyzing the ways identities can be constructed through ‘temporal othering,’ as well as ‘spatial othering,’ this book examines the rise of a new form of identity in Japan since the end of the Cold War, one that is differentiated not from prewar and wartime Japan, but from postwar Japan. The champions of this identity, it argues, see the postwar past as a shameful period, characterized by self-imposed military restrictions, and thus the relentless chipping away of these limitations in recent years is indicative of how dominant this identity has become. Exploring how these military restrictions have shifted from being a symbol of pride to a symbol of shame, this book demonstrates the concrete ways in which the past can both enable and constrain policy. Temporal Identities and Security Policy in Postwar Japan will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese politics and foreign policy, as well as international relations more generally.

'Normalizing Japan' discusses the future direction Japan's military policies are likely to take by considering how policy has evolved since the Second World War, and what factors shaped this evolution.

Identity has become an explicit focus of International Relations theory in the past two to three decades, with one case attracting and puzzling many early identity scholars: Japan. These constructivist scholars typically ascribed Japan a ‘pacifist’ or ‘antimilitarist’ identity – an identity which they believed was constructed through the adherence to ‘peaceful norms’ and ‘antimilitarist culture’. Due to the alleged resilience of such adherences, little change in Japan’s identity and its international relations was predicted. However, in recent years, Japan’s foreign and security policies have begun to change, in spite of these seemingly stable norms and culture. This book seeks to address these changes through a pioneering engagement with recent developments in identity theory. In particular, most chapters theorize identity as a product of processes of differentiation. Through detailed case analysis, they argue that Japan’s identity is produced and reproduced, but also transformed, through the drawing of boundaries between ‘self’ and ‘other’. In particular, they stress the role of emotions and identity entrepreneurs as catalysts for identity change. With the current balance between resilience and change, contributors emphasize that more drastic foreign and security policy transformations might loom just beyond the horizon. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Pacific Review.

Oren re-examines Japan’s threat perception during the first two decades of the Cold War, using a wide range of source materials, including many unavailable in English, or only recently declassified. There is a widely shared misconception that during the Cold War the Japanese were largely shielded from threats due to the American military protection, the regional balance of power, Japan’s geographical insularity, and domestic aversion to militarism. Oren dispels this, showing how security threats pervaded Japanese strategic thinking in this period. By dispelling this misconception, Oren enables us to more accurately gauge the degree to which Japan’s threat perception has evolved during and after the end of the Cold War and to enhance our understanding of Tokyo’s strategic calculus in the current situation of rivalry between China and the United States. This book will be of great value to both scholars of Japanese history and contemporary international relations.

Great power competition is back on the world stage, and today’s international system is home to regional influences on great power relations that cannot be ignored. The United States’ unipolar moment is long over, and China’s hegemonic ambitions find expression in a comprehensive global competition with the US that plays out across multiple spheres of world politics. The US-China rivalry can be felt in geostrategic, economic, governance, diplomacy, intelligence, and technological spheres, to name a few. Most accounts of China-US relations in the context of great power conflict emphasize the many ways in which this rivalry has a ripple effect across the globe, with an impact upon the relations and interests of smaller powers. And while these effects are considerable and important, this book contends that attention must also be paid to the ways in which smaller, regional states have the potential to shape this great power rivalry. Put simply, great powers both shape, and are shaped by, smaller states. Any understanding of contemporary great power relations between the US and China requires both a top down, but also a bottom up consideration of the interplay between great powers and regional ones. Often the interests of regional powers are rooted in domestic considerations such as their identities and national interests, and these influences transcend borders and often have an impact upon the great powers. This book considers these smaller, regional actors and attempts to measure the extent to which they influence the US-China rivalry. For this study, constructivist theory, which prioritizes the agency that regional powers enjoy, is loosely used as a tool to enable a more robust and comprehensive understanding of the influences on the contemporary great power relationship. Each of the book’s chapters represents a region, or part of a region, that enjoys a considerable impact upon US-China relations.

Japanese security, economic, institutional, and developmental policies have undergone a remarkable evolution in the 70 years since the end of World War II. In this volume, distinguished Japanese scholars reflect on the evolution of these policies and draw lessons for the coming decades. The pillars of Japan’s reentry into the international community since 1945 remain no less important seven decades later as Japan’s economy and society enter the next phase of maturity. The authors demonstrate the continuing viability of Japan’s postwar strategic choices, as well as the inevitability of adaptation to challenging new circumstances. This book will be of interest to historians of U.S.-Japan relations and policy makers seeking to place today’s policy issues in a historical context. Contributions by Akiko Imai, Akiko Fukushima, Jun Saito, Kazuya Sakamoto, Yoshihide Soeya, and Yoko Takeda

Nonviolent state behavior in Japan, this book argues, results from the distinctive breadth with which the Japanese define security policy, making it inseparable from the quest for social stability through economic growth. While much of the literature on contemporary Japan has resisted emphasis on cultural uniqueness, Peter J. Katzenstein seeks to explain particular aspects of Japan's security policy in terms of legal and social norms that are collective, institutionalized, and sometimes the source of intense political conflict and change. Culture, thus specified, is amenable to empirical analysis, suggesting comparisons across policy domains and with other countries. Katzenstein focuses on the traditional core agencies of law enforcement and national defense. The police and the military in postwar Japan are, he finds, reluctant to deploy physical violence to enforce state security. Police agents rarely use repression against domestic opponents of the state, and the Japanese public continues to support, by large majorities, constitutional limits on overseas deployment of the military. Katzenstein traces the relationship between the United States and Japan since 1945 and then compares Japan with postwar Germany. He concludes by suggesting that while we may think of Japan's security policy as highly unusual, it is the definition of security used in the United States that is, in international terms, exceptional.

Providing a novel multi-disciplinary theorization of memory politics, this insightful Handbook brings varied literatures into a focused dialogue on the ways in which the past is remembered and how these influence transnational, interstate, and global politics in the present.