Hegemony and the US–Japan Alliance

Abstract

With the transformation of the global security environment during the post-Cold War and post-9/11 period, new security measures have emerged. Nevertheless, why does the Japan–US alliance, one of the traditional security measures, continue to exist? Although many existing studies have pointed to emerging threats throughout the Asia-Pacific, this book presents a different reason for the continuation of the alliance by utilizing neo-Gramscian framework. Chapter 2 examines the development of the Japan–US alliance and the hegemony (or historic bloc) led by the United States from the postwar era to the early post-Cold War period (1951–1991) as a premise to discuss the post-Cold War Japan–US alliance in subsequent chapters. It argues that the alliance was strengthened through the interaction between ‘coercion’ (US demand for Japanese rearmament as well as the foreign dispatch of Japan Self Defense Forces [SDF]) and ‘consent’ in the form of Japan’s acceptance, according to the neo-Gramscian view. Specifically,...