Japan's Role Research Articles

Chapter One: The Trajectory of Japan's Remilitarisation

Is Japan on a path towards assuming a greater military role internationally, or has the recent military normalisation ground to a halt since the premiership of Junichiro Koizumi? In this book, Christopher W. Hughes assesses developments in defence expenditure, civil–military relations, domestic and international military–industrial complexes, Japan's procurement of regional and global power-projection capabilities, the expansion of US–Japan cooperation, and attitudes towards nuclear weapons, constitutional revision and the use of military force. In all of these areas, dynamic and long-term changes outweigh Japan's short-term political logjam over security policy. Hughes argues that many post-war constraints on Japan's military role are still eroding, and that Tokyo is moving towards a more assertive military role and strengthened US–Japan cooperation. Japan's remilitarisation will boost its international security role and the dominance of the US–Japan alliance in regional and global security affairs, but will need to be carefully managed if it is not to become a source of destabilising tensions.

Notes

Is Japan on a path towards assuming a greater military role internationally, or has the recent military normalisation ground to a halt since the premiership of Junichiro Koizumi? In this book, Christopher W. Hughes assesses developments in defence expenditure, civil–military relations, domestic and international military–industrial complexes, Japan's procurement of regional and global power-projection capabilities, the expansion of US–Japan cooperation, and attitudes towards nuclear weapons, constitutional revision and the use of military force. In all of these areas, dynamic and long-term changes outweigh Japan's short-term political logjam over security policy. Hughes argues that many post-war constraints on Japan's military role are still eroding, and that Tokyo is moving towards a more assertive military role and strengthened US–Japan cooperation. Japan's remilitarisation will boost its international security role and the dominance of the US–Japan alliance in regional and global security affairs, but will need to be carefully managed if it is not to become a source of destabilising tensions.

Chapter Five: Japan's External Military Commitments

Is Japan on a path towards assuming a greater military role internationally, or has the recent military normalisation ground to a halt since the premiership of Junichiro Koizumi? In this book, Christopher W. Hughes assesses developments in defence expenditure, civil–military relations, domestic and international military–industrial complexes, Japan's procurement of regional and global power-projection capabilities, the expansion of US–Japan cooperation, and attitudes towards nuclear weapons, constitutional revision and the use of military force. In all of these areas, dynamic and long-term changes outweigh Japan's short-term political logjam over security policy. Hughes argues that many post-war constraints on Japan's military role are still eroding, and that Tokyo is moving towards a more assertive military role and strengthened US–Japan cooperation. Japan's remilitarisation will boost its international security role and the dominance of the US–Japan alliance in regional and global security affairs, but will need to be carefully managed if it is not to become a source of destabilising tensions.

Conclusion

Is Japan on a path towards assuming a greater military role internationally, or has the recent military normalisation ground to a halt since the premiership of Junichiro Koizumi? In this book, Christopher W. Hughes assesses developments in defence expenditure, civil–military relations, domestic and international military–industrial complexes, Japan's procurement of regional and global power-projection capabilities, the expansion of US–Japan cooperation, and attitudes towards nuclear weapons, constitutional revision and the use of military force. In all of these areas, dynamic and long-term changes outweigh Japan's short-term political logjam over security policy. Hughes argues that many post-war constraints on Japan's military role are still eroding, and that Tokyo is moving towards a more assertive military role and strengthened US–Japan cooperation. Japan's remilitarisation will boost its international security role and the dominance of the US–Japan alliance in regional and global security affairs, but will need to be carefully managed if it is not to become a source of destabilising tensions.

Chapter Three: The Transformation of Civilian Control

Is Japan on a path towards assuming a greater military role internationally, or has the recent military normalisation ground to a halt since the premiership of Junichiro Koizumi? In this book, Christopher W. Hughes assesses developments in defence expenditure, civil–military relations, domestic and international military–industrial complexes, Japan's procurement of regional and global power-projection capabilities, the expansion of US–Japan cooperation, and attitudes towards nuclear weapons, constitutional revision and the use of military force. In all of these areas, dynamic and long-term changes outweigh Japan's short-term political logjam over security policy. Hughes argues that many post-war constraints on Japan's military role are still eroding, and that Tokyo is moving towards a more assertive military role and strengthened US–Japan cooperation. Japan's remilitarisation will boost its international security role and the dominance of the US–Japan alliance in regional and global security affairs, but will need to be carefully managed if it is not to become a source of destabilising tensions.

Appendix: Tables and charts

Is Japan on a path towards assuming a greater military role internationally, or has the recent military normalisation ground to a halt since the premiership of Junichiro Koizumi? In this book, Christopher W. Hughes assesses developments in defence expenditure, civil–military relations, domestic and international military–industrial complexes, Japan's procurement of regional and global power-projection capabilities, the expansion of US–Japan cooperation, and attitudes towards nuclear weapons, constitutional revision and the use of military force. In all of these areas, dynamic and long-term changes outweigh Japan's short-term political logjam over security policy. Hughes argues that many post-war constraints on Japan's military role are still eroding, and that Tokyo is moving towards a more assertive military role and strengthened US–Japan cooperation. Japan's remilitarisation will boost its international security role and the dominance of the US–Japan alliance in regional and global security affairs, but will need to be carefully managed if it is not to become a source of destabilising tensions.

Japan and South Asia: Toward a Strengthened Economic Cooperation

While in the whole scenario of contemporary Asia-Pacific's economic prosperity, Japan's catalytic role is continuing to evolve, ironically in this region's sprawling vibrant landscape, the only backward sub-region that has not yet kept pace with this changing trend is South Asia. Despite the magnitude of Japanese development aid to all South Asian nations, the region's share in Japan's global trade and investment is too small to merit much attention. Moreover, in Tokyo's strategic-diplomatic agenda, South Asia has in fact figured little for a long time, because it has been relevant neither to Japan's security necessities nor the needs for a global economic governance framework. Nonetheless, Japan has very recently shown a heightened interest in expanding its cooperation with South Asia (particularly India). Under this backdrop, this article strives to explore the reasons why South Asia has today risen strategically in significance to the breadth of Japanese foreign policy initiatives. The study argues that for mutual values and benefits, the economic and geo-strategic partnership between Japan and South Asia needs to be nourished more effectively and constructively. This comprehensive policy-relevant scholarly piece concludes with a reasonable expectation that Tokyo's policy towards South Asia will embrace a comprehensive review process with an action-oriented roadmap in a strongly competitive and dynamically changing Asia.

Critiquing the Idea of Japanese Exceptionalism: Japan and the Coordination of North Korea Policy

AbstractThe idea that Japan is playing an 'alternative role' in its foreign policy—that it is keeping a 'conspicuously low profile' and that its stance is in some sense 'unique'—has been a recurring theme of analysis of Japanese foreign policy. This article aims to critique this idea of Japanese exceptionalism, epitomised for instance in the 'aikido state' metaphor. By analysing Japan's role in the Six-Party Talks—arguably a suitable case for testing this metaphor—the article concludes that, far from keeping a low profile, Tokyo has exercised obstructive power over other actors involved in the talks. This conclusion is substantiated by comparison with Tokyo's role in other important instances of North Korea policy coordination over the period 1993–2002. By comparing Japanese behaviour with that of the USA, China, Russia and North Korea, the article concludes, furthermore, that the concepts of 'obstructionism' and 'power' facilitate understanding of their behaviour as well—with the implication that Japan's foreign policy is not so unique.

Global Governance and Japan: The Institutional Architecture

Global governance is a concept that is being widely used to try to capture something important about power, global politics and the current structure of the world order, but few writers have specified with any degree of precision what they mean by it, and some even deny its existence. Japan's role in global governance or in shaping the world order is being debated as well, both domestically and abroad. The country has frequently been portrayed as anomalous in the sense that, although it is the second largest economy in the world, its role in the security field is still constrained. In the introduction to this book, it is claimed that Japan can in fact be seen as a normal country if the appropriate conceptual tools are used, taking the three variables of structure, agency and norms into account. The origin of the volume is two conferences, held in 2004 and 2005, bringing together experts on both topics (global governance and Japan's role therein) in an effort to interrogate both in a new and potentially insightful way and by doing so move forward the debate on global governance and Japan's role. The book consists of a collection of revised papers originally presented at these conferences.

Christian Prophecy in Japan: Uchimura Kanzō

Uchimura Kanzo (1861-1930) was an extremely accomplished Meiji Christian convert who emphasized a Christianity he considered in tune with traditional Japanese religiosity and free of Western influence. When a child, he observed his family's distress as Meiji rulers dismantled the Tokugawa political system. Then he assumed responsibility for their support when he turned sixteen. Though thus burdened by family responsibility, he finished a Japanese undergraduate degree in fisheries science, studied further in the United States, and then returned home to encourage Bible study among the Japanese. He became a respected essayist. The result: a complete works of more than twenty thousand pages and many loyal followers who helped form the new democratic Japanese society after 1945. Samples of his writings cover such themes as these: Old Testament-style prophecy; Japan's role to emphasize Christianity's Asian roots; the Christian believer's utter dependence on God; Christian morality; and churchless Christianity as Japan's contribution to world Christianity. KEYWORDS: Christianity - Japan - Bible study - theology - missionaries - prophecy - pacifism - Uchimura Kanzo (ProQuest-CSA LLC: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) THE AUTHOR AND evangelist Uchimura Kanzo ... (1861-1930) is one of Japan's most outstanding essayists and Christians. This article first outlines the events of his life and then provides an introduction to his thought through a consideration of representative selections from Uchimura's own writings. The changes brought about by the Restoration have been frequently used to divide discussions of Japanese history into modern or premodern, so decisive are they considered. Little snippets in Kanzo's recollections indicate he knew how the changes affected his family. Kanzo was born a samurai in 1861. He remembers the troops of the Tokugawa shogunate as they passed his home northbound en route to ultimate defeat. He also remembers that his father shortly thereafter was appointed governor of one of the new provinces. The father turned down the appointment to continue with his daimyo. His income declined as the new government phased out the institutions of the old one. Kanzo, the eldest son but only sixteen, became legal head of the household. From then on he had to provide for his parents. Fortunately, Kanzo excelled at languages. His parents encouraged him to study English. Kanzo, along with another lad who would become Kanzo's lifelong friend, Nitobe Inazo ... (1862-1933),1 was studying English when both were recruited in 1877 to study in the rude new northern settlement of Sapporo. Government leaders needed administrators for Hokkaido. Students in training for this task received everything they needed plus a good stipend. This enabled Kanzo defray his family's costs in Tokyo. Students received all their education, with the exception of mathematics and classical Chinese, in English. They became very able in it. Once they graduated, they corresponded in English. They thus became part of a very small group of Japanese whose members dealt with foreigners effectively. Kanzo finished as valedictorian of the second class and entered the bureaucracy as a fisheries researcher. His early publications in the field reflected great promise. He could have contributed greatly to the development of Japanese biology had not his experience led him in other directions. As a student, he had been converted to Christianity under the influence of the American instructors. They shared the conviction of many contemporary Americans that faith in Christianity formed an important part of the curriculum. The school principal, at once a devout Christian, inspired scientist, and a charismatic teacher, encouraged them to accept Christianity and invited a Protestant missionary to Sapporo to baptize them. Kanzo and his friend Inazo joined the group. Christianity had been prohibited and ruthlessly suppressed in Japan for more than two hundred and fifty years. …

Japan in 2006: A Political Transition

Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro stepped down in September 2006 after a five-year term in which he reshaped Japanese politics by undermining his own party's political machine, stretched the constraints on Japan's military role, and promoted a program of “structural” economic reform. In his final year in office, he confronted a backlash against his economic reform program and presided over a chill in relations with China and South Korea. Abe Shinzo replaced Koizumi, pledging to repair relations with Japan's neighbors and to promote a pro-growth economic strategy.

Japan in a Dynamic Asia: coping with the new security challenges Yoichiro Sato and Satu Limaye (eds) Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006

This book examines Japan's post-Cold War economic and strategic relations with Asian countries (China, Taiwan, South Korea, North Korea, Russia, Southeast Asian countries, Australia, and India). It examines how and why the relations have changed and what kind of regional role Asian countries expect Japan to play. Then, it considers the future of Japan's relations with them. The book identifies important changes in Japan's post-Cold War relations with Asian countries and provides clear explanations for these changes. In the security sphere, Japan has improved its bilateral ties with Asian countries and has promoted establishment of regional security regimes, such as ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), while enhancing its military capability and strengthening its alliance with the United States. These actions were prompted by Japan's concern about changes in the security environment in Asia, particularly, the rise of China's economic and military power and, to a lesser extent, North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. As for its enhanced alliance with the United States, it has other roots too: U.S. military restructuring, its pressure for Japan's greater security role in Asia and beyond, and Japan's fear of abandonment by the United States. Japan is partly concerned about its stronger alliance with the United States because it increases the risk of entanglement into conflicts involving the United States, which has increased its unilateral tendency following the Cold War. Offsetting this risk is another motive behind Japan's improved military capability and its greater security bilateralism and regionalism in Asia.

BOOK REVIEW: "Japan's Role in Asia: Mutual Development or Ruthless Competition (4th Ed.)", by Lim Hua Sing

BOOK REVIEW: "Japan's Role in Asia: Mutual Development or Ruthless Competition (4th Ed.)", by Lim Hua Sing

Parting the mists: discovering Japan and the rise of national-style painting in modern China

In Parting the Mists, Aida Yuen Wong makes a convincing argument that the forging of a national tradition in modern China was frequently pursued in association with rather than in rejection of Japan. The focus of her book is on Japan's integral role in the invention of national-style painting, or guohua, in early-twentieth-century China. Guohua, referring to brush paintings on traditional formats, is often misconstrued as a residual conservatism from the dynastic age that barricaded itself within classical traditions. Wong places this art form at the forefront of cross-cultural exchange. Notable proponents of guohua (e.g., Chen Hengke, Jin Cheng, Fu Baoshi, and Gao Jianfu) are discussed in connection with Japan, where they discovered stylistic and ideological paradigms consonant with the empowering of Asian/Oriental cultural practices against the backdrop of encroaching westernization. Not just a window on the West, Japan stood as an informant of China modernism in its own right. The first book in English devoted to Sino-Japanese dialogues in modern art, Parting the Mists explores the sensitive phenomenon of Japanism in the practice and theory of Chinese painting. Wong carries out a methodologically agile study that sheds light on multiple spheres: stylistic and iconographic innovations, history writing, art theory, patronage and the market, geo-politics, the creation of artists' societies, and exhibitions. Without avoiding the dark history of Japanese imperialism, she provides a nuanced reading of Chinese views about Japan and the two countries' convergent, and often colliding, courses of nationalism.

Japan's Policy Stance on East Asian Neo-Regionalism: From Being a “Reluctant”, to Becoming a “Proactive” State

This article is a theoretically grounded empirical contribution aimed at shedding light on Japan's policy stance on East Asian neo-regionalism. It aims to examine the recent region-building process in East Asia. The dynamics in East Asia suggest that regional institutionalization, brought about by norm diffusion based on the idea of neo-regionalism, is likely to follow a progressive and evolutionary trajectory through the institutionalization of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) + 3 (South Korea, Japan and China). It provides a wide spectrum of regional-integrationist perspectives in order to offer as full a picture as possible of Japan's role in promoting regional integration in East Asia. The key finding of this article is that Japan has changed from a being “reluctant”, to becoming a “proactive” state in the context of regional collaboration in East Asia.

The War Over the Kyoto School

The War Over the Kyoto School John C. Maraldo (bio) Political Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School, and Co-Prosperity. By Christopher S. Goto-Jones. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. 192 pages. Hardcover £65.00/$60.00. Defending Japan's Pacific War: The Kyoto School Philosophers and Post-White Power. By David Williams. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. xxvi + 238 pages. Softcover £17.99/$19.99. The political position of Kyoto School philosophers has been controversial ever since they were first identified by Tosaka Jun in 1931 as a group of thinkers who developed or responded to the "bourgeois" philosophy of Nishida Kitarō . Tosaka named Tanabe Hajime , Nishida's younger colleague at the Imperial University of Kyoto, as the prime mover in the development of the school.1 But just who else should be included in what Tosaka termed the Kyōto gakuha is itself an unsettled matter, and one reason is that the political positions of its "members" are so varied.2 Indeed Tosaka himself, as a one-time student of Nishida, is often included as a member despite his Marxist leanings and early distancing from his teacher. For all this variation, the political controversy has tended to focus on a single issue: the alleged support of these thinkers for Japan's war with other nations in the 1930s and 40s. To put the question in one particularly acute form, did the philosophers' application of the idea of an "East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" (Tōa kyōeiken) support the government's war ideology or did it criticize it? The controversy over this single issue, however, has been two-pronged: the matter of what exactly the philosophers' positions were, and the matter of whether these positions were "right" or justified. Tanabe advocated a kind of social democracy and the need for an ethnic state as early as the 1920s; Nishida began to write specifically on political problems in the mid-1930s; and in the 1940s they and their disciples publicly spoke out on the place of Japan in the world and the rationale for war. Their views managed to rouse the ire of both unquestioning patriots during the war and those who, in [End Page 375] the postwar period, sharply criticized wartime policies. Marxists also criticized Nishida both before and after the war. Nishida died in July 1945; Tanabe retired and retreated into the mountains, and protégés like Nishitani Keiji were banned from their Kyoto University positions until 1952. In the ensuing years the controversy grew alternately louder and softer, issuing in public discussions such as a roundtable in 1965 engaging Ōshima Yasumasa , Furukawa Tesshi , Takeyama Michio , and others,3 and critical analyses such as Takeuchi Yoshimi's in the republication of the text of the forum on "Overcoming Modernity" originally held in 1942.4 Outside Japan, intellectual historians such as Tatsuo Arima, author of The Failure of Freedom: A Portrait of Modern Japanese Intellectuals, occasionally and vicariously put the Kyoto School on trial.5 Controversy flared up again starting in 1987 with allegedly new revelations concerning Heidegger's involvement in Nazism-under the assumption that the mistake of the Kyoto School philosophers was akin to Heidegger's. In 1988 the journal Gendai shisō devoted an issue to fascism that included a nuanced article by Karatani Kōjin on De Man Heidegger, and Nishida, and another by Nakamura Yūjirō on "The Case of Nishida Kitarō." At the same time, a few other scholars proposed that Nishida's and Nishitani's visions of a new international order offer valuable suggestions for Japan's role in the world today.6 The momentum of the controversy propelled it well beyond the confines of academia. In Japan over the years I have met people in many walks of life, both old and young, who refuse even to read Nishida and Kyoto School thinkers because they are associated with the war and its untold suffering. All the while, as translations of Kyoto School thinkers increased, a group of philosophers and theologians in the Americas and Europe, oblivious of the political controversy, continued to find in Nishida and the Kyoto School profound Buddhist alternatives to perennial philosophical and religious...

The ‘Lost Decade’ and Japanese Business Studies

The 1990s have been branded ‘Japan's Lost Decade’ — a period of missed opportunities for Japanese policy-makers and corporate leaders. It was also a difficult time for Japanese business studies — as a field we missed significant opportunities to examine systematically the many critiques of the Japanese business system, and to develop a research agenda that would provide general insights into change processes in business systems. This paper proposes evolutionary theory as one vehicle for understanding and assessing the basic assumptions of many of the critiques of Japan's business system produced over the last decade. It suggests that the concepts of variation, selection and retention can provide fruitful guides to research topics, and proposes that the field of Japanese business studies should work to re-establish Japan's longstanding role as a ‘critical case’ in social science.

Japan's Human Security Role in Southeast Asia

Japan is playing an active human security role in post–Cold War Southeast Asia, especially in crises where thousands of lives are at stake, displaced, or even lost. This approach includes: providing massive financial assistance to the region during the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis, engaging in peacemaking in Cambodia and Aceh, peacebuilding in East Timor, Aceh, and Mindanao, offering financial and medical assistance when East Asia was hit by the SARS epidemic, and deploying the largest contingent of Japanese troops since the end of World War II for humanitarian assistance to tsunami-stricken Aceh in early 2005. A broad human security framework which encompasses peacemaking, post-conflict peacebuilding, and the dispatch of troops for humanitarian relief in Southeast Asia allows Japan to not only play a more active political role but also to avoid being branded as an aspiring military power by its domestic and international critics.

Japan's Leadership Shifts: From the East Asian Crisis to the Establishment of an ASEAN + 3 Summit

The East Asian crisis was a catalyst for changing Japan's regional position and leadership role and therefore had significant implications for Japan's geo-political and economic relationship with East Asia. The Japanese government maintained the ‘developmental state’ approach in collaborating with the economic restructuring programmes in major East Asian countries after the crisis. Japanese responses to the crisis had significant implications for East Asian regional integration. They clearly indicated the shift in Japan's behaviour and the emergence of a regional leadership role in promoting regional integration in East Asia. This suggests that Japanese confidence in the validity of the developmental state concept prompted the government to reconsider its pro-active role in the establishment of an ASEAN +3 Summit.

Japan's changing conception of the ASEAN Regional Forum: from an optimistic liberal to a pessimistic realist perspective

This article explores changes in Japan's conception of and policy toward security multilateralism1 in the Asia-Pacific region after the end of the Cold War with special reference to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). It makes the observation that notwithstanding Japan's active role behind the establishment of the ARF in the early 1990s and continuing public expression of strong support for Asia-Pacific security multilateralism since that time, in actuality, Japan's enthusiasm for it has dwindled from the late 1990s onwards. This article argues that this has been due primarily to Japan's disappointing experiences in the ARF, evinced by its abortive efforts to promote meaningful cooperative security measures and the failings of multilateral security diplomacy in addressing its security concerns. Consequently, Japan's conception of regional security multilateralism has shifted from an optimistic liberal to a more pessimistic realist perspective from which the ARF can, at best, be seen as a venue contributing only to a minimal level of confidence building among regional countries or, to put it more cynically, ‘a talking shop’. This has made Japan's ARF policy more tentative and less energetic. Japan's enthusiasm has also been diluted by a number of internal and external constraints on ARF policy, including US misgivings about Japan's tilt toward regional security multilateralism, its domestic organizational limitations, growing dissent within the Japanese government over the value of security multilateralism, the lack of political support for bureaucratic initiatives and the unexpected frictions between bilateral and multilateral security approaches in Japan's overall security policy.