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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
175658
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| Summary/Abstract |
In what ways are Japanese foreign and security policies changing? How far will these changes go? Will they result in a policy posture that breaks from the post-1945 approach as originally designed by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru? This special issue presents six articles that address these questions. They tackle the relationship between recent changes in Japanese domestic policy institutions and Japanese diplomatic and security practice. In this introduction, we outline the significance of the essays’ findings and propose a methodological shift in the interpretation of Japanese policy. We make the case that Japan’s approach to diplomatic and security affairs under Abe is evidence of the emergence of a ‘Realpolitik Japan’. From this perspective, we argue that values and political ideology have translated into practical choices that make the question of the ‘break with the post-1945’ approach less relevant to understand the significance of political change.
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| 2 |
ID:
189250
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| Summary/Abstract |
Recent scholarship suggests that the thawing of diplomatic relations between China and Japan has caused a readjustment of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and Tokyo’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Vision towards an emerging complementarity. Through careful process-tracking, elite interviews, and analysis of Chinese and Japanese primary sources, this article instead demonstrates how, outside of the East Asian spotlight, Sino-Japanese geo-economic competition continues in South Asia and the Mekong subregion, fueled by power politics and a mutual distrust of each other’s initiatives. On the basis of this evidence, this article qualifies Sino-Japanese interactions as a quest and denial for spheres of influence, whereas the Japanese government aims at denying Chinese spheres of influence. In doing so, this article highlights how Japanese proactivism from Sri Lanka to Thailand, via infrastructure and government financing, has become a driver of growing non-traditional security cooperation with India, the U.S., and Australia.
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| 3 |
ID:
154259
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article reassesses the 2006 and, tentatively, the 2014 reset in Sino-Japanese relations to argue in favour of an increasingly state-centric understanding of Japanese diplomacy. By making use of a narrative account and a variety of primary sources—including personal memoirs, elite interviews, participatory observation, and leaked State Department cables—this article finds that Abe Shinzō’s foreign policy confidante, Yachi Shōtarō, embodied the unmatched influence of government actors in Japan’s political landscape. The article provides a close-up portrait of Yachi, with an emphasis on his preference for geopolitics, strategy, and secret diplomacy. Yachi and the institutional apparatus he represented sought détente with Japan’s main strategic adversary, while pushing for geopolitical initiatives that targeted China. The article concludes by arguing that the Abe administration’s insistence on, and institutionalized practice of, conducting public affairs in secret will likely further strengthen the role of the nation-state and of government actors in Japan, also in light of growing geopolitical tensions in East Asia.
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| 4 |
ID:
151442
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article operationalizes Japanese leadership in foreign and security policy, specifically the Abe administrations’ consistent China balancing. It will do so to dispel instances of Premier-centered diplomacy and posit that Abe's diplomatic agenda has rested on a ‘hybrid’ policy-making authority, where the leverage enjoyed by the Prime Minister's office (the Kantei) rested on little-appreciated politicized personnel appointments and demotions within the bureaucratic apparatus, specifically the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moreover, successful Japanese leadership has functioned especially when operating within the scope of the US strategic framework towards East Asia. While structural constraints, such as the ever-present influence of the USA and bureaucratic coordination, may constrain options, effective leadership in foreign policy-making can indeed make a difference within those boundaries.
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