This book is about Japan’s security, but it began in China. This is strangely appropriate as China’s choices about its security policies have greatly influenced Japan’s. In order to better understand this interaction, in 2010 I spent four months at Peking University researching China’s views of Japan. There I was able to witness firsthand the huge swing in Japan-China relations that was under way as China’s economic size surpassed Japan’s and, in September of that year, the first major escalation of the territorial dispute between Japan and China took place over an incident caused by a confrontation between a Chinese fishing trawler captain and the Japan Coast Guard in waters claimed by both countries. Seeing how China’s state-controlled media shifted the conversation and tone away from celebrating warm relations between Japan and China in advance of a large binational friendship conference held in Beijing in August to vilifying Japanese as unrepentant militarists just weeks later drove home to me the challenges Japan’s diplomats and military planners must manage.
I traveled from Beijing to Tokyo in October 2010 and witnessed the resolution of the Fishing Trawler Incident (as it has come to be called) through the eyes of the Japanese media, which offered a much wider range of views about the origins of and the paths to resolution of the Japan-China crisis that unfolded over the course of about a month. The Japanese media also offered countless stories and opinion pieces about the broader challenges posed by China’s economic and military rise. Since that time, China’s economy and its military spending have roughly doubled, and several more crisis incidents related to the Senkaku Islands dispute have occurred, prompting a number of changes to Japan’s defense posture.
China is far from the only issue on the minds of Japanese security planners, political leaders, and the general public, however. March 11, 2011, became a date seared into Japanese collective memory. A massive earthquake off the east coast of Japan’s main island caused a tsunami that washed miles inland, killing around twenty thousand people, making hundreds of thousands homeless, and leading to the meltdown of two nuclear power reactors situated along the coast near the town of Fukushima, a few hours north of Tokyo. That there was not a massive explosion or greater spread of radiation beyond the limited amount that did escape is a testament to Japanese courage and planning, whatever the mistakes and lapses that have been revealed in retrospect.
I spent the summer of 2011 conducting research for this book in offices with half the lights shut off to conserve energy and full of workers in short sleeves and without neckties to cope with higher air-conditioning settings in a shared effort to address Japan’s deep dependence on energy imports with its fifty-three nuclear power reactors either disabled or shut down as a precaution until safety inspections could be conducted. The first of these reactors restarted only four years later, and many others probably never will. This energy dependence—long an aspect of Japan’s broader security planning—thus became a second major crisis to unfold that year.
Japan’s resilience in the face of the March 11, 2011, triple disasters of the massive earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown of two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been noted by many, including Japan’s military security planners and those who craft military doctrine elsewhere in the region and beyond. The crisis helped two longtime allies—Japan and the United States—heal some recent wounds inflicted over Japan’s rocky political transition from long-standing rule by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party to the progressive Democratic Party, a change of power that had taken place for only nine months in the nearly sixty years the US-Japan Security Treaty had been in effect.
Since my return to Washington, DC, in 2011, I have traveled back to Japan a dozen times and spoken to security planners, politicians, and friends around the dinner table about many other challenges that Japan faces—in military security and in a troubling range of other areas, from its economic sluggishness to its low birthrate. What I heard was a mix of openness to new approaches—inspired, I believe, by both difficult circumstances and hope about new possibilities in a period of political change—and a deep nostalgia for the past. Discussion of Japan’s history—and divisive debates over it—raged in the Japanese media and on the streets in demonstrations large and small; these debates and demonstrations continue.
Over the course of writing this book, debates concerning historical narratives and remembrance were raging also in the places I live, Maryland and Washington, DC. Related to the subject of this book, Korean-Americans and other supporters in nearby Virginia had successfully advocated for placing a statue commemorating the “comfort women” forced to service the Japanese military during World War II, and Japan’s prime minister Shinzō Abe made a historic state visit to Washington, DC, where he became the first Japanese prime minister to address a joint session of Congress, during which he expressed “repentance” for the pain and suffering inflicted on Americans and others by Japan during World War II.
But these were not the only debates over history and remembrance I was encountering on a daily basis while writing this book. The year that I was on sabbatical leave for completing this book, 2014, was also the two-hundredth anniversary of the conclusion of the War of 1812, that pivotal war for maintaining American independence that most Americans have little knowledge of. Those seeking to commemorate this important milestone in American history struggled to connect with local populations where decisive battles were fought—and even more so with the general public. In the midst of this, I attended a reception at the British embassy in Washington, DC. In his toast to the new year, the affable British ambassador joked that he especially welcomed the arrival of 2015 because it meant the end of a year of apologies he had been making across the United States in his public remarks in 2014, two hundred years after the British had burned down the Capitol, the White House, and most of the rest of Washington, DC, in one of the republic’s darkest moments. He even included a slide in his PowerPoint snapshots of the past year of a painting depicting the burning of the White House. “Sorry about that,” he quipped, to general laughter in the audience. The United States and Britain have come a long way from those dark days to create a “special relationship” across the Atlantic, just as the United States and Japan have in creating their “most important bilateral relationship, bar none,” across the Pacific in the years since Japan’s defeat in World War II. And yet it is hard to imagine a gathering where “sorry about that” would be met with laughter in reference to Japanese wartime atrocities. This contrast evokes an important theme running through this book: the strong influence of the past on Japan’s security present and future.
There was another commemoration of a war going on at the time I was writing this book: the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the end of the American Civil War. This was the most devastating war in American history, in terms of both loss of life (more than in all other American wars before and after, combined) and persistent, divisive memories. One hundred fifty years later, major US newspapers publish editorials about how school textbooks should present the narrative of that war, which statues should be allowed to commemorate the legacy of the conflict, and what context should be provided in nearby historic signs. Twenty-four-hour news channels covered the lowering “for the last time” (perhaps) of the controversial Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina state capital building in 2015.
It has been fascinating for me to experience these American debates over a war that happened before my great-grandfather had immigrated to this country and to experience the heartfelt passions over the issues in local areas in which I now live but was not raised. But at the same time, these have become my battles, too. I applauded the US Supreme Court ruling in 2015 that allowed US state governors to reject issuance of special car license plates that included the Confederate flag and celebrated with friends the “victory” in South Carolina the day the flag came down.
In Japan, too, I have witnessed such passions in friends and acquaintances as well as total strangers related to Japan’s history and postwar security identity. I watched with friends at the Tokyo Foundation headquarters the historic press conference where Prime Minister Abe, on July 1, 2014, released his cabinet statement that reinterpreted Article Nine of Japan’s postwar constitution, paving the way for Japan to participate in collective self-defense activities with other friendly states. Afterward I walked around the neighborhood of the prime minister’s residence and saw thousands of protestors holding handmade signs rejecting the cabinet decision and calling for “preserving Article Nine” and for “no more wars.” I have interviewed members of Japan’s parliament who show great emotion in response to one historical narrative over another or to a minor policy decision that nonetheless resonates deeply with core issues of Japan’s postwar identity.
I am indebted to scholars in Japan, the United States, and elsewhere who focus their research on these issues despite the challenges of objectively reporting on matters so emotional for so many, sometimes at considerable risk to their academic careers and even their physical safety. My work focuses on the politics around security issues and on policy outcomes as they relate to Japan’s evolving regional and global security environment—but it is impossible to understand the currents of this political storm without drawing on scholarship of those who have explained how history issues have unfolded in postwar Japan and in the countries affected by Japan’s militarist and imperialist periods.
I am truly humbled by the number of people and institutions that helped me in the creation of this book. My understanding of Japanese security policy has been deeply enriched by their willingness to share their views, provide venues for discussion, and introduce me to others with similar interests. I cannot possibly name everyone who has assisted in this project, but I would like to single out some individuals and institutions for special thanks.
Gerald Curtis swooped in just as I was completing my previous book to encourage me not to rest on my laurels and, importantly, to invite me to participate in a collaborative project on China-Japan-US relations together with Professor Ryosei Kokubun and Professor Wang Jisi. So began my deepened understanding of the regional security environment Japan faces in the twenty-first century. In the years that followed, Gerry contributed important encouragement and feedback. Professor Kokubun did as well and, in addition, provided an institutional home at Keio University for part of a sabbatical leave, as did Professor Wang at Peking University. I would also like to thank Professor Zhu Feng and Professor Yoshihide Soeya for especially warm welcomes in those locations. Rounding off my institutional homes over the course of this project, Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies granted a research fellowship in the summer of 2009, and the East-West Center in Washington, DC, once again offered a space for me to write up my research findings in 2014. These homes away from home gave me access to both formal and informal feedback from researchers from those countries and others that enriched the quality of this book. I would like to collectively thank the many helpful staff and researchers at these institutions. Thank-you in addition to David Bradley of the Atlantic Media Company for providing quiet office space to complete the writing of the book.
Washington, DC, affords an exceedingly rich environment for the study of Japanese security policy, with its countless American experts on Japan and frequent visitors from Japan’s policy and scholarly communities. I have benefited greatly from participation in public and private meetings at the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Center for a New American Security, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Stimson Center. Despite the frenetic pace these specialists keep, many have made time to talk with me about my ideas and to share relevant information. In particular, a small group of experts generously agreed to meet with me monthly over lunch at the East-West Center to discuss five draft chapters of the book. They pushed me to address topics I would not have considered, corrected numerous errors, and offered information and feedback that have led to a much richer narrative. This group includes Kuniko Ashizawa, Suzanne Basalla, Bill Breer, Richard Bush, Emma Chanlett-Avery, Rust Deming, Ellen Frost, Glen Fukushima, Ben Goldberg, Michael Green, Tobias Harris, Komei Isozaki, Kentaro Kaihara, Kazuyo Kato, Weston Konishi, Fumiaki Kubo, Satu Limaye, Mark Manyin, Satoru Mori, Kongdan (Katy) Oh, Ian Rinehart, Grace Ruch, Ben Self, Junko Tanaka, Yuki Tatsumi, and Damien Tomkins. In addition, I would like to thank Kent Calder, Mike Mochizuki, Jim Schoff, Sheila Smith, and Nicholas Szechenyi. On the Japanese side, I offer a collective thank-you to all the rotating staff and visitors who made time to meet with me—a group that included many of Japan’s top security policy officials and numerous members of the Diet.
I include a final thank-you to several individuals who provided feedback at the last stages of this book’s completion, when Japan’s security policies and politics seemed to be evolving daily: Emma Chanlett-Avery, Steve Clemons, Zack Cooper, Ellen Frost, Brad Glosserman, Jeffrey Hornung, Eric Langenbacher, Katy Oh, and Hiroshi Yamazoe. Naturally all remaining errors of fact are on me!
Research for the book was funded in part by a Japan Foundation Abe fellowship and Washington College faculty enhancement and sabbatical leave grants. The Mike and Maureen Mansfield Foundation’s US-Japan Network for the Future program also offered valuable support over the course of this project. Research assistance at the East-West Center in Washington, DC, and at Washington College was provided by Ji Eun Choi, Alex Forster, Naoko Funatsu, Olivia Hughes, and Bradley Janocha. Kuniko Ashizawa, in addition, provided valuable research assistance and suggestions during the project’s final stages.
Lastly, but first in my heart, thank-you to my husband and family for their understanding during all my time away from occasions large and small.