1. Japan’s Twenty-First-Century Security Renaissance
1. The DPJ merged with the Japan Innovation Party and “Vision of Reform” to form the Democratic Party (minshintō) on March 27, 2016. This book maintains the DPJ abbreviation, while recognizing that in the later half of 2016 the party had taken on a new identity.
2. The complete text of Article Nine reads as follows: “1. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes. 2. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”
3. “Sebuntīnzu de kangaeyō sengo nanajūnen” [Let’s think about the seventy years of the postwar period at the age of seventeen], Sebuntīn, September 2015; “Anpo hōsei mada kutsugaeseru” [We can still overturn the security bill], Shūkan pureibōi, August 3, 2015; “Ikura heiwashugi o tanaetemo, Nihon wa Isuramukoku ni nerawareru” [Chanting pacifism will not make Japan immune from the Islamic State’s threats], Sapio, April 2015. Other examples would include “Okāsan koso kaiken no maeni chiken” [We mothers need to know about the constitution before the constitution changes], VERY, March 2014, and “Anpo hōsei dewa heiwa ni naranai” [The security bill will not make peace], SPA!, September 15, 2015.
4. Takashi Umehara et al., Kenpō kyūjō wa watashitachi no anzen soshō desu [Our security rests on Article Nine] (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2015); Aritsune Toyota, Kokubō onchi ga kuni o horobosu [“Defense tone deafness” will destroy our nation] (Tokyo: Shōdensha, 2015). Examples of more middle-of-the-road attempts to discuss the merits of security reform would include Akira Ikegami, Sekai kara sensō ga nakunaranai hontō no riyū [True reasons why war will not disappear from the world] (Tokyo: Shōdensha, 2015), and Yōji Kōda, Sansei, hantai o iumae no shūdan jieiken nyūmon [Introduction to collective self-defense, before deciding yes or no] (Tokyo: Gentōsha, 2014).
5. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Military Expenditure Database, 1988–2014, http://milexdata.sipri.org/files.
6. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2012 (London: Routledge, 2012).
7. The ten members of ASEAN are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
8. Andrew L. Oros, Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity, and the Evolution of Security Practice (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008), develops the latter argument in depth, that Japan’s Cold War military policies evolved in important ways in response to an evolving domestic and international environment, and that Japan contributed to Cold War–era global military strategy in many ways that were downplayed to the Japanese public during this period. Yasuhiro Izumikawa, “Explaining Japanese Antimilitarism: Normative and Realist Constraints on Japan’s Security Policy,” International Security 35, no. 2 (fall 2010): 123–60, and Paul Midford, Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011), also argue that Japan’s antimilitarist past has been overstated. I return to this subject in chapter 2.
9. Daily protests in front of the prime minister’s official residence in June 2014 over the reported plan by Prime Minister Abe to reinterpret Article Nine of Japan’s constitution to allow the JSDF to participate in CSD activities with other militaries and a reprisal of such protests when enabling legislation was introduced into the Diet in June 2015 are two recent examples, discussed in chapters 5 and 6.
10. Daisuke Tsuda et al., Abe seiken no netto s enryaku [The Abe government’s “net” strategy] (Tokyo: Tsukuru shuppan, 2013), demonstrates Abe’s skillful use of Facebook and other social media to mobilize the so-called net uyoku (right-wing netizens) in support of his policies. On the broader transformation of Japanese politics as a result of new media, see Iwao Ōsaka, “Sōsharu media ga kaeru seiji to sono genkai” [Politics in the era of social media: Its impact and limits], Voters, February 2012, 10–12.
11. Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: PublicAffairs, 2007). Other recent books predicting Japan’s growing military power include Michael Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism: Foreign Policy Challenges in an Era of Uncertain Power (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Richard Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2007); and Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Remilitarisation (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2009). Dennis Yasutomo has argued that Japan “crossed the Rubicon” with its limited dispatch of the JSDF to Iraq in 2003: Japan’s Civil-Military Diplomacy: The Banks of the Rubicon (New York: Routledge, 2014).
12. The Kōmei Party changed its English-language name from New Kōmei Party in 2014; in this book I use the direct translation of the long-standing Japanese Kōmeitō, or Kōmei Party, for both before and after 2014.
13. In addition to my previous argument of this position in Normalizing Japan, see Linus Hagström, “The ‘Abnormal’ State: Identity, Norm/Exception and Japan,” European Journal of International Relations 20, no. 2 (2014): 1–24, for another caution over the unreflective use of this term.
14. Political heavyweight Ichirō Ozawa is generally credited with popularizing the discourse on normalization in Japanese with his call for Japan to become a futsū no kuni (normal nation) in his 1994 book Blueprint for a New Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation, trans. Louisa Rubinfien (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1994), but many others in Japan have characterized Japan’s behavior in the realm of military security as “abnormal,” dating back to the early postwar years and the predecessors of Shinzō Abe, such as discourse under the political reign of Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi (1957–1960), in the context of efforts to revise the initial Mutual Defense Treaty between Japan and the United States.
15. The term “normal” is used in this book generally without quotation marks to reflect the conventions in discourse regarding this concept in writings both inside and outside Japan.
16. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism, White Paper on Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, 2013, http://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001063075.pdf.
17. Citing Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism, White Paper on Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, 2010, Smith writes, “96 percent of Japan’s energy supply and 60 percent of its food supply come from overseas” (Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China [New York: Columbia University Press, 2015], 196).
18. Walter LeFeber, The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations throughout History (New York: Norton, 1997), and Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire: China
and the World Since 1750 (New York: Basic Books, 2012), offer two very readable narratives of this early modern period of Japan’s history in relation to the United States and China. Prime Minister Abe’s Advisory Panel on the History of the Twentieth Century and on Japan’s Role and the World Order in the Twenty-First Century offers a contemporary Japanese narrative of the period that exposes the continuing disagreement among states in the region about the origins of World War II in Asia. The panel’s report was issued on August 6, 2015, and is available at http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/21c_koso/pdf/report_en.pdf.
19. The complete text of this document is available at http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/siryou/131217anzenhoshou/nss-e.pdf.
20. Oros, Normalizing Japan, discusses these debates over the extent of postwar rearmament in chapter 2. Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism, explains these debates in terms of the Yoshida Doctrine developed by Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida in the early postwar period; Samuels, Securing Japan, explains these developments under the mantra of “baking the pacifist loaf” (chapter 2).
21. Amy Catalinac convincingly demonstrates the effect of the changed electoral system in Electoral Reform and National Security: From Pork to Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Tomohito Shinoda discusses the effect of institutional reform in the prime minister’s office (kantei) on foreign policy, in Koizumi Diplomacy: Japan’s Kantei Approach to Foreign and Defense Affairs (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), and in his later work Contemporary Japanese Politics: Institutional Changes and Power Shifts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).
22. The LDP did briefly lose its grip on power for nine months in 1993–1994 due to a split in the LDP that led some party members to bolt and to join a coalition of opposition parties in what proved to be an unwieldy coalition. The LDP returned to power in 1994 in a coalition with its former archrivals, the JSP, which had the result of accelerating the decline of the JSP.
23. Cabinet Secretariat, National Security Strategy: December 17, 2013. Note that the literal translation of what the Japanese government calls in English “proactive contributions to peace” (sekkyokuteki heiwashugi) is “proactive pacifism.” Arguably the alternative translation more accurately conveys the spirit of the phrase to an English-speaking audience.
24. Michael Green, in Japan’s Reluctant Realism, published in 2001, was prescient in his prediction of such a shift.
25. Smith, Intimate Rivals, develops the argument that China’s rise has deeply influenced Japan’s domestic politics but does not examine in depth the implications for Japan’s security policies. Numerous contributors to a recent special issue of Pacific Review argue that the scholarly approach of “relational constructivism” explains well this interactive dynamic between international and domestic political change; for an overview, see Linus Hagström and Karl Gustafsson, “Japan and Identity Change: Why It Matters in International Relations,” Pacific Review 28, no. 1 (March 2015): 1–22.
26. The scholarly literature explaining this predominant theory and seeking to adapt it to address perceived flaws in the core theory is vast. One variant, called postclassical realism, has been applied by numerous scholars to the case of Japan. See Gideon Rose, “Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy,” World Politics 51, no. 1 (October 1998): 144–72, for an explanation of this and other variants, and Tsuyoshi Kawasaki, “Postclassical Realism and Japanese Security Policy,” Pacific Review 14, no. 2 (June 2001): 221–40, for one of several applications of an adapted realist paradigm to Japan.
27. Oros, Normalizing Japan, chapter 14, among other works, develops this argument.
28. Ibid., 9.
29. Recent inquiry along these lines related to Japan includes several contributors to a special issue of Pacific Review, introduced by Hagström and Gustafsson, “Japan and Identity Change.”
30. On the concept of a security dilemma, see Robert Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30, no. 2 (January 1978): 167–214. For a post–Cold War application of this concept to East Asia, see Richard K. Betts, “Wealth, Power, and Instability: East Asia and the United States after the Cold War,” International Security 18, no. 3 (winter 1993–1994): 34–77.
31. Two intriguing examinations of the latter phenomenon, the diffusion of power in the system, are Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Future of Power (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), and Moisés Naím, The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be (New York: Basic Books, 2013).
32. These documents are available in English at http://www.mod.go.jp/j/approach/agenda/guideline/2014/pdf/20131217_e2.pdf, and http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/siryou/131217anzenhoshou/nss-e.pdf.
33. Jing Sun, Japan and China as Charm Rivals: Soft Power in Regional Diplomacy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), and Claude Meyer, China or Japan: Which Will Lead Asia? (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), examine this broader competition beyond military power.
34. China’s direct military threat to Japan is focused on the Senkaku Islands, which China and Taiwan both claim but which Japan administers. The United States does not take a position on the sovereignty of the islands but has pledged, under Article 5 of the US-Japan Security Treaty, to protect any territory Japan administers, which thus includes these islands.
35. Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen, The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2011). provides a comprehensive overview of the LDP’s evolution from its creation in 1955 to its fall from power to the DPJ in 2009.
36. Gerald L. Curtis, The Japanese Way of Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), explains the electoral logic of the old system, and The Logic of Japanese Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), also by Curtis, elucidates the early dynamics under the new electoral system. Tomohito Shinoda offers an updated overview and analysis in Contemporary Japanese Politics: Institutional Changes and Power Shifts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).
37. The generational-shift aspect of this changeover, from the former LDP leaders who had some direct experience with World War II to what is known as the postwar generation of Prime Minister Abe, is discussed in Atsutoshi Yamada, “Sensō o shiranai Abe seiken no bōsō o ureru riberaru-ha no chōrōtachi” [Liberal elders lament the runaway Abe administration ignorant of war], Keizaikai, August 5, 2014. One English-language description of this factional shift is Kazuhiko Togo, “The Assertive Conservative Right in Japan: Their Formation and Perspective,” SAIS Review of International Affairs 30, no. 1 (winter–spring 2010): 77–89. Samuels, Securing Japan, discusses the beginning of this shift in the broader context of security policy through 2007.
38. “Iro aseta ‘hoshu honryū’” [The fading conservative mainstream], Sankei shimbun, June 17, 2014, and “Hoshu honryū wa dareno te ni” [Who will inherit the conservative mainstream?], Asahi shimbun, February 9, 2014, both develop this theme.
39. These two documents are examined in chapters 4 and 5, respectively.
40. It should be noted, however, that Noda’s move to nationalize the islands was driven in large part by the policy activism of the far right, led by then governor of Tokyo Shintarō Ishihara.
41. Abe Shinzō, “Japan Is Back: A Conversation with Shinzo Abe,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2013), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/interviews/2013-05-16/japan-back.
42. There is an extensive scholarly literature on these earlier historical disjunctures. Pyle, Japan Rising, offers a strong introduction to the topic with many citations to other scholarly work.
43. Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), aptly notes that expressing contrition does not always lead to acceptance by the aggrieved party and can also cause domestic political backlash.
44. Thomas U. Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), chapter 4, provides an excellent summary of this narrative.
45. Thomas U. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), popularized the term “antimilitarism” over the also commonly used term “pacifism.” Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism, among others, argues that postwar Japanese security policy is better described as rooted in the Yoshida Doctrine, of which antimilitarist or pacifist security policies are one facet.
46. Oros, Normalizing Japan, among others, develops this argument, rooted in the concept of security identity. Bhubhindar Singh, Japan’s Security Identity: From a Peace State to an International State (London: Routledge, 2013), applies this framework to Japanese security policy through 2012.
47. Chapter 2 discusses earlier battles to adapt Japan’s antimilitarist security identity, particularly precursors to Japan’s security renaissance under the rule of Prime Minister Koizumi, 2001–2006.
48. John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 1999), reproduces this photograph and offers many other striking visual portrayals of the occupation, together with a masterful, Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural and historical narrative that was a best seller in its two-volume Japanese translation—itself an indicator of Japanese interest and attention to this period of their history.
49. George R. Packard, Protest in Tokyo: The Security Treaty Crisis of 1960 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), provides a compelling narrative of the period soon after the events; John Swenson-Wright, Unequal Allies? United States Security and Alliance Policy Toward Japan, 1945–1960 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005), provides new insights on this period using expanded documentary evidence.
50. Emma Chanlett-Avery et al., Japan-U.S. Relations: Issues for Congress, CRS Report 7–5700, September 29, 2015 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service).
51. Ibid., 20. Details about the funding mechanisms for the Japanese government portion are provided in this source.
52. Ibid., 22.
53. Lindsay Black, Japan’s Maritime Security Strategy: The Japan Coast Guard and Maritime Outlaws (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
54. The authoritative study of this deployment in English is Yasutomo, Japan’s Civil-Military Diplomacy.
55. Cabinet Office polling has indicated Japanese “affinity” toward the United States at over 80 percent since 2011.
56. Chanlett-Avery et al., Japan-US Relations, i.
57. Two contrasting studies of the broader US-Japan relationship are Kent Calder, The Pacific Alliance: Reviving U.S.-Japan Relations (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), and Gavan McCormack, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace (New York: Verso, 2007).
2. The Gradual Awakening
1. Yasuhiro Izumikawa, “Explaining Japanese Antimilitarism: Normative and Realist Constraints on Japan’s Security Policy,” International Security 35, no. 2 (fall 2010): 123–60, provides a good summary of different viewpoints on this debate circa 2010.
2. Nicholas Eberstadt, “Demography and Japan’s Future,” in Reimagining Japan: The Quest for a Future That Works, edited by McKinsey and Company, 82–87 (San Francisco: VIZ Media, 2011). Japan’s demographic challenges are discussed further in chapter 3.
3. Andrew L. Oros, Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity, and the Evolution of Security Practice (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008). My work was intended to build on important work in this area by Thomas U. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), and Peter Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996); others have further built on this framework, including Bhubhindar Singh, Japan’s Security Identity: From a Peace State to an International State (London: Routledge, 2013).
4. Two recent English-language works in this area, which both cite extensive literature in English and in Japanese, are Thomas U. Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008).
5. Two important English-language works in this area that both cite extensive literature in English and in Japanese and present quite different perspectives are Kent Calder, The Pacific Alliance: Reviving U.S.-Japan Relations (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), and Gavin McCormack, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace (New York: Verso, 2007). Two more recent and policy-focused studies are Sheila A. Smith, Japan’s New Politics and the U.S.-Japan Alliance (Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations Press, July 2014), and Michael Green and Zack Cooper, eds., Strategic Japan: New Approaches to Foreign Policy and the US-Japan Alliance (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2015).
6. A lively debate informed by excellent scholarly research has populated major journals on this subject in the past decade. See Jennifer Lind, “Pacifism or Passing the Buck? Testing Theories of Japanese Security Policy,” International Security 29, no. 1 (summer 2004): 92–121; Izumikawa, “Explaining Japanese Antimilitarism”; Akitoshi Miyashita, “Where Do Norms Come From? Foundations of Japan’s Postwar Pacifism,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7, no. 1 (January 2007): 99–120; Paul Midford, “The Logic of Reassurance and Japan’s Grand Strategy,” Security Studies 11, no. 3 (spring 2002): 1–43; and Christopher P. Twomey, “Japan, a Circumscribed Balancer: Building on Defensive Realism to Make Predictions about East Asian Security,” Security Studies 9, no. 4 (summer 2000): 167–205.
7. Three that cover the full postwar period are Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: PublicAffairs, 2007); Richard Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007); Kazuhiko Togo, Japan’s Foreign Policy 1945–2003: The Quest for Pro active Policy (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
8. Indirectly, however, political actors in Japan from the left and the right were concerned by the threat posed to Japan by the deepened American influence, the long-term plan for a US military presence in Japan that would result, and Japan’s dependence on this one ally for military security—the third historical legacy discussed in this book.
9. However, as critics often note, Japan possesses one of the largest plutonium stockpiles in the world, and though carefully monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Japan has the technology to make a nuclear weapon fairly quickly. Moreover, Japan enjoys extended deterrence under the US nuclear umbrella, so whether it truly would prefer a world without nuclear weapons remains an open question.
10. The “Basic Policy for National Defense” is included annually in Defense of Japan—for example, Ministry of Defense, Defense of Japan 2007 (Tokyo: Inter Group, 2007), 462. The policy also commits Japan to support of the UN system and roots Japanese security in the US-Japan alliance.
11. Until Japan’s first formal national security strategy was crafted in 2013, the NDPG served effectively in that role, while the MTDP that followed soon after each NDPG would set out numerical targets and operationalization of the NDPG. Annual defense white papers, published since 1975, have been a third major official source on Japanese defense planning—until the fourth, the national security strategy, was developed in 2013.
12. James Auer, “Japan’s Military Capability in 2015,” SAIS Policy Forum Series, no. 5 (Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins University, December 1998), 5.
13. Ron Matthews and Keisuke Matsuyama, Japan’s Military Renaissance? (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 11.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 12.
16. James Auer and Robyn Lim, “The Maritime Basis of American Security in East Asia,” Naval War College Review 54, no. 1 (2001): 48.
17. Christopher W. Hughes, “Japan’s Military Modernization: In Search of a ‘Normal’ Security Role,” in Strategic Asia 2005–06: Military Modernization in an Era of Uncertainty, edited by Ashley J. Tellis and Michael Wills, 105–36 (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2005).
18. The full document is reproduced in the annual Defense of Japan volumes and also posted in both English and Japanese at http://www.mod.go.jp.
19. Japan’s first non-LDP prime minister in almost forty years, Morihiro Hosokawa, caused alarm in Washington, DC, and among Japanese defense elites when he published an article after the end of his term as prime minister in the influential US journal Foreign Affairs, asking in his provocative title, “Are U.S. Troops in Japan Needed?” (July/August 1998:2–5).
20. Oros, Normalizing Japan, includes two tables that summarize twenty-two important security-related developments from 1998 to 2007 (such as North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests and China’s foray into manned space flight) and fifteen important Japanese security decisions in response in table 10 (p. 177) and table 11 (p. 179), respectively. Annual Defense of Japan volumes also include a detailed chronology of major events affecting Japan’s security and Japan’s major security policy decisions.
21. Oros, Normalizing Japan, discusses the decision to develop surveillance satellites and missile defense in chapters 5 and 6.
22. Thomas J. Christensen, “China, the U.S.-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma in East Asia,” International Security 23, no. 4 (spring 1999): 49–80.
23. Lindsay Black, Japan’s Maritime Security Strategy: The Japan Coast Guard and Maritime Outlaws (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
24. For a useful chart of total numbers of piracy incidents in Southeast Asia, around Somalia, and worldwide, 1991–2012, see ibid., 175.
25. Ibid., 118.
26. Jeffrey Hornung interviewed several of these decision makers and argues that this event was a critical turning point in Japan’s security policy evolution (“Learning How to Sweat: Explaining the Dispatch of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces in the Gulf War and Iraq War” [PhD diss., George Washington University, 2009]).
27. The full document is reproduced in the annual Defense of Japan volumes and also posted in both English and Japanese at http://www.mod.go.jp.
28. Dennis T. Yasutomo, Japan’s Civil-Military Diplomacy: The Banks of the Rubicon (New York: Routledge, 2014), provides the authoritative account to date of the JSDF role in Iraq.
29. Japan Today, May 28, 2015.
30. The count of fourteen consists of two “special measures deployments” (to the Indian Ocean and to Iraq), eight instances of International Peace Cooperation Activities (Cambodia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Golan Heights, twice to East Timor, Afghanistan, and Iraq), and six instances of International Disaster Relief Activities (Honduras, Turkey, India, Iran, Thailand, and Indonesia). East Timor and Iraq are counted only once each, and the Indian Ocean as a single region, to reach a total of fourteen. The MOD itself lists a higher count of JSDF deployments as a result of multiple missions within many of the mentioned cases—for example, JASDF activities in Kuwait, JGSDF activities in Samawah, and JMSDF activities in the Persian Gulf are counted as three instances (and areas) of overseas deployment despite all being coordinated as assistance to the US-led coalition in Iraq. Further information about these deployments is provided in Defense of Japan 2007, 577–79.
31. Singh, Japan’s Security Identity.
32. SIPRI data shows peak Japanese spending to date as the 2003 calendar year, in constant 2011 US dollars. In unadjusted yen terms, the peak was in 2000 according to SIPRI data. (According to the MOD, the peak was in 2002, but spending was more or less constant from 1997 to 2003—see Defense of Japan 2007, 488.) As discussed in chapters 3 and 5, Japanese defense spending has been more or less stagnant since 2002, with a modest rise in yen terms in 2014 and 2015 after over a decade of modest decline or flat budgets (though in US dollars the decline continues because of the declining value of the yen); Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, 1988–2014, http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/.
33. See, for example, Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Re-emergence as a “Normal” Military Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
34. Christopher Hughes describes this operation as follows: “This flotilla carried five GSDF helicopters and twenty GSDF trucks, and acted as a ‘floating camp’ for joint MSDF and GSDF operations” (“Japan’s Military Modernization: In Search of a ‘Normal’ Security Role,” in Strategic Asia 2005–06: Military Modernization in an Era of Uncertainty, ed. Ashley J. Tellis and Michael Wills [Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2005], 114).
35. Writing in 2013, Swaine et al. argue that “the development of the JMSDF’s air-capable ships is a noteworthy twenty-five-year saga of Japan’s sea service overcoming political, legal, financial, and bureaucratic obstacles with single-minded purpose and a consistent operational vision” (China’s Military and the U.S.-Japan Alliance in 2030: A Strategic Net Assessment [Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2013], 345n66). This source continues with one-paragraph descriptions of Ōsumi-, Hyūga-, and “improved” Hyūga-class ship features.
36. Hughes, “Japan’s Military Modernization,” summarizes these major developments, drawing on multiple years of Defense of Japan white papers. Swaine et al., China’s Military, 131–33, also provides a useful summary of Japan’s emerging capabilities.
37. Swaine et al., China’s Military, 133.
38. Further description of this new joint operations posture is provided in Defense of Japan 2007, 218–20, and in later volumes.
39. Swaine et al., China’s Military 3, 124. Beyond the JSDF itself, Prime Minister Abe’s recent Advisory Panel on the History of the Twentieth Century also stresses the continuing constraints on Japan’s international contributions to date, writing, “Looking back on the Japanese actions since the first half of the 1990s, it cannot be denied that they have been a half step behind the actual needs. . . . It cannot be said that Japan has been able to properly contribute in a manner that fully responds to the demands of the international community” (“Report of the Advisory Panel on the History of the Twentieth Century and on Japan’s Role and the World Order in the Twenty-First Century,” August 6, 2015, http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/21c_koso/pdf/report_en.pdf).
40. Hughes, “Japan’s Military Modernization,” 122–23. On the budget issue in particular, see also David Fouse, “Japan’s FY 2005 National Defense Program Outline: New Concepts, Old Compromises,” Asia-Pacific Security Studies 4, no. 3 (March 2005): 2–8.
41. As Hughes writes in “Japan’s Military Modernization,” “Following five years of deliberation, the National Diet’s House of Representatives and House of Councilors [sic] released separate reports on constitutional revision in April 2005. . . . The House of Councilors [sic] failed to agree on revisions to Article 9, and neither of the houses was able to reach a consensus on revisions relating to the exercise of the right of collective self-defense—although they both agreed that Japan should engage more actively in international security cooperation” (115–16).
42. Japan’s territorial dispute with the Soviet Union was the most strategic in terms of the Cold War since the Soviet naval fleet could have been more effectively blocked had Japan controlled the Northern Territories (where the Soviets garrisoned troops). It is also the only one of the three territorial disputes that involves inhabited islands. Moreover, while the Northern Territories are small in relation to Japan’s main islands, they are larger than the southern outlying islands of Okinawa, which support a population of over one million Japanese and the majority of US forces based in Japan.
43. John Dower has described the controversy over the Smithsonian Institution’s plan to provide a broader historical narrative related to its display of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II and the dropping of the bomb (“How a Genuine Democracy Should Celebrate Its Past,” in Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World, 176–84 [New York: New Press, 2012]). This volume includes a chapter on Japanese narratives of the atomic bombings: “The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory.”
44. Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics, 12.
45. Dower discusses the successes and shortcomings of these proceedings in Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 1999), chapter 4.
46. Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics, 152–53.
47. Mitsubishi Materials senior chief executive Hikaru Kimura apologized on behalf of its predecessor firm, Mitsubishi Mining, to an audience in Los Angeles that included a surviving American forced laborer POW. The firm was reported to have operated four sites in Japan that at the time of liberation in 1945 held about 876 American POWs; 27 Americans died in those camps (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/20/mitsubishi-materials-apologizes-for-using-us-prisoners-of-war-as-slave-labor).
48. According to Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics, article 2 of the agreement on settlement of wartime claims obligated Japan to provide “economic cooperation assistance” worth $500 million in exchange for the statement that wartime claims between the two countries “is settled completely and finally” (27). Since that time, he writes, well over $4 billion of additional assistance has been provided.
49. Details on the Korean case are provided in Lind, Sorry States, chapter 2. In the 1972 joint communiqué between Japan and China that led the way to resumption of diplomatic relations, the Chinese stated, “In the interest of the friendship between the Chinese and the Japanese peoples, it renounced its demand for war reparation from Japan” (http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/china/joint72.html). For details on Japan’s reconciliation with China, see Yinan He, The Search for Reconciliation: Sino-Japanese and German-Polish Relations since World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
50. Lind, Sorry States, 168.
51. “Report of the Advisory Panel on the History of the Twentieth Century,” 8. Beyond such “heart-to-heart diplomacy,” however, the report also argues that “war reparations from Japan and its subsequent economic cooperation were of extremely huge significance and played a major part in reconciliation between Japan and Southeast Asia” (31) and that the “efforts of Japanese companies, together with ODA, bore fruit in a big way in improving the image of Japan in Asia” (8).
52. One collection of memories from former imperial soldiers and sailors from this period is provided in Takeo Okuno, Taiheiyō sensō: Heishi to shimin no kiroku [The Pacific War: A record of soldiers and citizens] (Tokyo: Sōgōsha, 1995).
53. Tatsuzō Ishikawa, Nankin kōryakusen rupo [Reportage on the Nanking invasion war] (Tokyo: Bungei shunjū, 1999).
54. According to Naoko Kumagai, 60 Korean women accepted atonement money from the Asia Women’s Fund, of a total of 285 across South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines (“Asia Women’s Fund Revisited,” Asia-Pacific Review 21, no. 2 [2014]: 118, 121).
55. Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics, 183.
56. The proportion of those who said yes was 53.1percent, while 24.8 percent said no (a roughly equal percentage to those who said “don’t know”); conducted by the Yomiuri shimbun, October 5, 1993, as reported in Dower, Ways of Forgetting, 110.
57. The text of this speech is available at http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/n-america/us/fmv0109/010908.html.
58. Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics, 124.
59. “Report of the Advisory Panel on the History of the Twentieth Century,” 19.
60. Lind, Sorry States.
61. Brad Glosserman and Scott A. Snyder, The Japan–South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).
62. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism, and Katzenstein, Cultural Norms, explain the effect of these concerns on Japan’s Cold War–era security policies, drawing on extensive Japanese-language scholarship of this period. Oros, Normalizing Japan, and Singh, Japan’s Security Identity, continue the narrative into the post–Cold War period.
63. “Report of the Advisory Panel on the History of the Twentieth Century,” 4.
64. This point is developed further in Oros, Normalizing Japan, 4. For a more recent theoretical explication of this concept in relation to recent innovations in international relations theories, see Andrew L. Oros, “International and Domestic Challenges to Japan’s Postwar Security Identity: ‘Norm Constructivism’ and Japan’s New ‘Proactive Pacifism,’” Pacific Review 28, no. 1 (March 2015): 139–60.
65. Oros, Normalizing Japan, chapter 2, describes the establishment and evolution of this security identity over the course of the early postwar and Cold War periods.
66. A more detailed discussion of the party politics of Japan’s Cold War–era security identity is provided ibid.
67. Ibid., chapter 7, argues that the hegemonic security identity of domestic antimilitarism continued to set the boundaries and to shape political debate even in the 1998 to 2007 period, when, others have argued, Japan’s security identity, or strategic culture, had shifted (e.g., Samuels, Securing Japan, and Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Remilitarisation [London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2009]).
68. Oros, Normalizing Japan, 17.
69. Michael J. Green, Arming Japan: Defense Production, Alliance Politics, and the Postwar Search for Autonomy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), provides one such narrative.
70. Scholars have devoted substantial attention to the complexity of the relationship, however, from many angles beyond just the US-Japan military alliance. Dower, Embracing Defeat, discusses the complexity from the “original sin” of the occupation period, and Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan since the Occupation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), continues the story into the postwar period; other works, such as Naoko Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), and Michael Auslin, Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cultural History of U.S.-Japan Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), convey the social concerns related to the US influence, while such work as McCormack, Client State, take up US imperialism. An extensive Japanese-language literature covers similar themes.
71. The JSDF to this day has not lost a single member to a force-related casualty, though there have been numerous deaths and injuries related to training exercises, accidents, and suicide. Japan’s de facto cap on military spending as 1 percent of GDP, instituted in the mid-1960s, is far below the limit of the United States or most NATO allies during the Cold War period.
72. Tim Weiner wrote an extended article on this subject quoting numerous sources (“C.I.A. Spent Millions to Support Japanese Right in 50’s and 60’s,” New York Times, October 9, 1994); subsequently, many more documents and interviews have revealed further details, though a full accounting has never been provided by the US government, despite the timing well beyond the standard release of such information.
73. Dower, Embracing Defeat, explains the “reverse course” policies; George R. Packard, Protest in Tokyo: The Security Treaty Crisis of 1960 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), explains the events of 1959 to 1960 and Kishi’s actions related to the passage of the security treaty.
74. Mike Mochizuki maps out these different schools of conservative thought in Japan: Domestic Change and Foreign Policy (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1995); Samuels, Securing Japan, develops a similar typology and updates it for the later post–Cold War period. On the issue of “interoperability” and weapons autonomy in particular, see Green, Arming Japan, and Richard J. Samuels, “Rich Nation, Strong Army”: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994).
75. An English translation is available at https://www.jimin.jp/english/. For a critical overview of the draft, see Lawrence Repeta, “Japan’s Democracy at Risk: The LDP’s Ten Most Dangerous Proposals for Constitutional Change,” Asia Pacific Journal 11, no. 28 (July 15, 2013), http://www.japanfocus.org/-lawrence-repeta/3969/article.html.
76. “Report of the Advisory Panel on the History of the Twentieth Century,” 16.
77. These dual concerns are the subject of countless scholarly articles on the dynamics of the US-Japan alliance and indeed of scholarship on alliances in general. See, for example, Izumikawa, “Explaining Japanese Antimilitarism,” and Midford, “Logic of Reassurance.”
78. The full text of the treaty, formally called the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States of America, is available at http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/n-america/us/q&a/ref/1.html.
79. As the 2015 Advisory Panel on the History of the Twentieth Century states, “The United States began seeing Japan, which had become a major economic power by then, as a rival” (16).
80. Under the latest five-year agreement for the period 2011 to 2016, Japan pays for most of the salaries of about twenty-five thousand Japanese employees at US military installations, at a cost of about ¥188 billion annually (about $1.6 billion at ¥120 to US$1). The Japanese government also pays a large portion of utility costs at US facilities, which was agreed to shrink to 72 percent over this five-year period; Emma Chanlett-Avery et al., Japan-U.S. Relations: Issues for Congress, CRS Report 7–5700, September 29, 2015 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service), 14.
81. Whether this “areas surrounding Japan” included the area around Taiwan was a principal concern of opponents of the new guidelines given the Taiwan Strait crisis that had unfolded around the time of the guidelines revision process.
82. Michael Green and Patrick Cronin, eds., The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Past, Present, and Future (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1999), and Yoichi Funabashi, Alliance Adrift (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1999), provide two detailed accounts of issues leading to the 1997 guidelines and the challenges of implementing them after they were adopted.
83. Two important studies of this period are Akikazu Hashimoto, Mike Mochizuki, and Kurayoshi Takara, eds., The Okinawa Question and the U.S.-Japan Alliance (Washington, DC: George Washington University, Sigur Center for Asian Studies, 2005), and Laura Elizabeth Hein and Mark Selden, eds., Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003).
84. Yasutomo, Japan’s Civil-Military Diplomacy, provides a detailed account of the JGSDF operations in Iraq and some discussion of the prior deployment of the JGSDF and JASDF to the area.
85. Paul Midford, Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011), provides comprehensive time-series polling data related to the overseas dispatch of the JSDF.
86. Oros, Normalizing Japan, chapter 7, develops this argument in greater depth.
3. Japan’s Relative Decline and New Security Challenges in a Multipolar Asia
1. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2012 (London: Routledge, 2012), as quoted in David Shambaugh, “International Relations in East Asia: A Multidimensional Analysis,” in International Relations of Asia, ed. David Shambaugh and Michael Yahuda, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), 8.
2. “Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2014,” SIPRI Fact Sheet, April 2015, 3, http://books.sipri.org/files/FS/SIPRIFS1504.pdf.
3. This three-tiered approach is set out in the 2013 national security strategy.
4. World Bank database, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG.
5. David Shambaugh, “International Relations in East Asia: A Multidimensional Analysis,” in International Relations of Asia, ed. David Shambaugh and Michael Yahuda, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), 8.
6. Figure 3.5 shows US military spending in relation to Asian states; the vastly larger scale of US spending somewhat obscures the spending by smaller, Asian states.
7. This data is presented in chart form in The Foreign Policy and Security Implications of Global Aging for the Future of Japan-U.S. Relations: Report of the Sixth Annual Japan-U.S. Joint Public Policy Forum (Washington, DC: Wilson Center; Tokyo: Sasakawa Peace Foundation, October 9, 2014), https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/asia_150128_global_aging_report_0310.pdf.
8. Brigitte Miksa, “The Future Is Gray for the Developed World,” Japan Times, September 1, 2015.
9. David Chiavacci explains the complex nexus of practical needs and political realities related to immigration in Japan in “Indispensable Future Workforce or Internal Security Threat? Securing Japan’s Future and Immigration,” in Governing Insecurity in Japan: The Domestic Discourse and Policy Response, ed. Wilhelm Vosse, Reinhard Drifte, and Verena Blechinger-Talcott, 116–40 (New York: Routledge, 2014).
10. Miksa, “Future Is Gray.”
11. Ibid.
12. Data for this estimate is from Jack A. Goldstone, “Global Population Megatrends and Japan’s Demographic Crisis: Devastating Threat or Manageable Challenge?” (paper presented at the Sixth Annual Japan-U.S. Joint Public Policy Forum, Tokyo, October 9, 2014).
13. Michael Swaine et al., China’s Military and the U.S.-Japan Alliance in 2030: A Strategic Net Assessment (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2013), 74–78, discusses different aspects of China’s demographic challenges.
14. http://www.globalfirepower.com/, accessed July 24, 2015. The site explains the methodology for its overall calculations as follows: “The GFP ranking is based on a formula utilizing over fifty different factors, compiled and measured against each nation. Bonuses (ex: low oil consumption) and penalties (ex: high oil consumption) are applied to further refine the list. The finalized GFP value is recognized as the ‘Power Index’ (PwrIndx) which supplies a nation its respective positioning in the rankings.”
15. Jeffrey W. Hornung and Mike M. Mochizuki usefully compare Japan’s “power-projection capabilities” with those of seven other “middle powers” in “Japan: Still an Exceptional Ally,” Washington Quarterly 39, no. 1 (spring 2016): 95–116. While the article does not directly address possible combat scenarios in East Asia, it does underscore that Japanese military forces have numerous strengths beyond what many would expect from a state that stresses in public diplomacy its limited military power.
16. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2012 (London: Routledge, 2012).
17. Ministry of Defense, Defense of Japan 2014, shows a steadily increasing number of scrambles related to the Russian military, up from 124 in 2003 to 359 in 2013. The peak number of scrambles during the Cold War was 944, not substantially higher than the 810 in 2013, though in 2012 and 2013 the largest number of scrambles was related to China, not Russia. (see figure III-1-1-3, p. 183.)
18. Robert Kaplan, Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (New York: Random House, 2014), 5.
19. Alessio Patalano, Post-war Japan as a Sea Power: Imperial Legacy, Wartime Experience and the Making of a Navy (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).
20. Richard Samuels, “‘New Fighting Power!’ Japan’s Growing Maritime Capabilities and East Asian Security,” International Security 32, no. 3 (winter 2007/2008): 84–112.
21. Denny Roy, Return of the Dragon: Rising China and Regional Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 75.
22. There is a large body of scholarly literature that examines Japan-China relations in a number of different areas. One recent book that stresses the interactions between China and Japan as both sought to modernize is Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750 (New York: Basic Books, 2012). A short book on the contemporary period is Michael Yahuda, Sino-Japanese Relations after the Cold War: Two Tigers Sharing a Mountain (New York: Routledge, 2013). On recent interactions between the two states from a Japanese perspective, see Akio Takahara and Ryūji Hattori, eds., Nitchū kankeishi, 1972–2012 [A history of Japan-China relations, 1972–2012] (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2012). For a longer historical narrative, see Ming Wan, Sino-Japanese Relations: Inter action, Logic, and Transformation (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006).
23. Sheila Smith, Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 9.
24. Japan Center for Economic Research, “The 37th Middle-Term Economic Forecast (2010–2020),” February 2011. Full text available at https://www.jcer.or.jp/eng/pdf/m37_summary.pdf.
25. Smith, Intimate Rivals, 9.
26. Ibid., 258.
27. Still, as Kenneth Pyle writes in Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: PublicAffairs, 2007), 35–36, China’s rise in the seventh century spurred the Japanese state to act even back then.
28. Speech by Premier Wen Jiabao of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China at the Japanese Diet, Tokyo, April 12, 2007; full text available at http://manchester.china-consulate.org/eng/xwdt/t311107.htm.
29. Smith, Intimate Rivals, xi.
30. Roy, Return of the Dragon, 3.
31. Reported on China View, the English-language site of the Xinhua News Agency: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/08/content_5177334.htm.
32. Wen’s speech included the following: “Since the normalization of diplomatic ties between China and Japan, the Japanese Government and leaders have on many occasions stated their position on the historical issue, admitted that Japan had committed aggression and expressed deep remorse and apology to the victimized countries. The Chinese Government and people appreciate the position they have taken” (http://manchester.china-consulate.org/eng/xwdt/t311107.htm).
33. Japan External Trade Organization, “2008 Jetro White Paper on ‘International Trade and Foreign Direct Investment’”: http://www.jetro.go.jp/en/reports/white_paper/trade_invest_2008.pdf
34. The full text is available at http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/2649_665393/t458431.shtml.
35. The exact sequence of events is disputed and the subject of considerable media coverage and debate. Smith, Intimate Rivals, chapter 6, and James Manicom, Bridging Troubled Waters: China, Japan, and Maritime Order in the East Chin a Sea (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), chapter 2, among others, offer details on the origins and unfolding of this incident.
36. Japan’s official position is explained in a pamphlet distributed by the MOFA: http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/senkaku/pdfs/senkaku_pamphlet.pdf.
37. As computed in constant 2011 US dollars by SIPRI: http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/.
38. Roy, Return of the Dragon, 63–64. Richard A. Bitzinger, “China’s Double-Digit Defense Growth: What It Means for a Peaceful Rise,” Foreign Affairs, March 19, 2015, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-03-19/chinas-double-digit-defense-growth, states that China’s official defense spending is widely considered to be underreported and that China is able to acquire more for what it spends than other major military spenders because of lower costs of acquisition and labor in China.
39. Bjørn Elias Mikalsen Grønning, “Japan’s Shifting Military Priorities: Counterbalancing China’s Rise,” Asian Security 10, no. 1 (2014): 15.
40. Jeffrey Hornung, “Japan’s Growing Hard Hedge Against China,” Asian Security 10, no. 2 (2014): 97. This article includes numerous useful references to other recent articles that track Japan’s growing military response to China’s rise.
41. Roy, Return of the Dragon, 70.
42. Brad Glosserman and Scott A. Snyder, The Japan–South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 43.
43. Details can be found in Roy, Return of the Dragon, 60–62.
44. Ibid., chapter 7, offers five “mitigating factors” for why the security relationship with China may not deteriorate as much as some fear: (1) US-China relations appear stable and there are efforts on both sides to keep that the case, (2) the system works for China too, (3) China itself does not seem to want to be a global superpower with all the responsibilities that entails, (4) other actors are balancing against China’s military rise, (5) China itself argues that it seeks to achieve a “peaceful rise.” And yet Roy sees a persistent risk of conflict because of factors such as that “aggression is in the eye of the beholder” and that many Chinese are acting in a way that seeks to legitimate a “Chinese sphere of influence” in East Asia.
45. Numerous contributors to a recent special issue of the Pacific Review argue this point in relation to Japan’s perception of change in the Asian region; for an overview, see Linus Hagström and Karl Gustafsson, “Japan and Identity Change: Why It Matters in International Relations,” Pacific Review 28, no. 1 (March 2015): 1–22
46. Smith, Intimate Rivals, argues convincingly that Japanese leaders and the Japanese public alike perceive a growing threat from China across the board: “Most Japanese citizens did not see China’s rise as a distant phenomenon but as a recurring stream of incidents and crises that could affect their daily lives” (237). The end result, it concludes, is a substantial effect on Japan’s internal governing practices, in particular: (1) voices in the debate over appropriate policies toward China have diversified beyond the previous dominance of business leaders and diplomats and (2) issues related to China have been integral to debates over the need for broader governance reform in Japan (238–39).
47. As noted earlier, however, the figures look more balanced between the United States and China if figures are computed using PPP.
48. “Trends in World Military Expenditure,” 2.
49. US Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC, 2006), http://archive.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/QDR20060203.pdf.
50. Smith, Intimate Rivals, 259.
51. Ibid., 260.
52. T. J. Pempel, “Japan’s Search for the ‘Sweet Spot’: International Cooperation and Regional Security in Northeast Asia,” Orbis 55, no. 2 (spring 2011): 273.
53. Corey J. Wallace, “Japan’s Strategic Pivot South: Diversifying the Dual Hedge,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 2013, 484.
54. Bhubhindar Singh, Japan’s Security Identity: From a Peace State to an International State (London: Routledge, 2013), provides additional details on these cases.
55. Annual Defense of Japan white papers list such bilateral defense-related meetings.
56. Wallace, “Japan’s Strategic Pivot South,” 490.
57. Jing Sun, Japan and China as Charm Rivals: Soft Power in Regional Diplomacy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), provides an overview of both aspects.
58. Swaine et al., China’s Military.
59. Smith, Intimate Rivals, 260, develops this point further.
4. Domestic Power Transitions and Japan’s Evolving Strategic Posture, 2006 to 2012
1. The LDP briefly lost power to a rival coalition for nine months after the 1993 Lower House election, but the LDP had won the largest number of seats of any party in that election.
2. Major scholarly works by Kenneth Pyle, Richard Samuels, and Christopher Hughes predict a more or less continuous “normalization” of Japan through this domestic power transition.
3. The House of Councillors was created by the postwar constitution from the previous House of Peers and is generally is a coequal house in Japan’s bicameral parliament—with the exceptions that the House of Representatives can pass legislation not passed or voted on in the House of Councillors with a two-thirds majority vote and that prime ministers tend to be drawn from the members of the House of Representatives.
4. The complete text of these guidelines is available at http://www.mod.go.jp/e/d_act/d_policy/pdf/guidelinesFY2011.pdf.
5. The early post–Cold War period also saw a dramatically altered international environment, but not the same sense of immediate threat. The North Korea missile and nuclear threat created a first-round shock in the late 1990s (and early 1990s for defense watchers in the Japan Defense Agency). Domestic crises—in particular the Great Hanshin earthquake and sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway, both in 1995—also had created impetus for institutional change to better address crisis management. Tomohito Shinoda, Koizumi Diplomacy: Japan’s Kantei Approach to Foreign and Defense Affairs (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), traces the evolution toward more centralization of power in the prime minister’s office—a trend that intensified throughout the period examined in this book.
6. Twenty-seven Lower House elections were conducted between 1946 and 2015, a span of sixty-nine years.
7. Thirty-three prime ministers have served in the seventy years from August 1945 to August 2015.
8. Richard Samuels, Machiavelli’s Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005, chapter 8, explains Yoshida’s pivotal role.
9. The Constitutional Revision in Japan Research Project at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University maintains an archive of the numerous specific proposals that have been advanced by a number of different political actors in Japan, including the 1994 and 2005 drafts mentioned here; see http://wax.lib.harvard.edu/collections/collection.do?coll=101.
10. It is frequently noted that Abe is the grandson of former prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, who served in the wartime Tōjō cabinet as minister of munitions and thus shared responsibility for Japan’s wartime conduct, but, as noted by Japanese historian Kenichi Matsumoto, it is rarely noted in media reporting that Kishi later opposed the Tōjō cabinet and was jailed for his opposition; nor that Abe’s other grandfather, Kan Abe, actively resisted the network of political parties led by Tōjō, the so-called Taisei Yokusankai. See Kenichi Matsumoto, “(Right Tilt?): Is ‘Japan Moves to Right’ True? Second Abe Administration Faces Test of Realism,” Discuss Japan: Japan Foreign Policy Forum, nos. 13–15 (March 5, 2013), http://www.japanpolicyforum.jp.
11. Among the voluminous writings on Abe’s background, see Muneo Narusawa, “Abe Shinzo: Japan’s New Prime Minister a Far-Right Denier of History,” Asia-Pacific Journal /Japan Focus 11, no. 1 (January 14, 2013), http://apjjf.org/2013/11/1/Narusawa-Muneo/3879/article.html, and Mike M. Mochizuki and Samuel Parkinson Porter, “Japan under Abe: Toward Moderation or Nationalism?” Washington Quarterly 36, no. 4 (2013): 25–41.
12. R. Taggart Murphy takes a more strident stand on Abe, writing, “For no sooner was Abe in office than he set out to enact what Koizumi had only hinted at: replacement of the postwar constitution; a robust, unapologetic military; an affirmation of the central place of the Imperial House in the sovereign edifice of the Japanese state; and the promotion of an understanding of the events of the 1930s that would portray them as a legitimate response to Western colonialism and the threats of alien ideologies” (Japan and the Shackles of the Past: What Everyone Needs to Know [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014], 311). See also Kenneth B. Pyle, “Abe Shinzo and Japan’s Change of Course,” NBR Analysis, October 2006, http://nbr.org/publications/issue.aspx?id=97.
13. See, for example, an address by Abe’s foreign minister Tarō Asō, “On the ‘Arc of Freedom and Prosperity,’” March 12, 2007, http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/pillar/address0703.html. Weston S. Konishi offers critical analysis of this strategy in “Will Japan Be Out of Tune with a Concert of Democracies?” Asia Pacific Bulletin, no. 19 (June 27, 2008), http://www.eastwestcenter.org/publications/will-japan-be-out-tune-concert-democracies.
14. Daniel Sneider, “The New Asianism: Japanese Foreign Policy under the Democratic Party of Japan,” in Japan under the DPJ: The Politics of Transition and Governance, ed. Kenji E. Kushida and Phillip Y. Lipscy (Stanford, Calif.: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2013), 386.
15. An overview of the DPJ founding period is offered in Kenji E. Kushida and Phillip Y. Lipscy, “The Rise and Fall of the Democratic Party of Japan,” in Kushida and Lipscy, Japan under the DPJ. The short summary in this paragraph draws from this extended history.
16. The issue of candidate backgrounds for DPJ candidates from the creation of the party through the 2012 Lower House election is examined in detail in Daniel M. Smith, Robert J. Pekkanen, and Ellis S. Krauss, “Building a Party: Candidate Recruitment in the Democratic Party of Japan, 1996–2012,” in Kushida and Lipscy, Japan under the DPJ.
17. James Manicom, Bridging Troubled Waters: China, Japan, and Maritime Order in the East China Sea (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), chapter 5, discusses this agreement.
18. Most prominent among such reports was the so-called Second Armitage-Nye report (Richard L. Armitage, Joseph S. Nye, “The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Getting Asia Right through 2020,” CSIS Report, 2007, http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/070216_asia2020.pdf). Later, the “Unmet Expectations” report was also widely circulated (Michael Finnegan, Managing Unmet Expectations in the US-Japan Alliance, NBR Special Report, no. 17 [Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, November 2009], http://nbr.org/publications/issue.aspx?id=188).
19. The expert panel report and the official government report are both available, in Japanese, at http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/mitsuyaku/kekka.html. For an English-language overview, see Jeffrey Lewis, “More on US-Japan ‘Secret Agreements,’” http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/2660/more-on-us-japan-secret-agreements.
20. Steven R. Reed, “The Survival of ‘Third Parties’ in Japan’s Mixed-Member Electoral System,” in Kushida and Lipscy, Japan under the DPJ, 113.
21. Ibid., 118.
22. Kushida and Lipscy, “Rise and Fall,” 8.
23. Smith, Pekkanen, and Krauss, “Building a Party,” 179.
24. They made up only 3 percent of Noda’s appointees, which was more on a par with their overall percentage in the Diet. See Christopher Hughes, “The Democratic Party of Japan’s New (but Failing) Grand Security Strategy: From ‘Reluctant Realism’ to ‘Resentful Realism’?” In Kushida and Lipscy, Japan under the DPJ, 179–80.
25. Weston S. Konishi, From Rhetoric to Reality: Foreign-Policy Making under the Democratic Party of Japan (Boston: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 2012), v–vi and 15–22, where Konishi expands on these schools.
26. Konishi makes a similar argument, writing, “The ‘big change’ in Japanese foreign policy following the DPJ’s takeover in 2009 did not transpire according to some expectations. On the contrary, the DPJ’s foreign policy increasingly resembles the status quo—emphasizing the centrality of the US-Japan alliance” (ibid., v).
27. See Bhubhindar Singh, Japan’s Security Identity: From a Peace State to an International State (London: Routledge, 2013), for examples and references to a wider literature.
28. Konishi, From Rhetoric to Reality, v.
29. Ibid., 23.
30. Kushida and Lipscy, “Rise and Fall,” use this term to describe the governing style between Hatoyama and Ozawa.
31. Under Ozawa’s leadership, the DPJ won a significant victory in the Upper House elections in 2007, setting the stage for the 2009 victory in the Lower House. An Ozawa premiership may have even further cemented the transformation of Japan’s security posture during the DPJ years without the difficulties in US-Japan relations suffered under Hatoyama. As Sneider writes in “The New Asianism,” “Ozawa had a reputation as a conservative nationalist, even as an advocate of Japanese military buildup. . . . As an LDP leader, Ozawa had advocated support for the Gulf War in 1991 based on the formation of a UN-sanctioned international coalition. After failing in an earlier attempt, Ozawa was instrumental in pushing through the 1992 law authorizing Japanese forces to participate in peacekeeping operations (PKO).” Even more recently, Sneider continues, “this stance was visible when the DPJ—albeit with some dissenters from among the ex-Socialists—backed the post-9/11 decision to dispatch Japanese naval forces in a noncombat, logistical role in support of Afghanistan operations in 2002” (377).
32. Hughes, “Democratic Party,” 359.
33. Sneider, “New Asianism,” 395.
34. Matteo Dian, The Evolution of the US-Japan Alliance: The Eagle and the Chrysanthemum (Oxford: Chandos, 2014), 174, also emphasizes the historical legacy argument in his explanation for why deepened security cooperation with external partners progressed faster with India and Australia than with South Korea.
35. Ichiro Ozawa, Blueprint for a New Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation, trans. Louisa Rubinfien (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1994).
36. Ministry of Defense, Defense of Japan 2010, introduction by Defense Minister Kitazawa.
37. According to research conducted by Kushida and Lipscy, only about 40 percent of proposed legislation passed during the regular Diet session of 2010, and, even more surprising, the rate was only 55 percent for cabinet-submitted legislation (“Rise and Fall,” 20).
38. Defense of Japan 2012 provides polling data—in both areas exceeding 80 percent.
39. Kushida and Lipscy, “Rise and Fall,” 14, includes a useful table of approval and disapproval ratings of both the DPJ and the LDP from 1998 to 2012.
40. Konishi, From Rhetoric to Reality, offers a useful chart aggregating support rates of the three DPJ governments as measured by both Asahi shimbun and Yomiuri shimbun polls, permitting a comparison of poll results from the left of center and right of center, respectively. It is notable, if predictable, that the most right-leaning DPJ prime minister also shows higher support rates in the Yomiuri poll.
41. Sneider, “New Asianism,” 370–71.
42. Smith, Pekkanen, and Krauss, “Building a Party,” 167.
43. Additional discussion of this pivotal election follows in chapter 5.
44. Sneider, “New Asianism,” 371.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 396.
47. Ibid., 398.
48. On the international politics–public opinion nexus, see, for example, Paul Midford, Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011), and, on the domestic politics–international politics interaction, see Linus Hagström, “The ‘Abnormal’ State: Identity, Norm/Exception and Japan,” European Journal of International Relations 20, no. 2 (2014): 1–24.
49. Hughes, “Democratic Party,” 335.
50. See Shogo Suzuki, “The Rise of the Chinese ‘Other’ in Japan’s Construction of Identity: Is China a Focal Point of Japanese Nationalism?” Pacific Review 28, no. 1 (March 2015): 95–116, and Alexander Bukh, “Shimane Prefecture, Tokyo, and the Territorial Dispute over Dokdo/Takeshima: Regional and National Identities in Japan,” Pacific Review 28, no. 1 (March 2015): 47–70.
5. The New Conservative Mainstream and New Security Policies Under Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, 2012 to 2016
1. As with public protests in other democracies, discerning an accurate head count is both difficult and highly politicized. Organizations supporting the demonstrations have claimed turnouts of well over one hundred thousand, while the mainstream media has generally reported participation at around half that figure.
2. Japan Times, July 29, 2015.
3. The SIPRI database shows 2014 spending at about $45.8 billion, which is a modest drop from the previous year in US dollars despite being a rise of about 2 percent in yen terms—the largest rise in defense spending in Japan in three years and, before that, since 1998. The Abe government claims to be the first to increase defense spending in over a decade, because some costs that SIPRI considers defense related are not included in Japan’s official defense budget. In addition, SIPRI provides data by calendar year rather than the fiscal year used by the Japanese government. Using SIPRI data, once again Japan’s security renaissance can be traced back to the years of DPJ rule. In constant 2011 US dollars, Japan spent about the same on defense in 1999 as it did in 2014, with a peak in 2003 and a roughly annual modest decline since that time.
4. This argument is further developed in Andrew L. Oros, “Does Abe’s Rightward Shift Threaten His Legacy?” PacNet, no. 2 (January 7, 2014), http://csis.org/publication/pacnet-2-does-abes-rightward-shift-threaten-his-legacy.
5. See George Ehrhardt et al., eds., Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2014), for a broad overview of this pivotal and understudied party in contemporary Japanese politics.
6. This despite the obvious difference that the United States has a treaty obligation to protect the Senkaku Islands but not eastern Ukraine and multiple reassurances by US officials that the United States would protect Japan in such a case.
7. In fact, crisis management continues to be the charge of the deputy cabinet secretary for crisis management, though the NSC helps facilitate meetings. Reportedly this arrangement was the result of a compromise in setting up the NSC to satisfy concerns of the National Police Agency; interview with Cabinet Secretariat staff, Tokyo, June 2014.
8. For an overview of Japan’s previous thinking about security, including the idea of comprehensive security from the Cold War era and human security in the post–Cold War era, see Christopher Hughes, Japan’s Security Agenda: Military, Economic, and Environmental Dimensions (Boulder, Colo.: Rienner, 2004).
9. National Institute for Defense Studies, East Asian Strategic Review 2014, 46. For an extended discussion in Japanese of the evolution of the NSC, see Tsuyoshi Sunohara, Nihonban NSC to wa nani k a [What is the Japan-style NSC?] (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2014). For an English-language summary, including an organizational chart, see Ministry of Defense, Defense of Japan 2014, 125–26.
10. Defense of Japan 2014, 126.
11. National Institute for Defense Studies, East Asian Strategic Review 2014, 43. Other ministers represented in the Nine-Minister Meeting in addition to the six already mentioned are the minister of finance, the minister of public management, home affairs, post and telecommunications, and the chairman of the National Public Safety Commission.
12. In the first Abe administration, the US director of national intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair is quoted as saying that he insisted that the MOD share US-provided information with other ministries in Japan only with express US permission, given lax information security laws in Japan at the time; Asahi shimbun, October 6, 2013.
13. Defense of Japan 2014, 127.
14. SEALDs is the name the group uses in Japanese, an English-language acronym for Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy. The group’s goals and action items are outlined in English at http://sealdseng.strikingly.com/.
15. Nihon Bengoshi Rengōkai [Japan Federation of Bar Associations], “Himitsu hogohō no mondaiten wa?” [What are the problems with the secrets law?], http://www.nichibenren.or.jp/activity/human/secret/problem.html.
16. “Himitsu hogo hōan: Nōberushō gakushara kōgi seimei” [The designated secrets bill: Nobel laureates issue protest statement], Mainichi shimbun, November 28, 2013; my translation.
17. For more detailed analysis of the national security strategy and likely next steps, see East Asia Strategic Review 2014, 48–54. For a broader analysis of the national security strategy in the context of Japan’s evolving national security policies, see Noboru Yamaguchi, “Evolution of Japan’s National Security Policy under the Abe Administration,” Asan Forum, April 11, 2014, http://www.theasanforum.org/evolution-of-japans-national-security-policy-under-the-abe-administration/.
18. “Difference between ‘Dynamic Defense Force’ and ‘Dynamic Joint Defense Force,’” Defense of Japan 2014, 145.
19. Defense of Japan 2014, 148–58. The complete text of these documents is available at http://www.mod.go.jp/e/d_act/d_policy/national.html.
20. For an analysis of this shift in defense posture, see Toshi Yoshihara, “Japanese Hard Power: Rising to the Challenge,” National Security Outlook, August 2014.
21. This document is available at http://www.mod.go.jp/e/pressrele/2014/14040102.pdf.
22. “Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology,” 2.
23. Michael Swaine et al., China’s Military and the U.S.-Japan Alliance in 2030: A Strategic Net Assessment (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2013), 143, expands on this point.
24. Saadia M. Pekkanen and Paul Kallender-Umezu, In Defense of Japan: From the Market to the Military in Space Policy (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010), discusses changes in space policy related to national defense leading up to the more recent changes, showing the continuity of policy under Japan’s security renaissance.
25. The new mission statement and vision for JICA is available on its homepage: http://www.jica.go.jp/english/about/mission/index.html; it was announced via a cabinet statement on February 10, 2015: http://www.mofa.go.jp/files/000067701.pdf. For a critical overview of the changes and continuities from past ODA policies, see Lean Alfred Santos, “Figuring Out Japan’s New Aid Charter,” https://www.devex.com/news/figuring-out-japan-s-new-aid-charter-85520.
26. Dennis T. Yasutomo, Japan’s Civil-Military Diplomacy: The Banks of the Rubicon (New York: Routledge, 2014), provides a compelling and detailed examination of the linkage between Japan’s ODA policy and its security policy evolution, focusing on the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq.
27. Jeffrey W. Hornung and Mike M. Mochizuki, “Japan: Still an Exceptional Ally,” Washington Quarterly 39, no. 1 (spring 2016): 95–116, provides a useful analysis of Japan’s continued exceptionalism in its military posture and practices in comparison with other “middle power” US allies—even factoring in the recent series of changes implemented under the Abe government.
28. Brad Glosserman and Scott A. Snyder, The Japan–South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), provides timely analysis of this issue.
29. The JSDF was initially invited to join the multinational relief efforts following the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 that resulted in the deaths of about seventy thousand people, but the Chinese leadership rescinded landing permission after public criticism quickly emerged.
30. For an examination of the domestic and international politics related to Takeshima Day, see Alexander Bukh, “Shimane Prefecture, Tokyo, and the Territorial Dispute over Dokdo/Takeshima: Regional and National Identities in Japan,” Pacific Review 28, no. 1 (March 2015): 47–70.
31. One of many such examples is Muneo Narusawa, “Abe Shinzo: Japan’s New Prime Minister a Far-Right Denier of History,” Asia-Pacific Journal 11, no. 1 (January 14, 2013), http://japanfocus.org/-Narusawa-Muneo/3879/article.html.
32. An explanation of this petition and a reprint of its contents and signatories are provided in Hiroki Manabe, “Japan Scholars in West Issue Statement Calling for ‘Unbiased’ Accounting of Past,” Asahi Shimbun, Asia and Japan Watch, May 7, 2015, http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201505070028.htm.
33. Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Foreign and Security Policy under the “Abe Doctrine”: New Dynamism or New Dead End? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 4. “In the end,” Hughes concludes, “the Doctrine may lead to a dead end and Japan’s shift to ‘Resentful Realism’” (91).
34. “Sugomu dake no Abe gaikō wa Kimu Jon’un, Shū Kinpei, Paku Kune, Pūchin ni kanzen ni namerareteiru” [Abe’s intimidation diplomacy totally played around by Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, Pak Geun-hye, and Putin], Shūkan posuto, November 11, 2014, criticizes what is described as a “warmongering Abe.”
35. Tsuneo Watanabe, “Abe shushō ni tsutaetai ‘waga taikenteki Yasukuni-ron’” [Message to Prime Minister Abe: My experiential Yasukuni theory], Bungeishunjū, September 2014. Beyond this extended critique, each of Japan’s major daily newspapers criticized the Yasukuni visit, apart from Sankei shimbun, but tended to focus on the reaction from abroad rather than direct criticism at Abe himself.
36. The Cabinet Office maintains transcripts of several statements by Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga to this effect, for example, at the May 8, 2013, press conference: http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/tyoukanpress/201305/08_a.html.
37. Abe stated, “First of all, I would like to state very clearly that the Abe cabinet upholds the position on the recognition of history of the previous administrations, in its entirety, including the Murayama Statement [apologizing in 1995 for the damage and suffering caused by Japan to its Asian neighbors] and the Koizumi Statement [of 2005, stating that Japan must never again take the path to war]. I have made this position very clearly, on many occasions, and we still uphold this position. Also we have made it very clear that the Abe cabinet is not reviewing the Kōnō Statement [of 1993, in which the government of Japan extended its sincere apologies and remorse to all those who had suffered as comfort women]. On the question of comfort women, when my thought goes to these people, who have been victimized by human trafficking and gone through immeasurable pain and suffering beyond description, my heart aches. And on this point, my thought has not changed at all from previous prime ministers” Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, interview by David Ignatius, Washington Post, March 26, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/03/26/david-ignatiuss-full-interview-with-japanese-prime-minister-shinzo-abe/.
38. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga described the main findings and process of the report at a press conference on June 20, 2014; available in Japanese at http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/tyoukanpress/201406/20_p.html. The full report is available in English at http://japan.kantei.go.jp/96_abe/documents/2014/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2014/06/20/JPN_ROK_EXCHANGE.pdf.
39. “Japan PM Shinzo Abe Marks War Criminal Ceremony,” BBC News, August 27, 2014; Jonathan Soble, “Shinzo Abe Stays Away as Japanese Lawmakers Visit Contentious Yasukuni Shrine,” New York Times, October 20, 2015.
40. “Japan Is Back: A Conversation with Shinzo Abe,” Foreign Affairs, July / August 2013, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/interviews/2013-05-16/japan-back.
41. “Report of the Advisory Panel on the History of the Twentieth Century and on Japan’s Role and the World Order in the Twenty-First Century,” August 6, 2015, http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/21c_koso/pdf/report_en.pdf.
42. See, for example, Muneo Narusawa, “Abe Shinzō to kyoku-u rekishi shūseishugisha wa sekai no teki dearu” [Shinzō Abe and ultra-right-wing history revisionists are the enemy of the world], News for the People in Japan, January 2, 2013, www.news-pj.net/toukou/narusawa-20130105.html.
43. The JCP newspaper Akahata reported that ten members of the Abe cabinet were affiliated with the Kōnō Statement Denial Caucus (“Kōnō danwa nitei no giren, Abe seiken ni shusshin kakuryō 10 shi” [Ten cabinet members of the Abe administration affiliated with the “Kōnō Statement Denial” Caucus], Akahata shimbun, October 13, 2014).
44. Note that Japanese media refer to the cabinet chosen in December 2012 as the “second” Abe cabinet, counting as the first members selected for his first term as prime minister in 2006; the figures noted here refer to the second Abe cabinet. Matthew Penney provides a summary of group membership of each member of this cabinet and a short description of each group: “The Abe Cabinet: An Ideological Breakdown,” Asia-Pacific Journal / Japan Focus, January 2013, http://apjjf.org/-Matthew-Penney/4747/article.html. Group membership information for the third Abe cabinet (appointed on October 7, 2015) is provided in table format in “Dai sanji Abe Shinzō naikaku no chōtakaha (kyoku-u) no daijintachi” [Ultra-hawkish (ultra-right-wing) members of the third Abe cabinet], Harbor Business Online, http://hbol.jp/25122/takahagiin, accessed January 17, 2016. The Nippon Kaigi website provides a wide account of their activities (in Japanese): http://www.nipponkaigi.org/.
45. Emma Chanlett-Avery et al., Japan-U.S. Relations: Issues for Congress, CRS Report 7–5700, September 29, 2015 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service), 7.
46. Some of many newspaper articles include “Sengo 68-nen to kinrin gaikō: Uchimuki shikō o nukedasō” [Sixty-eight years from the end of the war and our neighborhood diplomacy: Need to depart from inward orientation], Asahi shimbun, August 15, 2013; “Kokka anpo senryaku, naze kakikomu ‘aikokuhin’” [National security strategy, why is patriotism included?], Tōkyō shimbun, December 12, 2013; “Minshushugi to iu ki, edaha o yutaka ni shigerasō” [A tree called democracy, let it grow thick and leafy], Mainichi shimbun, January 1, 2014. A more extended treatment is provided in Nozomu Yamazaki, ed., Kimyōna nashonarizumu no jidai: Haigaishugi ni kōshite [The era of odd nationalism: Defying jingoism] (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2015). One example of concern over rising militarism is seen in “Yomigaeru gunkokushugi: Sengo nanajūnen tokushū” [Resurging militarism: Special issue on seventy years since the war], Shūkan kin’yōbi, July 31, 2015.
47. Brad Glosserman and Scott A. Snyder, The Japan–South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 31.
48. Ibid., citing research reported in Juan Díez-Nicolás, “Cultural Differences on Values about Conflict, War, and Peace,” World Values Research 3, no. 1 (2010), 6.
49. Glosserman and Snyder, Japan–South Korea Identity Clash, citing Pew polling data, 32.
50. Cabinet Secretariat, National Security Strategy: December 17, 2013, 1.
51. Ibid.
52. This issue of challenges to Japan’s “security identity” under Abe is analyzed in a more explicitly theoretical fashion in Andrew L. Oros, “International and Domestic Challenges to Japan’s Postwar Security Identity: ‘Norm Constructivism’ and Japan’s New ‘Proactive Pacifism,’” Pacific Review 28, no. 1 (March 2015): 139–60.
53. Paul Midford, Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011), reproduces extensive polling data that illustrate this point in the post–Cold War period through 2009; Corey J. Wallace, “The Evolution of the Japanese Strategic Imagination and Generation Change: A Generationally-Focused Analysis of Public and Elite Attitudes towards War and Peace in Japan” (PhD diss., University of Auckland, 2014), and Glosserman and Snyder, Japan–South Korea Identity Clash, analyze polling data through 2014 that also illustrate this point.
54. NHK polling from 2010 to 2014, cited in Wallace, “Evolution,” 178.
55. NHK polling in 2013, cited ibid., 155.
56. Asahi polling 2013, 2014, cited ibid., 134.
57. Ibid., 186.
58. Interpreting polling on the specific issue of CSD is somewhat tricky given the broad nature of the policy. When Japanese are polled with a specific example of CSD, majorities have been found in support of the exercise of CSD in some cases—such as aiding a US ship under attack in an area near Japan. When asked the more abstract question of support for CSD, a majority did not support a policy change in numerous polls over time. For explication of this point and specific polling data, see Wallace, “Evolution,” 157.
59. Japan Times, July 26, 2015.
60. Although for over sixty years conservatives and nationalists in Japan have consistently sought to formally revise Article Nine, until the twenty-first century, there was no time when it looked as if a vote for revision could obtain the necessary two-thirds affirmative vote in the Diet. The process by which the subsequently required national referendum would be conducted had not even been determined by legislation until 2007 (under the first Abe administration), as no national referendum of any sort has ever been conducted in Japan.
61. Defense of Japan 2012, 110.
62. Cabinet Secretariat, “Cabinet Decision on Development of Seamless Security Legislation to Ensure Japan’s Survival and Protect Its People,” July 1, 2014, http://japan.kantei.go.jp/96_abe/decisions/2014/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2014/07/03/anpohosei_eng.pdf, 8.
63. Defense of Japan 2015, 139–52, provides an overview of the different aspects of the new legislation as well as of issues related to its implementation.
64. Japan Times, July 9, 2014.
65. Ibid.
66. Yoichi Funabashi writes that the invitation in 1997 to the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili for a meal in the prime minister’s office was totally unprecedented (Alliance Adrift [New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1999], 118). He also discusses the cautious attitudes of Japanese prime ministers in the 1990s toward interacting with the military.
67. Yuki Tatsumi, “Great Expectations During Japan Military Chief’s US Visit,” Diplomat, July 24, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/07/great-expectations-during-japan-military-chiefs-us-visit/, notes the significance of this public appearance. A video of Admiral Takei’s speech (in English) is available at http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/07/29/from-ocean-of-war-to-ocean-of-prosperity/idt3.
68. National Institute for Defense Studies, East Asian Strategic Review 2013, 118.
69. For a discussion of the depth of the Japan-Australia security partnership circa 2015, see Thomas S. Wilkins, “The Japan Choice: Reconsidering the Risks and Opportunities of the ‘Special Relationship’ for Australia,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 2015, doi:10.1093/irap/lcv025. A more comprehensive, earlier overview can be found in William Tow and Rikki Kersten, eds., Bilateral Perspectives on Regional Security: Australia, Japan and the Asia-Pacific Region (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
70. The full restrictions beyond just that Japan’s survival must be threatened are explained as follows in Defense of Japan 2015, 140, figure II-1-3-1, section 3: “The Government believes that not only when an armed attack against Japan occurs but also when an armed attack against a foreign country that is in a close relationship with Japan occurs and as a result threatens Japan’s survival and poses a clear danger to fundamentally overturn people’s right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and when there is no other appropriate means available to repel the attack and ensure Japan’s survival and protect its people, use of force to the minimum extent necessary should be interpreted to be permitted under the Constitution as measures for self-defense.”
71. Defense of Japan 2012, 474.
72. Polling data of 2015 is available at http://survey.gov-online.go.jp/h26/h26-bouei/gairyaku.pdf.
73. For example, Ichirō Ozawa had left the DPJ to form the People’s Life Party, which fared poorly in the December 2012 election; Shizuka Kamei left the LDP to form the People’s New Party but is now an independent; and Shintarō Ishihara left the LDP to support the further-right JIP only to see electoral support for that party also wane. An article in the Shūkan posuto argues this general point: “Beitsuishō no Nihonjin wa ‘kōfukuna dorei’: Media riterashī kakutoku hitsuyō” [US-following Japanese are “happy slaves”: We need media literacy], October 2, 2012.
74. Polling data of 2015 is available in Japanese at http://survey.gov-online.go.jp/h26/h26-bouei/gairyaku.pdf. Defense of Japan 2014 (Tokyo: Urban Connections, 2014) provides longitudinal polling data reporting that over 70 percent of Japanese responding view the US-Japan Security Treaty as “helpful” since the 2000 survey, rising from 63.9 percent in 1991 (465).
75. Shūkan posuto argues this general point in “Beitsuishō no Nihonjin wa ‘kōfukuna dorei’: Media riterashī kakutoku hitsuyō” [US-following Japanese are “happy slaves”: We need media literacy], October 2, 2012.
76. New York Times, February 22, 2014.
77. Hugh White, The China Choice: Why We Should Share Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
78. See, for example, Hiroshi Yuasa, “Great Power Relationship vs. Rebalance: The ‘New Model of Great Power Relations’ Trap,” Sankei News, March 30, 2014, http://watchingamerica.com/WA/2014/04/09/great-power-relationship-vs-rebalance-the-new-model-of-great-power-relations-trap/.
79. Mike M. Mochizuki, Japan: Domestic Change and Foreign Policy (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1995).
80. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “U.S.-Japan Joint Vision Statement,” April 28, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/28/us-japan-joint-vision-statement.
81. The full text of “The Guidelines for US-Japan Defense Cooperation” is available at http://www.mofa.go.jp/files/000078188.pdf.
82. “US-Japan Joint Vision Statement,” 2.
83. The full text of the 1997 guidelines is reproduced in Defense of Japan 2014, 417–20.
84. “Guidelines for US-Japan Defense Cooperation,” 3.
85. Ibid., 18.
86. Chanlett-Avery et al., Japan-U.S. Relations, 1.
87. Embassy of the United States, Tokyo, Japan, “Statement on Prime Minister Abe’s December 26 Visit to Yasukuni Shrine,” December 26, 2013, http://japan.usembassy.gov/e/p/tp-20131226-01.html.
Conclusion: Implications and Next Steps in Japan’s Security Renaissance
1. The panel’s full name is the Advisory Panel on the History of the Twentieth Century and on Japan’s Role and the World Order in the Twenty-First Century. The report of this panel was issued on August 6, 2015, and is available at http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/21c_koso/pdf/report_en.pdf.
2. Brad Glosserman and Scott A. Snyder, The Japan–South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), provides an excellent contemporary overview of such opportunities lost and the multiple challenges to attaining that path.
3. Mary M. McCarthy examines this international-domestic linkage in “US Comfort Women Memorials: Vehicle for Understanding and Change,” Asia Pacific Bulletin, no. 275 (August 12, 2014), http://www.eastwestcenter.org/sites/default/files/private/apb275.pdf.
4. James Steinberg and Michael E. O’Hanlon, Strategic Reassurance and Resolve: U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014), makes a strong case for seeing the US-China relationship in this manner.
5. Paul Midford, “The Logic of Reassurance and Japan’s Grand Strategy,” Security Studies 11, no. 3 (spring 2002): 1–43, among others, develops this point.
6. Note that Japan does not officially recognize that it has a territorial dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands, despite China’s increasingly more strident claims. Japan’s position is that the matter was unequivocally settled more than half a century ago, as discussed in chapter 3.
7. For a recent discussion of likely next steps in deepening Japan-Australia security cooperation, see Yuki Tatsumi, ed., US-Japan-Australia Security Cooperation: Prospects and Challenges (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2015).
8. Glosserman and Snyder, Japan-South Korea Identity Clash, reaches a similar conclusion, providing considerable context and support for this view.
9. Bhubhindar Singh, Japan’s Security Identity: From a Peace State to an International State (London: Routledge, 2013); Lindsay Black, Japan’s Maritime Security Strategy: The Japan Coast Guard and Maritime Outlaws (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
10. The new mission statement and vision for JICA is available at http://www.jica.go.jp/english/about/mission/index.html; it was announced via a Cabinet Statement on February 10, 2015, available at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/files/000067701.pdf. For a critical overview of the changes and continuities from past ODA policies, see Lian Alfred Santos, “Figuring Out Japan’s New Aid Charter,” at https://www.devex.com/news/figuring-out-japan-s-new-aid-charter-85520.
11. Dennis Yasutomo provides a compelling and detailed examination of the linkage between Japan’s ODA policy and its security policy evolution, focusing on the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, in Japan’s Civil-Military Diplomacy.
12. This and other new institutional approaches at JICA were presented by JICA president Akihiko Tanaka at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC: “Japan’s Proactive Contribution to Peace: What It Means in Development,” July 27, 2015. An audio transcript is available at http://www.brookings.edu/events/2015/07/27-japan-proactive-contribution-peace.
13. Gerald Curtis, The Logic of Japanese Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), explains the complicated political realignment of the 1990s and the forces that led to it; T. J. Pempel, Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998), links these changes to a broader socioeconomic context.
14. Toshi Yoshihara, “Japanese Hard Power: Rising to the Challenge,” National Security Outlook, August 2014, 11.
15. Douglas McGray wrote about Japan’s “gross national cool” in Foreign Policy magazine in 2009: http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/11/11/japans-gross-national-cool/.
16. Jeff Kingston, Japan’s Quiet Transformation: Social Change and Civil Society in the Twenty-First Century (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), and a follow-up edited volume, Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan (New York: Routledge, 2014), provide an excellent overview of such broader societal change.
17. R. Taggart Murphy, Japan and the Shackles of the Past: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 385.
18. A broad-based study organized by the global consulting giant McKinsey and Company after the triple disaster of March 2011 contains short essays by over eighty Japan experts across the political-economic-social spectrum arguing for the need to take a fresh look at Japan and its most pressing challenges: Reimagining Japan: The Quest for a Future That Works (San Francisco: VIZ Media, 2011).
19. Michael Swaine et al., China’s Military and the U.S.-Japan Alliance in 2030: A Strategic Net Assessment (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2013), considers these two, among other, possible scenarios for China—as well as different scenarios for Japan and the United States, setting out the likely security implications of each together with the likelihood of each scenario.
20. Corey J. Wallace, “The Evolution of the Japanese Strategic Imagination and Generation Change: A Generationally-Focused Analysis of Public and Elite Attitudes towards War and Peace in Japan” (PhD diss., University of Auckland, 2014), addresses this issue through elite interviews and a survey of Diet members, contrasting his findings with public opinion polling and previous literature on the subject.
21. Gerald L. Curtis, The Japanese Way of Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), develops this point broadly; Andrew L. Oros, Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity, and the Evolution of Security Practice (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008), chapters 2, 4, and 5 illustrate this in the context of specific security policies during the Cold War period.
22. When the Ministry of Defense was upgraded in status from Japan Defense Agency in January 2007, the core mission of the ministry was expanded to not only the defense of Japan but also international contributions to peace (Defense of Japan 2007, 183–84).