Securing Japan

Securing Japan
Author: Richard J. Samuels
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2011-07-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 080145798X

For the past sixty years, the U.S. government has assumed that Japan's security policies would reinforce American interests in Asia. The political and military profile of Asia is changing rapidly, however. Korea's nuclear program, China's rise, and the relative decline of U.S. power have commanded strategic review in Tokyo just as these matters have in Washington. What is the next step for Japan's security policy? Will confluence with U.S. interests—and the alliance—survive intact? Will the policy be transformed? Or will Japan become more autonomous? Richard J. Samuels demonstrates that over the last decade, a revisionist group of Japanese policymakers has consolidated power. The Koizumi government of the early 2000s took bold steps to position Japan's military to play a global security role. It left its successor, the Abe government, to further define and legitimate Japan's new grand strategy, a project well under way-and vigorously contested both at home and in the region. Securing Japan begins by tracing the history of Japan's grand strategy—from the Meiji rulers, who recognized the intimate connection between economic success and military advance, to the Konoye consensus that led to Japan's defeat in World War II and the postwar compact with the United States. Samuels shows how the ideological connections across these wars and agreements help explain today's debate. He then explores Japan's recent strategic choices, arguing that Japan will ultimately strike a balance between national strength and national autonomy, a position that will allow it to exist securely without being either too dependent on the United States or too vulnerable to threats from China. Samuels's insights into Japanese history, society, and politics have been honed over a distinguished career and enriched by interviews with policymakers and original archival research. Securing Japan is a definitive assessment of Japanese security policy and its implications for the future of East Asia.

Japan's National Security

Japan's National Security
Author: Peter J. Katzenstein
Publisher: Cornell East Asia Series
Total Pages: 314
Release: 1993
Genre: History
ISBN:

Japan's National Security offers a detailed examination of Japan's distinctive security policy. It traces in considerable detail the evolution of Japan's approach to the economic, political and military dimensions of national structures of government as well as a particular set of relations between state and society. One of the noteworthy aspects of this book is its detailed attention to the transnational links between the Japanese and the American militaries. The book accords a special place of the interaction between the legal and social norms that have affected Japanese conceptions of national security since 1945. Japan's National Security offers an important, meticulously researched, and up-to-date perspective on the role that Japan is likely to play after the Cold War. Together with Defending the Japanese State, these two monographs analyze the structures and norms that are shaping Japan's policy on internal and national security. The specific focus is on governmental, state-society and transnational structures as well as the social and legal norms that affect the policies of Japan's police and self-defense forces.

"Rich Nation, Strong Army"

Author: Richard J. Samuels
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2018-08-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1501718460

Since World War II, Japan has become not only a model producer of high-tech consumer goods, but also-despite minimal spending on defense-a leader in innovative technology with both military and civilian uses. In the United States, nearly one in every three scientists and engineers was engaged in defense-related research and development at the end of the Cold War, but the relative strength of the American economy has declined in recent years. What is the relationship between what has happened in the two countries? And where did Japan's technological excellence come from? In an economic history that will arouse controversy on both sides of the Pacific, Richard J. Samuels finds a key to Japan's success in an ideology of technological development that advances national interests. From 1868 until 1945, the Japanese economy was fired by the development of technology to enhance national security; the rallying cry "Rich Nation, Strong Army" accompanied the expanded military spending and aggressive foreign policy that led to the disasters of the War in the Pacific. Postwar economic planners reversed the assumptions that had driven Japan's industrialization, Samuels shows, promoting instead the development of commercial technology and infrastructure. By valuing process improvements as much as product innovation, the modern Japanese system has built up the national capacity to innovate while ensuring that technological advances have been diffused broadly through industries such as aerospace that have both civilian and military applications. Struggling with the uncertainties of a post-Cold War economy, the United States has important lessons to learn from the way Japan has subordinated defense production yet emerged as one of the most technologically sophisticated nations in the world. The Japanese, like the Venetians and the Dutch before them, show us that butter is just as likely as guns to make a nation strong, but that nations cannot hope to be strong without an ideology of technological development that nourishes the entire national economy.

Normalizing Japan

Normalizing Japan
Author: Andrew Oros
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2009-07-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804770662

'Normalizing Japan' discusses the future direction Japan's military policies are likely to take by considering how policy has evolved since the Second World War, and what factors shaped this evolution.

Japan Prepares for Total War

Japan Prepares for Total War
Author: Michael A. Barnhart
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2013-03-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0801468450

The roots of Japan's aggressive, expansionist foreign policy have often been traced to its concern over acute economic vulnerability. Michael A. Barnhart tests this assumption by examining the events leading up to World War II in the context of Japan's quest for economic security, drawing on a wide array of Japanese and American sources.Barnhart focuses on the critical years from 1938 to 1941 as he investigates the development of Japan's drive for national economic self-sufficiency and independence and the way in which this drive shaped its internal and external policies. He also explores American economic pressure on Tokyo and assesses its impact on Japan's foreign policy and domestic economy. He concludes that Japan's internal political dynamics, especially the bitter rivalry between its army and navy, played a far greater role in propelling the nation into war with the United States than did its economic condition or even pressure from Washington. Japan Prepares for Total War sheds new light on prewar Japan and confirms the opinions of those in Washington who advocated economic pressure against Japan.

Paths Diverging?

Paths Diverging?
Author: William E. Rapp
Publisher:
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2004
Genre: Confidence and security building measures (International relations)
ISBN:

The author explores the changing nature of Japanese security policy and the impact of those changes on the U.S.-Japan security alliance. He begins his analysis by acquainting the reader with an insider's view of the conflicted Japanese conceptions of security policy and the various ideational and structural restraints on expanding the role of the military. Next, he explores the events of the past decade that have caused huge shifts in security policy and posture and predicts the future vectors of those changes within Japan. Finally, the author overlays the likely Japanese security future on the alliance and concludes that changes in the basic relationship between the United States and Japan must occur if the alliance is to retain its centrality 20 years from now.

Japan’s Security Renaissance

Japan’s Security Renaissance
Author: Andrew L. Oros
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231542593

For decades after World War II, Japan chose to focus on soft power and economic diplomacy alongside a close alliance with the United States, eschewing a potential leadership role in regional and global security. Since the end of the Cold War, and especially since the rise of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan's military capabilities have resurged. In this analysis of Japan's changing military policy, Andrew L. Oros shows how a gradual awakening to new security challenges has culminated in the multifaceted "security renaissance" of the past decade. Despite openness to new approaches, however, three historical legacies—contested memories of the Pacific War and Imperial Japan, postwar anti-militarist convictions, and an unequal relationship with the United States—play an outsized role. In Japan's Security Renaissance Oros argues that Japan's future security policies will continue to be shaped by these legacies, which Japanese leaders have struggled to address. He argues that claims of rising nationalism in Japan are overstated, but there has been a discernable shift favoring the conservative Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party. Bringing together Japanese domestic politics with the broader geopolitical landscape of East Asia and the world, Japan's Security Renaissance provides guidance on this century's emerging international dynamics.

New Directions in Japan’s Security

New Directions in Japan’s Security
Author: Paul Midford
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2020-09-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000174174

While the US-Japan alliance has strengthened since the end of the Cold War, Japan has, almost unnoticed, been building security ties with other partners, in the process reducing the centrality of the US in Japan’s security. This book explains why this is happening. Japan pursued security isolationism during the Cold War, but the US was the exception. Japan hosted US bases and held joint military exercises even while shunning contacts with other militaries. Japan also made an exception to its weapons export ban to allow exports to the US. Yet, since the end of the Cold War, Japan’s security has undergone a quiet transformation, moving away from a singular focus on the US as its sole security partner. Tokyo has begun diversifying its security ties. This book traces and explains this diversification. The country has initiated security dialogues with Asian neighbors, assumed a leadership role in promoting regional multilateral security cooperation, and begun building bilateral security ties with a range of partners, from Australia and India to the European Union. Japan has even lifted its ban on weapons exports and co-development with non-US partners. This edited volume explores this trend of decreasing US centrality alongside the continued, and perhaps even growing, security (inter) dependence with the US. New Directions in Japan’s Security is an essential resource for scholars focused on Japan’s national security. It will also interest on a wider basis those wishing to understand why Japan is developing non-American directions in its security strategy.

Global Security Watch—Japan

Global Security Watch—Japan
Author: Andrew Lee Oros
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2010-09-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0313381399

This book offers a comprehensive overview of Japan's national security institutions and policy today, including a detailed discussion of Japan's regional security environment and its alliance with the United States in the context of the Democratic Party of Japan's rise to power in August 2009. 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, making Japan one of the United States's longest and most important military allies. Over 40,000 US troops are based in Japan, as is the only U.S. aircraft carrier based outside the United States, the USS George Washington. Japan possesses one of the world's largest economies and strongest military forces, and as a result, its national security policies and institutions are highly significant—not just to America, but to the rest of the global community as well. This book provides an overview of Japan's transformation into one of the world's most capable military powers over the past 150 years. Particular attention is paid to developments in the past decade, such as the 2009 change in the controlling political party and Japan's responses to new global security threats.

Japan Rising

Japan Rising
Author: Kenneth Pyle
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2009-04-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786732024

Japan is on the verge of a sea change. After more than fifty years of national pacifism and isolation including the "lost decade" of the 1990s, Japan is quietly, stealthily awakening. As Japan prepares to become a major player in the strategic struggles of the 21st century, critical questions arise about its motivations. What are the driving forces that influence how Japan will act in the international system? Are there recurrent patterns that will help explain how Japan will respond to the emerging environment of world politics? American understanding of Japanese character and purpose has been tenuous at best. We have repeatedly underestimated Japan in the realm of foreign policy. Now as Japan shows signs of vitality and international engagement, it is more important than ever that we understand the forces that drive Japan. In Japan Rising, renowned expert Kenneth Pyle identities the common threads that bind the divergent strategies of modern Japan, providing essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how Japan arrived at this moment -- and what to expect in the future.