The Politics of Japanese Defense

The Politics of Japanese Defense
Author: Joseph P. Keddell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2016-09-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1315485753

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan uses incremental changes to manage conflicting pressures over defence.This work focuses on the establishment of defence policy constraints through 1992. It discusses the various implications of using defence policy as a means of conflict management.

Japan's Evolving Security Policy

Japan's Evolving Security Policy
Author: Kyoko Hatakeyama
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2021-03-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000366855

Japan has been expanding its military roles in the post-Cold War period. This book analyses the shift in Japan’s security policy by examining the collective ideas of political parties and the effect of an international norm. Starting with the analysis of the collective ideas held by political parties, this book delves into factors overlooked in existing literature, including the effects of domestic and international norms, as well as how an international norm is localised when a conflicting domestic norm already exists. The argument held throughout is that these factors play a primary role in framing Japan's security policy. Overall, three security areas are studied: Japan’s arms trade ban policy, Japan’s participation in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, and Japan’s enlarged military roles in international security. Close examination demonstrates that the weakening presence of the left since the mid-1990s and the localisation of an international norm encouraged Japan to broaden its military role. Providing a comprehensive picture of Japan’s evolving security policy, this book asserts that shifts have occurred in ways that do not violate the pacifist domestic norm. Japan's Evolving Security Policy will appeal to students and scholars of International Relations, Asian Politics, Asian Security Studies and Japanese Studies.

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.

The Self-defense Forces and Postwar Politics in Japan

The Self-defense Forces and Postwar Politics in Japan
Author: 佐道明広
Publisher:
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2017-03-27
Genre: Japan
ISBN: 9784916055743

"In 1947, Japan eternally renounced war and the possession of armed forces with its constitution. How, then, did the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) survive, moreover, evolve over the ensuing 70 years into the prominent presence it is today? Sado Akihiro reviews the JSDF's history chiefly from the viewpoint of restrictions imposed on it by civil officials of the national bureaucracy, based on lessons gleaned from the arbitrary conduct of the military in pre-World War II days. He also explores the financial constraints placed on the JSDF in the form of a percentage of the GNP. This book traces the inside story of U.S.-Japan relations and Japan's defense policy. It attempts to shine a light on the true state of the JSDF in the midst of new challenges that put it at a crossroads, including post-9/11 international terrorism, North Korean nuclear development, and China's increased military presence in Asia"--Back cover.

Defenders of Japan

Defenders of Japan
Author: Garren Mulloy
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2021-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1787387305

Japan’s post-war armed forces are a paradox, both embarrassing remnants of the past and valuable repositories of experience. This book charts the development of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) from 1954 as both unorthodox military institutions and servants of a civil society that decries militarism. Investigating JSDF contributions to Japanese and global security, the evolution of such contributions during and after the Cold War, and their possible reconfiguration for Japan’s security needs ahead, Garren Mulloy offers insight into the Forces’ past, present and future. He explores the characteristics and contradictions of Japanese policy, including novel approaches in response to an increasingly assertive China, the latent threat of North Korea and contributory pressure from the US. Though the American alliance remains the core of Japanese security, new partnerships and international overtures will also shape the Forces’ place in Prime Minister Abe’s new vision of ‘proactive contributions to peace’. Defenders of Japan deconstructs how the JSDF have adapted and will continue to adapt within domestic norms, caught between unresolved legacies of Japan’s imperial past and a dynamically shifting balance of future global power.

Japanese War Criminals

Japanese War Criminals
Author: Sandra Wilson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2017-02-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231542682

Beginning in late 1945, the United States, Britain, China, Australia, France, the Netherlands, and later the Philippines, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China convened national courts to prosecute Japanese military personnel for war crimes. The defendants included ethnic Koreans and Taiwanese who had served with the armed forces as Japanese subjects. In Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East tried Japanese leaders. While the fairness of these trials has been a focus for decades, Japanese War Criminals instead argues that the most important issues arose outside the courtroom. What was the legal basis for identifying and detaining subjects, determining who should be prosecuted, collecting evidence, and granting clemency after conviction? The answers to these questions helped set the norms for transitional justice in the postwar era and today contribute to strategies for addressing problematic areas of international law. Examining the complex moral, ethical, legal, and political issues surrounding the Allied prosecution project, from the first investigations during the war to the final release of prisoners in 1958, Japanese War Criminals shows how a simple effort to punish the guilty evolved into a multidimensional struggle that muddied the assignment of criminal responsibility for war crimes. Over time, indignation in Japan over Allied military actions, particularly the deployment of the atomic bombs, eclipsed anger over Japanese atrocities, and, among the Western powers, new Cold War imperatives took hold. This book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the construction of the postwar international order in Asia and to our comprehension of the difficulties of implementing transitional justice.

Introduction to Japanese Politics

Introduction to Japanese Politics
Author: Hayes
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2009-05-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0765627426

This widely used text is an even-handed, forthright attempt to explain the political life of Japan as well as the forces that shape it. It demystifies this complex society by explaining the historical background for modern Japan; the political process, its formal structure, the party system, and citizen participation; the social order and the domestic economy; and Japan's role in international politics with emphasis on U.S.-Japanese relations and the international economy. The revised and updated Third Edition covers the new ground of 1995-1999, a period during which Japan experienced extraordinary political and economic change.

"Rich Nation, Strong Army"

Author: Richard J. Samuels
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 473
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.

In Defense of Japan

In Defense of Japan
Author: Saadia Pekkanen
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2010-08-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804775001

In Defense of Japan provides the first complete, up-to-date, English-language account of the history, politics, and policy of Japan's strategic space development. The dual-use nature of space technologies, meaning that they cut across both market and military applications, has had two important consequences for Japan. First, Japan has developed space technologies for the market in its civilian space program that have yet to be commercially competitive. Second, faced with rising geopolitical uncertainties and in the interest of their own economics, the makers of such technologies have been critical players in the shift from the market to the military in Japan's space capabilities and policy. This book shows how the sum total of market-to-military moves across space launch vehicles, satellites and spacecraft, and emerging related technologies, already mark Japan as an advanced military space power.

Japan's International Relations

Japan's International Relations
Author: Glenn D. Hook
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 680
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134328052

The new edition of this comprehensive and user-friendly textbook provides a single volume resource for all those studying Japan's international relations.