Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society
Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society

Author: Tomoyuki Sasaki

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-08-27

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1472529642

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Japan's so-called 'peace constitution' renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation, and bans the nation from possessing any war potential. Yet Japan also maintains a large, world-class military organization, namely the Self-Defence Forces (SDF). In this book, Tomoyuki Sasaki explores how the SDF enlisted popular support from civil society and how civil society responded to the growth of the SDF. Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society details the interactions between the SDF and civil society over four decades, from the launch of rearmament in 1950. These interactions include recruitment, civil engineering, disaster relief, anti-SDF litigation, state financial support for communities with bases, and a fear-mongering campaign against the Soviet Union. By examining these wide-range issues, the book demonstrates how the militarization of society advanced as the SDF consolidated its ideological and socio-economic ties with civil society and its role as a defender of popular welfare. While postwar Japan is often depicted as a peaceful society, this book challenges such a view, and illuminates the prominent presence of the military in people's everyday lives.

Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society
Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society

Author: Tomoyuki Sasaki

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-08-27

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1472529553

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Japan's so-called 'peace constitution' renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation, and bans the nation from possessing any war potential. Yet Japan also maintains a large, world-class military organization, namely the Self-Defence Forces (SDF). In this book, Tomoyuki Sasaki explores how the SDF enlisted popular support from civil society and how civil society responded to the growth of the SDF. Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society details the interactions between the SDF and civil society over four decades, from the launch of rearmament in 1950. These interactions include recruitment, civil engineering, disaster relief, anti-SDF litigation, state financial support for communities with bases, and a fear-mongering campaign against the Soviet Union. By examining these wide-range issues, the book demonstrates how the militarization of society advanced as the SDF consolidated its ideological and socio-economic ties with civil society and its role as a defender of popular welfare. While postwar Japan is often depicted as a peaceful society, this book challenges such a view, and illuminates the prominent presence of the military in people's everyday lives.

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons
Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons

Author: Dr. Jeffrey Record

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 1786252961

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Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.

Civil Society in Japan
Civil Society in Japan

Author: K. Hirata

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2002-08-16

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0230109160

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Civil Society and Japan's Foreign Aid examines the changing relations between the Japanese state and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in promoting effective aid policies and analyzes the changing nature of policy making and governance in Japan. It is based on extensive research in Southeast Asia and Japan, investigating the role of Japanese aid in fields such as education, health care, environmental protection, and economic development. It analyzes the key players in aid policymaking, including donor governments, multinational organizations, international and local NGOs, the business community, and aid recipients.

Defenders of Japan
Defenders of Japan

Author: Garren Mulloy

Publisher: Hurst Publishers

Published: 2021-09-30

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1787387305

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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.

Japan's Civil-Military Diplomacy
Japan's Civil-Military Diplomacy

Author: Dennis T. Yasutomo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-05-09

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1134651864

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Since the early 1990s, there has been a clear evolution in the military dimension of Japanese diplomacy. From Gulf War I in 1991 to the present day, an incremental but unmistakable acceptance of, and resort to, military dispatches has taken place, and yet crucially, Japan has not morphed into a traditional military power. Exploring Japan’s involvement in both Afghanistan and Iraq, this book examines the evolution and nature of the new civil-military dimension in Japanese foreign policy. It shows how foreign aid, Japan’s traditional non-military diplomatic tool, was merged with the operations of the Japanese Self-Defense Force in Iraq and the activities of NATO-ISAF forces in Afghanistan, and emphasises the centrality of civilian power to Japanese foreign policy and diplomacy. However, Dennis Yasutomo argues that while a new civil-military security culture is replacing the old merchant state culture of pacifism and anti-militarism, Japan does not yet qualify as a military "normal nation". Further, the book’s exploration of the increased utilization of military power within the context of civilian objectives and non-military diplomatic instruments, sheds light on the current build-up of Japanese military power in East and Southeast Asia amid territorial disputes and nuclear threats, and highlights the impact that Japan’s new civil-military diplomacy may have on wider international affairs in the 21st Century. Drawing on interviews with key actors in Tokyo, as well as with practitioners who have served on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, this book will have broad appeal to students and scholars working on Japanese politics and diplomacy, military and security studies and international relations.

The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Politics
The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Politics

Author: Robert J. Pekkanen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-10-25

Total Pages: 1001

ISBN-13: 0190050993

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"Book Abstract and Keywords: The study of Japanese politics has flourished over the past several decades. This Handbook provides a state-of-the-field overview for students and researchers of Japanese. The volume also serves to introduce Japanese politics to readers less familiar with Japan. In addition, the volume has a theme of "evaluating Japan's democracy." Taken as a whole, the volume provides a positive evaluation of the state of Japan's democracy. The volume is divided into two parts, roughly corresponding to domestic Japanese politics and Japan's international politics. Within the domestic politics part, there are four distinct sections: "Domestic Political Actors and Institutions," covering the Japanese Constitution, electoral systems, prime minister, Diet, bureaucracy, judiciary, and local government; "Political Parties and Coalitions," covering the Liberal Democratic Party, coalition government, Kōmeitō, and the political opposition; "Policymaking and the Public," covering the policymaking process, public opinion, civil society, and populism; and, "Political Economy and Social Policy," covering industrial, energy, social welfare, agricultural, monetary, and immigration policies, as well as social inequality. In the international relations part, there are four sections: "International Relations Frameworks," covering grand strategy, international organizations, and international status; "International Political Economy," covering trade, finance, foreign direct investment, the environment, economic regionalism, and the linkage between security and economics; "International Security," covering remilitarization, global and regional security multilateralism, nuclear nonproliferation, naval power, space security, and cybersecurity; and, "Foreign Relations" covering Japan's relations with the United States, China, South Korea, ASEAN, India, the European Union, and Russia. Keywords: international relations, comparative politics, democracy, international order, alliances, space security, elections, Liberal Democratic Party, multilateralism, remilitarization, international organizations, populism, civil society, coalitions, political parties, trade, finance monetary policy, foreign direct investment, cybersecurity"--

Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society
Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society

Author: Tomoyuki Sasaki

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9781474219440

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"Japan's so-called 'peace constitution' renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation, and bans the nation from possessing any war potential. Yet Japan also maintains a large, world-class military organization, namely the Self-Defence Forces (SDF). In this book, Tomoyuki Sasaki explores how the SDF enlisted popular support from civil society and how civil society responded to the growth of the SDF. Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society details the interactions between the SDF and civil society over four decades, from the launch of rearmament in 1950. These interactions include recruitment, civil engineering, disaster relief, anti-SDF litigation, state financial support for communities with bases, and a fear-mongering campaign against the Soviet Union. By examining these wide-range issues, the book demonstrates how the militarization of society advanced as the SDF consolidated its ideological and socio-economic ties with civil society and its role as a defender of popular welfare. While postwar Japan is often depicted as a peaceful society, this book challenges such a view, and illuminates the prominent presence of the military in people's everyday lives."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Japan’s Arduous Rejuvenation as a Global Power
Japan’s Arduous Rejuvenation as a Global Power

Author: Victor Teo

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-04-08

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 9811361908

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This open access book assesses the profound impact of Japan’s aspirations to become a great power on Japanese security, democracy and foreign relations. Rather than viewing the process of normalization and rejuvenation as two decades of remilitarization in face of rapidly changing strategic environment and domestic political circumstances, this volume contextualizes Japan’s contemporary international relations against the longer grain of Japanese historical interactions. It demonstrates that policies and statecraft in the Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s era are a continuation of a long, unbroken and arduous effort by successive generations of leaders to preserve Japanese autonomy, enhance security and advance Japanese national interests. Arguing against the notion that Japan cannot work with China as long as the US-Japan alliance is in place, the book suggests that Tokyo could forge constructive relations with Beijing by engaging China in joint projects in and outside of the Asia-Pacific in issue areas such as infrastructure development or in the provision of international public goods. It also submits that an improvement in Japan-China relations would enhance rather than detract Japan-US relations and that Tokyo will find that her new found autonomy in the US-Japan alliance would not only accord her more political respect and strategic latitude, but also allow her to ameliorate the excesses of American foreign policy adventurism, paving for her to become a truly normal great power.