Japan’s Threat Perception during the Cold War

Japan’s Threat Perception during the Cold War

Author: Eitan Oren

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-02-10

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 1000836126

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Oren re-examines Japan’s threat perception during the first two decades of the Cold War, using a wide range of source materials, including many unavailable in English, or only recently declassified. There is a widely shared misconception that during the Cold War the Japanese were largely shielded from threats due to the American military protection, the regional balance of power, Japan’s geographical insularity, and domestic aversion to militarism. Oren dispels this, showing how security threats pervaded Japanese strategic thinking in this period. By dispelling this misconception, Oren enables us to more accurately gauge the degree to which Japan’s threat perception has evolved during and after the end of the Cold War and to enhance our understanding of Tokyo’s strategic calculus in the current situation of rivalry between China and the United States. This book will be of great value to both scholars of Japanese history and contemporary international relations.


The U.S.-Japan Security Relationship After the Cold War

The U.S.-Japan Security Relationship After the Cold War

Author: Francis Fukuyama

Publisher: Rand Corporation

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 106

ISBN-13: 9780833014382

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In the 1990s the close security relationship between the U.S. and Japan is being eroded by the disappearance of traditional Cold War threats and an increase in international trade disputes. In Japan, market opening demands from Washington and the fraying of America's social fabric have raised questions as to the wisdom of relying too heavily on the U.S. as a security partner and a socio-economic model. In the U.S., frustration with continuing bilateral trade deficits and a growing perception that the Japanese are playing by different economic rules has begun to strain the relationship. Particular concern has been raised about the danger of U.S. technology flow to Japan in both the military and civilian sectors. While a close U.S.-Japan security relationship is likely to continue for many years, both nations will have to learn how to participate in a more equal partnership.


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.


Governing Insecurity in Japan

Governing Insecurity in Japan

Author: Wilhelm Vosse

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-27

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 113509151X

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Since the end of the Cold War, Japan's security environment has changed significantly. While, on the global level, the United States is still Japan's most important security partner, the nature of the partnership has changed as a result of shifting demands from the United States, new international challenges such as the North Korean nuclear programme and the rapid rise of China. At the same time, Japan has been confronted with new, ‘non-traditional’ security threats such as international terrorism, the spread of infectious diseases, and global environmental problems. On the domestic level, demographic change, labour migration, economic decline, workplace insecurity, and a weakening impact of policy initiatives challenge the sustainability of the lifestyle of many Japanese and have led to a heightened sense of insecurity among the Japanese public. This book focuses on the domestic discourse on insecurity in Japan and goes beyond military security. The chapters cover issues such as Japan’s growing perception of regional and global insecurity; the changing role of military forces; the perceived risk of Chinese foreign investment; societal, cultural and labour insecurity and how it is affected by demographic changes and migration; as well as food insecurity and its challenges to health and public policy. Each chapter asks how the Japanese public perceives these insecurities; how these perceptions influence the public discourse, the main stakeholders of this discourse, and how this affects state-society relations and government policies. Governing Insecurity in Japan provides new insights into Japanese and international discourses on security and insecurity, and the ways in which security is conceptualized in Japan. As such, it will be of interest to students and scholars working on Japanese politics, security studies and international relations.


The U.S.-Japan Alliance

The U.S.-Japan Alliance

Author: Michael J. Green

Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13:

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The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Past, Present, and Future explains the inner workings of the U.S.-Japan alliance and recommends new approaches to sustaining this critical bilateral security relationship.


Sorry States

Sorry States

Author: Jennifer Lind

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-08-15

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0801462274

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Governments increasingly offer or demand apologies for past human rights abuses, and it is widely believed that such expressions of contrition are necessary to promote reconciliation between former adversaries. The post-World War II experiences of Japan and Germany suggest that international apologies have powerful healing effects when they are offered, and poisonous effects when withheld. West Germany made extensive efforts to atone for wartime crimes-formal apologies, monuments to victims of the Nazis, and candid history textbooks; Bonn successfully reconciled with its wartime enemies. By contrast, Tokyo has made few and unsatisfying apologies and approves school textbooks that whitewash wartime atrocities. Japanese leaders worship at the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war criminals among Japan's war dead. Relations between Japan and its neighbors remain tense. Examining the cases of South Korean relations with Japan and of French relations with Germany, Jennifer Lind demonstrates that denials of past atrocities fuel distrust and inhibit international reconciliation. In Sorry States, she argues that a country's acknowledgment of past misdeeds is essential for promoting trust and reconciliation after war. However, Lind challenges the conventional wisdom by showing that many countries have been able to reconcile without much in the way of apologies or reparations. Contrition can be highly controversial and is likely to cause a domestic backlash that alarms—rather than assuages—outside observers. Apologies and other such polarizing gestures are thus unlikely to soothe relations after conflict, Lind finds, and remembrance that is less accusatory-conducted bilaterally or in multilateral settings-holds the most promise for international reconciliation.


Cultural Norms and National Security

Cultural Norms and National Security

Author: Peter J. Katzenstein

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-09-05

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1501731467

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Nonviolent state behavior in Japan, this book argues, results from the distinctive breadth with which the Japanese define security policy, making it inseparable from the quest for social stability through economic growth. While much of the literature on contemporary Japan has resisted emphasis on cultural uniqueness, Peter J. Katzenstein seeks to explain particular aspects of Japan's security policy in terms of legal and social norms that are collective, institutionalized, and sometimes the source of intense political conflict and change. Culture, thus specified, is amenable to empirical analysis, suggesting comparisons across policy domains and with other countries. Katzenstein focuses on the traditional core agencies of law enforcement and national defense. The police and the military in postwar Japan are, he finds, reluctant to deploy physical violence to enforce state security. Police agents rarely use repression against domestic opponents of the state, and the Japanese public continues to support, by large majorities, constitutional limits on overseas deployment of the military. Katzenstein traces the relationship between the United States and Japan since 1945 and then compares Japan with postwar Germany. He concludes by suggesting that while we may think of Japan's security policy as highly unusual, it is the definition of security used in the United States that is, in international terms, exceptional.


Japan and the Middle East

Japan and the Middle East

Author: Satoru Nakamura

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-03-11

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 9811934592

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The book provides a comprehensive analysis of the emergence, political economy and foreign relations of Japan’s relations with the Middle East, with an emphasis on its relations with the states in the Gulf Region. It offers both country specific case studies and thematic chapters, providing comprehensive study on Japan’s relations with the Gulf and the wider Middle East. Japan enjoys a strategic partnership with the Arab Gulf countries in terms of its energy trade, yet this has morphed into a wider trading relationship with the wider Middle East. The book studies Japan’s relations with Israel, Egypt and Turkey, covering security, the oil sector and the LNG sector Middle East. This will allow this book to go beyond its rich analytical and empirical content.


Economics and Politics

Economics and Politics

Author: Helmut Norpoth

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780472101863

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An important study on the effects of economic performance on elections.