Japan’s Threat Perception during the Cold War

Japan’s Threat Perception during the Cold War PDF Author: Eitan Oren
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000836126
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
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.

Japan’s Threat Perception during the Cold War

Japan’s Threat Perception during the Cold War PDF Author: Eitan Oren
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000836126
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

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

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons PDF Author: Dr. Jeffrey Record
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786252961
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
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 PDF Author: Wilhelm Vosse
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113509151X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
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.

Cultural Norms and National Security

Cultural Norms and National Security PDF Author: Peter J. Katzenstein
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501731467
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
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 PDF Author: Satoru Nakamura
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811934592
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
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.

Sorry States

Sorry States PDF Author: Jennifer Lind
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801462274
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
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.

U. S.-Japan Strategic Alliances in the Semiconductor Industry

U. S.-Japan Strategic Alliances in the Semiconductor Industry PDF Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 9781568066820
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
Reviews the evolution of strategic alliances involving U.S. and Japanese companies in the semiconductor industry, and analyzes whether alliances can contribute to the renewal of an industry faced with stiff competition from Japan. Provides an overview of the changing nature of technology linkages in this important industry.

Japan's Aging Peace

Japan's Aging Peace PDF Author: Tom Phuong Le
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231553285
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Since the end of World War II, Japan has not sought to remilitarize, and its postwar constitution commits to renouncing aggressive warfare. Yet many inside and outside Japan have asked whether the country should or will return to commanding armed forces amid an increasingly challenging regional and global context and as domestic politics have shifted in favor of demonstrations of national strength. Tom Phuong Le offers a novel explanation of Japan’s reluctance to remilitarize that foregrounds the relationship between demographics and security. Japan’s Aging Peace demonstrates how changing perceptions of security across generations have culminated in a culture of antimilitarism that constrains the government’s efforts to pursue a more martial foreign policy. Le challenges a simple opposition between militarism and pacifism, arguing that Japanese security discourse should be understood in terms of “multiple militarisms,” which can legitimate choices such as the mobilization of the Japan Self-Defense Forces for peacekeeping operations and humanitarian relief missions. Le highlights how factors that are not typically linked to security policy, such as aging and declining populations and gender inequality, have played crucial roles. He contends that the case of Japan challenges the presumption in international relations scholarship that states must pursue the use of force or be punished, showing how widespread normative beliefs have restrained Japanese policy makers. Drawing on interviews with policy makers, military personnel, atomic bomb survivors, museum coordinators, grassroots activists, and other stakeholders, as well as analysis of peace museums and social movements, Japan’s Aging Peace provides new insights for scholars of Asian politics, international relations, and Japanese foreign policy.

The Korean Diaspora in Post War Japan

The Korean Diaspora in Post War Japan PDF Author: Myung Ja Kim
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786731851
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The indistinct status of the Zainichi has meant that, since the late 1940s, two ethnic Korean associations, the Chongryun (pro-North) and the Mindan (pro-South) have been vying for political loyalty from the Zainichi, with both groups initially opposing their assimilation in Japan. Unlike the Korean diasporas living in Russia, China or the US, the Zainichi have become sharply divided along political lines as a result. Myung Ja Kim examines Japan's changing national policies towards the Zainichi in order to understand why this group has not been fully integrated into Japan. Through the prism of this ethnically Korean community, the book reveals the dynamics of alliances and alignments in East Asia, including the rise of China as an economic superpower, the security threat posed by North Korea and the diminishing alliance between Japan and the US. Taking a post-war historical perspective, the research reveals why the Zainichi are vital to Japan's state policy revisionist aims to increase its power internationally and how they were used to increase the country's geopolitical leverage.With a focus on International Relations, this book provides an important analysis of the mechanisms that lie behind nation-building policy, showing the conditions controlling a host state's treatment of diasporic groups.

Special Duty

Special Duty PDF Author: Richard J. Samuels
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501741608
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
The prewar history of the Japanese intelligence community demonstrates how having power over much, but insight into little can have devastating consequences. Its postwar history—one of limited Japanese power despite growing insight—has also been problematic for national security. In Special Duty Richard J. Samuels dissects the fascinating history of the intelligence community in Japan. Looking at the impact of shifts in the strategic environment, technological change, and past failures, he probes the reasons why Japan has endured such a roller-coaster ride when it comes to intelligence gathering and analysis, and concludes that the ups and downs of the past century—combined with growing uncertainties in the regional security environment—have convinced Japanese leaders of the critical importance of striking balance between power and insight. Using examples of excessive hubris and debilitating bureaucratic competition before the Asia-Pacific War, the unavoidable dependence on US assets and popular sensitivity to security issues after World War II, and the tardy adoption of image-processing and cyber technologies, Samuels' bold book highlights the century-long history of Japan's struggles to develop a fully functioning and effective intelligence capability, and makes clear that Japanese leaders have begun to reinvent their nation's intelligence community.