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Based on original fieldwork including interviews held with Japanese officials, this text provides important new insight into Japan and East Asian relations, principally through the close examination of changes in Japan’s regional policy. Furthering discussions on Japan’s new regional activism, Hayashi explores how Japan and East Asian relations have developed, how Japan’s regional policy has changed, and why. In addition, the book challenges conventional views on Japanese foreign policy, arguing that it is not reactive but incrementally effective. The book incorporates three major case studies that provide detailed narratives and analysis of Japan and Washington’s diverging ideological approaches, Japan’s policies towards the East Asian financial crisis, and its policies towards East Asian regionalism.
Based on original fieldwork including interviews held with Japanese officials, this text provides important new insight into Japan and East Asian relations, principally through the close examination of changes in Japan’s regional policy. Furthering discussions on Japan’s new regional activism, Hayashi explores how Japan and East Asian relations have developed, how Japan’s regional policy has changed, and why. In addition, the book challenges conventional views on Japanese foreign policy, arguing that it is not reactive but incrementally effective. The book incorporates three major case studies that provide detailed narratives and analysis of Japan and Washington’s diverging ideological approaches, Japan’s policies towards the East Asian financial crisis, and its policies towards East Asian regionalism.
The central puzzle in the study of Japanese foreign policy has been why Japan has continued to play a passive role in international affairs, despite its impressive economic and political power. Challenging this central puzzle, the core argument of this study is to present an alternative path for the study of Japanese foreign policy. In fact, in recent years Japanese foreign policy has become less dependent on the United States, more strategic towards Asia, and more energetic towards international and regional institutions. One of the main features is multilateralism in Japanese foreign policy, as shown by Japan's active participation in the regional institutions. In pursuing multilateralism,...
Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature looks at the ways in which authors writing in Japanese in the twentieth century constructed a division between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ in their work. Drawing on methodology from Foucault and Lacan, the clearly presented essays seek to show how Japanese writers have responded to the central question of what it means to be ‘Japanese’ and of how best to define their identity. Taking geographical, racial and ethnic identity as a starting point to explore Japan's vision of 'non-Japan', representations of the Other are examined in terms of the experiences of Japanese authors abroad and in the imaginary lands envisioned by authors in Japan. Using a diverse cross-section of writers and texts as case studies, this edited volume brings together contributions from a number of leading international experts in the field and is written at an accessible level, making it essential reading for those working in Japanese studies, colonialism, identity studies and nationalism.
Leading specialists from Europe and Japan examine the institutional mechanisms of governance at the global level and provide concrete evidence of the role Japan plays in these institutions. An excellent introduction to the concept of global governance, the volume analyzes how global governance actually works through the global institutional mechanisms of governance. It provides an up-to-date and contemporary analysis of the six most important global institutions, namely: the Group of 7/8 the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development the World Bank the International Monetary Fund the World Trade Organization the United Nations. Written clearly and concisely, the book provides a thorough and accessible discussion on Japan’s role within these institutions and uses supporting case studies to ask whether Japan is reactively or proactively involved in trying to shape these institutions in order to promote its own interests. As such, it will be a valuable resource for undergraduates and scholars with an interest in global governance, Japanese politics and political economy.
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 impac...
Based on primary resources, including documents and extensive interviews with Japanese policy makers, this book provides a comprehensive and detailed empirical analysis of Japan’s involvement in Asia-Pacific security multilateralism after the end of the Cold War with special reference to the ARF. Giving an in-depth account of new developments in Japan’s post-Cold War security policy, Yuzawa also examines: Japan's initial motivations, expectations and objectives for promoting regional security multilateralism Japan's diplomacy for achieving these objectives and experiences in the ARF since its formation the effectiveness and limitations of the ARF with regards national and Asia-Pacific se...
Disembedding autonomy : Asia after the developmental state / Toby Carroll and Darryl S.L. Jarvis -- The origins of East Asia's developmental states and the pressures for change / Richard Stubbs -- Globalization and development : the evolving idea of the developmental state / Shigeko Hayashi -- Late capitalism and the shift from the development state to the variegated market state / Toby Carroll -- Capitalist development in the 21st century : states and global competitiveness / Paul Cammack -- From Japan's Prussian path to China's Singapore model : learning authoritarian developmentalism / Mark Thompson -- What does China's rise mean for the developmental state paradigm? / Mark Beeson -- The ...
Examining the ways in which the Japanese have manipulated historical memory, the contributors reveal the presence of an underlying concept of 'Japaneseness' that excludes members of the principal minority groups in Japan.
The purpose of this book is to illuminate the changing nature of contemporary Japan by decoding a range of political, economic and social boundaries, with a focus on the period following the inauguration of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichirō’s administration (2001—6). A rapid turnover of prime ministers followed Koizumi—Abe Shinzō (2006--7), Fukuda Yasuo (2007--8) and Asō Tarō (2008—)—but the transformation set in motion through his promotion of a more proactive role for Japan internationally, and the implementation of ‘structural reforms’ domestically, set the direction for future administrations. The central argument of the book is that, in order to achieve the twin goals of greater international proactivity and domestic reform, the government and other actors supporting the new direction for Japan pushed forward by the Koizumi administration needed to take action in order to destabilize and reformulate a range of extant boundaries. This task was achieved by deploying material as well as normative resources, including the production of new discourses about the way these resources should be deployed.