Tsutsui W.M. A Companion to japanese histоry

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The consumer ethnic boom could also substitute for the lack of direct substantive

contact with foreign communities within Japan. It was not mere coincidence that

Latin music and Japanese groups such Orquesta de la Luz (who performed solely in

Spanish) gained popularity as South American Japanese begin to migrate to Japan

to look for work. Okinawan culture and music from pop singers to more traditional

musicians gained acceptance in the wake of campaigns to sell Okinawan tourism as

a domestic substitute for Hawaii or Southeast Asia which were still foreign and exotic.

The vogue for ethnic culture might seem to recapitulate the rather shallow form

of brand-name consumption. Indeed, one claim of Nihonjinron is that Japanese

culture is unique in its ability to absorb foreign influences while maintaining an

essential, homogeneous core. However, as the old adage ‘‘you are what you eat’’

implies, the consumption and internalization of foreign cultures can also give the

Japanese a new perspective on their own society, one that celebrates the diversity of its

elements.

NOTES

1 Gluck, ‘‘The Past in the Present,’’ p. 93; Igarashi, Bodies of Memory, pp. 14, 19–46.

2 Dower emphasizes the aspects of exhaustion, despair, and their cultural effects in the early

postwar years in chs. 3 and 4 of Embracing Defeat.

3 The airport is more commonly known as Narita, a nearby town, but Sanrizuka is the

hamlet where the airport is located. For a description of the farmers’ struggle against the

airport, see Apter and Sawa, Against the State.

4 Ishinomori presents a succinct summation of structural changes to the economy following

the first oil shock in his comic Japan, Inc., p. 159. Residents’ movements proliferated in

the 1970s as the price of Japan’s affluence became clear. The last of the ‘‘big four’’

pollution cases (Minamata, Niigata, Toyama, and Yokkaichi City) was decided in 1973,

building on the strict environmental pollution laws that were passed in 1970.

5 Tanaka Kakuei was forced from office in 1974, and then in 1976 the US Senate investi-

gation into the Lockheed scandal revealed that Tanaka had taken $2 million in bribes from

the company in a deal brokered by President Nixon in exchange for purchasing Lockheed

airplanes for All Nippon Airways.

6 The first major textbook controversy occurred in 1982. The issue resurfaced in the early

and late 1990s with the descriptions of the Rape of Nanking, the colonial administration

of Korea and Taiwan, biochemical warfare experiments, and the ‘‘comfor t women’’ issues

being the focal points. International protests in these cases have tempered revisions that

would minimize negative portrayals of Japan’s actions, but the Ministry of Education

continues to encourage such changes.

7 All demographic figures are from the 2003 English edition of ‘‘Latest Demographic

Statistics’’ compiled by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research

(affiliated with the Ministry of Health and Welfare), except where noted. The full report

can be viewed on-line and downloaded at <http://www.ipss.go.jp/p-info/e/psj2003/

PSJ2003.pdf> accessed Mar. 18, 2006.

8 By 1970, life expectancy had climbed four years to 69 for men and 74 for women, and by

1980 those figures had risen another four years for each. In 1990, men’s life expectancy

was nearly 76 and women’s nearly 82.

9 By 1950, infant mortality had dipped to slightly over 60 per 1,000 live births, by 1961 the

figure had fallen to 30, by 1965 it had dropped below 20, and by 1975 it was slightly over 10.

POSTWAR SOCIETY AND CULTURE 329

10 The figures vary according to which source one uses. The population census puts the

figure at 59.6 percent for 1955, rising to a high of 63.9 percent in 1975, and then falling

back to 60.1 percent in the year 2000.

11 Brinton, ‘‘Christmas Cakes and Weddings Cakes,’’ p. 80.

12 Abortion and contraception prevalence rates come from the Mainichi Shinbun Population

Problems Research Council, The Population and Society of Postwar Japan based on Half a

Century of Family Planning (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun Population Problems Research

Council, 2000).

13 Norgen, Abortion before Birth Control, p. 10.

14 Coleman, Family Planning in Japanese Society, pp. 204–19.

15 Edwards, Modern Japan through Its Weddings, pp. 116–26.

16 Brinton, Women and the Economic Miracle, pp. 176–88.

17 White, Migration in Metropolitan Japan, pp. 20–1.

18 Vogel, Japan’s New Middle Class, pp. 71–85, 271–81.

19 ‘‘Europe Toughens Stand against Japan’s Exports,’’ New York Times (Apr. 2, 1979).

20 Hein, ‘‘Defining Growth,’’ pp. 112–15.

21 Igarashi, ‘‘Zenkyo

sedai,’’ pp. 208–26.

22 The English ‘‘three Ds’’ does not quite match the Japanese ‘‘three Ks’’ of kitanai, kiken,

kitsui, literally dirty, dangerous, and severe.

23 This fell to 32.7 percent in 1960, 19.3 percent in 1970, 10.9 percent in 1980, and 7.1

percent in 1990.

24 Kelly, ‘‘Finding a Place in Metropolitan Japan,’’ p. 194. The hick image of rural areas was

partly due to the sizeable gap with urban areas in the diffusion of household consumer

goods in the 1960s and 1970s.

25 Article 1 of the constitution of Japan.

26 According to Yoshino, nihonjinron has in actual practice resonated more with business-

men trying to organize their thoughts on social organization, especially in cross-cultural

encounters, than with educators and intellectual elites. This rhetoric subsided once the

recession hit Japan and Western criticism of Japan’s economic position faded (Yoshino,

Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan, pp. 158–84).

27 See the English translation of Murakami’s Underground for his interviews with Aum

members.

28 Oguma, Tan itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen, pp. 3–15. This book has been translated into

English by David Askew as A Genealogy of ‘‘Japanese’’ Self-Images.

29 One incident in particular brought the problem of discrimination against Korean residents

to the fore, the case of Kim Hee Roh in 1968, who killed some gangsters and then took

hostages in order to stave off his capture. He used the occasion to demand that the media

broadcast his descriptions of the situation of Korean residents.

30 This is a controversial point, as Yano points out, made all the more ironic by the number

of ‘‘foreign’’ resident singers and the popularity of overseas Korean and Taiwanese enka

singers in Japan (Yano, Tears of Longing, pp. 9, 30).

31 Wender, Lamentation as History, pp. 188–233.

32 See Pollack’s article on the comic World Apartment Horror, which links the landsharking

problem with foreign immigration (especially from Asia) and the legacy of Japan’s colonial

past (Pollack, ‘‘Revenge of the Illegal Asians,’’ pp. 677–714).

33 The campaign was an extension of the highly successful ‘‘Discover Japan’’ campaign that

the advertising giant, Dentsu

, mounted for the Japan National Railways in the 1970s.

That campaign featured modern urban youth – especially women – discovering through

rail travel the traditional, hence rural, culture with which they had lost touch (Ivy,

‘‘Formations of Mass Culture,’’ pp. 251–6; see also Ivy, Discourses of the Vanishing,

pp. 29–65).

330 WESLEY SASAKI-UEMURA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Apter, David, and Sawa Nagayo. Against the State: Politics and Social Protest in Japan.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Brinton, Mary. ‘‘Christmas Cakes and Weddings Cakes: The Social Organization of Japanese

Women’s Life Course.’’ In Takie Lebra, ed., Japanese Social Organization. Honolulu:

University of Hawai i Press, 1992.

Brinton, Mary. Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1993.

Coleman, Samuel. Family Planning in Japanese Society: Traditional Birth Control in a Modern

Urban Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: Norton

1999.

Edwards, Walter. Modern Japan through Its Weddings: Gender, Person, and Society in Ritual

Portrayal. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989.

Gluck, Carol. ‘‘The Past in the Present.’’ In Andrew Gordon, ed., Postwar Japan as History.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Hein, Laura. ‘‘Defining Growth: Debates on Economic Strategies.’’ In Andrew Gordon, ed.,

Postwar Japan as History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Igarashi Akio. ‘‘Zenkyo

sedai.’’ In Uchiyama Hideo and Kurihara Akira, eds., Sho

wa do

jidai o

ikiru: sorezore no sengo. Tokyo: Yu

hikaku, 1986.

Igarashi, Yoshikuni. Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945–

1970. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Ishikawa Hiroyoshi. Yokubo

no sengoshi: shakai shinrigaku kara no apuro

chi. Tokyo: Taihei

Shuppansha, 1981.

Ishinomori Shotaro

. Japan, Inc.: An Introduction to Japanese Economics, trans. Betsey Scheiner.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Ivy, Marilyn. ‘‘Formations of Mass Culture.’’ In Andrew Gordon, ed., Postwar Japan as

History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Ivy, Marilyn. Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1995.

Kariya Tetsu and Hanasaki Akira. Oishinbo, 36, Nichi-Bei kome senso

. Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1992.

Kelly, William. ‘‘Finding a Place in Metropolitan Japan: Ideologies, Institutions, and Everyday

Life.’’ In Andrew Gordon, ed., Postwar Japan as History. Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1993.

Murakami Haruki. Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, trans. Alfred

Birnbaum and J. Philip Gabriel. New York: Vintage International, 2000.

Murayama Hisashi. Mini-komi sengoshi: ja

narizumu no genten o motomete. Tokyo: San ichi

Shobo

, 1985.

Norgren, Tiana. Abortion before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Oguma Eiji. Tan itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen: ‘‘Nihonjin’’ no jigazo

no keifu. Tokyo: Shi-

nyo

sha, 1995.

Oguma Eiji. A Genealogy of ‘‘Japanese’’ Self-Images, trans. David Askew. Melbourne: Trans

Pacific Press, 2002.

Pollack, David. ‘‘Revenge of the Illegal Asians: Aliens, Gangsters, and Myth in Kon Satoshi’s

World Apartment Horror.’’ positions: east asia cultures critique 1:3 (Winter 1993): 677–714.

Rohlen, Thomas. Japan’s High Schools. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Steiner, Kurt, Krauss, Ellis, and Flanagan, Scott, eds. Political Opposition and Local Politics in

Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.

POSTWAR SOCIETY AND CULTURE 331

Traphagan, John, and Knight, John, eds. Demographic Change and the Family in Japan’s Aging

Society. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.

Vogel, Ezra. Japan’s New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb, 2nd

edn. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963.

Wender, Melissa. ‘‘Lamentation as History: Literature of Koreans in Japan, 1965–1999.’’

Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1999.

White, James W. Migration in Metropolitan Japan. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies,

University of California, 1982.

Wilkinson, Thomas. The Urbanization of Japanese Labor, 1868–1955. Amherst: University of

Massachusetts Press, 1986.

Yamada Masahiro. Parasite Single no jidai. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo

, 1999.

Yano, Christine. Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song. Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002.

Yoshino, Kosaku. Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Inquiry. Lon-

don: Routledge, 1992.

FURTHER READING

Many topics have not been covered in this article, perhaps most notably a discussion

of the workplace environment and its structures. Numerous works cover both factory

and office settings, but for a structured introduction to this topic, see Kumazawa

Makoto, Portraits of the Japanese Workplace: Labor Movements, Workers, and Man-

agers, ed. Andrew Gordon, trans. Andrew Gordon and Mikiso Hane (Boulder, Colo.:

Westview Press, 1996). For an analysis of after hours socializing and its function, see

Anne Allison, Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo

Hostess Club (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Several works have

appeared recently on foreign workers in Japan, such as John Lie, Multiet hnic Japan

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). With regard to foreigners in

Japan in general, see Komai Hiroshi, Foreign Migrants in Contemporary Japan, trans.

Jens Wilkinson (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2001).

Although many excellent works have appeared on consumption in Japan, fewer

books have explored the exportation of Japanese culture as a regional process of

globalization, the topic of Iwabuchi Ko

ichi, Recentering Globalization: Popular

Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,

2002). Several good books have also been published recently on specialized topics

concerning women, such as Glenda Roberts, Staying on the Line: Blue-Collar Women

in Contemporary Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai i Press, 1994). One book on

women’s political behavior that should be mentioned is Robin LeBlanc, Bicycle

Citizens: The Political World of the Japanese Housewife (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1999).

Histories of the postwar are beginning to appear, ranging from intellectual histories

such as J. Victor Koschmann, Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1996) to social histories such as Timothy George,

Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan (Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), and E. Taylor A tkins, Blue Nippon:

Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).

332 WESLEY SASAKI-UEMURA

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Japan in the World

Glenn D. Hook

Debates on Japan in the world in the period following the end of World War II have

been shaped profoundly by the rise of Japan in the international system, the scholarly

approaches dominant in the field of international studies, and the sociopolitical

context in which the scholarship on Japan has been produced. Japanese researchers,

particularly during the Allied occupation of Japan (1945–52), often have been con-

cerned with producing scholarship aimed at influencing government policy and

public opinion in regard to Japan’s role in the world, particularly in respect of

securing peace for the nation. The specific theoretical approach adopted in this

endeavor has been of less concern in comparison with the overwhelming interest in

charting the path of the postwar Japanese state. In contrast, American scholars have

often been more interested in applying a particular theoretical approach to the case of

Japan, be that realism, liberalism, or more recently constructivism, or their variant

forms; or in producing scholarship with policy relevance for the US government.

Clearly, therefore, synthesizing the scholarship on Japan in the world calls for sensi-

tivity to the global and national as well as the academic environments in which it is

produced.

Indeed, unlike in the case of the United Kingdom, which established the first chair

of international politics in the world in 1919 at the University of Wales in Aberyst-

wyth, the scholars who took part in the debate on the future course of Japan in the

early postwar years were not necessarily scholars of international relations in the

narrow sense, but rather public intellectuals from mainly the social science disciplines,

set on using their analytical skills to promote the peace of the Japanese nation. The

first course by a specialist in international politics was not taught at a Japanese

university until the late 1950s. Similarly, unlike in the United States and the United

Kingdom, which even in the early postwar years already maintained a tradition of

peer-reviewed articles in specialist journals of political science and international

relations, scholars in Japan frequently publish their research as boo ks and articles in

university journals or in leading current affairs journals, such as Sekai, a journal similar

to Foreign Affairs , except for being left-of-center in political orientation. Thus, what

needs to be noted about the emergenc e of the scholarly debate on Japan in the world

in the early postwar years is that it did not take place in an ivory tower atmosphere –

nor in terms of the application of a particular theoretical approach to the topic – but

A Companion to Japanese History

Edited by William M. Tsutsui

rather in the context of how the knowledge and insights generated by social scientific

analysis could be employed in order to try to influence government policy on the

postwar role of Japan in the world.

With the above perspectives as background, the purpose of this chapter is to focus

on the key debates on Japan in the world, with a particular emphasis on those that

emerged during the post-1945 pe riod in Japan and the United States. This is where

most of the scholarship on Japan’s international relations has been produced, reflect-

ing the central role of the United States in defeating the Japanese empire and shaping

the postwar politics and global role of the newly emerging economic superpower, and

the interest of Japanese scholars in influencing the international relations of the

postwar Japanese state. A bird’s eye view of the postwar period highlights a range

of themes of concern in this scholarly debate. Two have remained central throughout.

First is the question of how to ensure the security of Japan in the world, which during

the early cold war era pitted supporters of the security treaty with the United

States against those in favor of unarmed neutralism. The first section addresses this

topic and the changes that have taken place in Japanese security policy in the later

cold war and post-cold-war years. The second theme relates to the nature of Japan’s

role in the world, and whether it can be considered as ‘‘proactive’’ or ‘‘reactive.’’ The

second section deals with this question by investigating the nature of Japanese

leadership, or lack of leade rship, in the region and the world. By addressing the se

two key themes, this chapter aims to show that, irrespective of characterizations of

Japan as an anomalous, if not aberrant or abnormal, actor in the world, it is in fact

normal.

The Postwar Choice: The US–Japan Security Treaty

The debate on national security to emerg e in Japan following the empire’s defeat was

carried out not only in the scholarly world, but also more broadly on the political and

mass levels. A key reason for this was the desire of academics to influence the future

role of Japan in the world by proposing the future options available to ensur e peace

was secured after the end of the occupation. It was a position born of their failure to

mount a forceful opposition to Japan’s military aggression and path to war in the

1930s and early 1940s. Thus, rather than the specific theoretical approach adopted,

although the main trends of scholarship were influenced by either Marxism or

modernism (kindaishugi),

their works’ relevance to the contemporary world was of

central concern.

The debate over the final shape of the postwar settlement and the future course of

Japan set a group of scholars known collectively as the Peace Issues Discussion Group

(PIDG) against the government of Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru and its intellec-

tual allies. Members of the PIDG such as Maruyama Masao, regarded as perhaps the

most important political thinker of the postwar era, and Shimizu Ikutaro

, soon to

emerge as one of the nation’s leading sociologists and political commentators, were

thus at loggerheads with historian Hayashi Kentaro

and other academic supporters of

Prime Minister Yoshida’s proposal to sign a ‘‘one-sided’’ peace treaty (basically a

treaty excluding the communist states) as well as a security treaty with the United

States.

334 GLENN D. HOOK

This policy choice by the Prime Minister, which over time became know n as the

‘‘Yoshida Doctrine,’’ tied Japanese security to the United States, including the so-

called ‘‘nuclear umbrella,’’ and enabled the government to place priority on eco-

nomic recovery, growth, and catching up with the industrially developed West. The

choice implied a build-up of Japanese military forces and was thus a challenge to

Article 9 of the 1947 constitution, which states in part that ‘‘land, sea, and air forces,

as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.’’ Japan was as a result

integrated into US strategy, but the pressure on respective Japanese governments to

build up the military was nevertheless not met with the abandonment of Article 9 of

the constitution, but rather with the flexible reinterpretation of its meaning.

For

instance, instead of a regular military the government in 1954 established the Self-

Defense Forces (SDF), whose role has been restricted. The revision of the security

treaty in 1960, which took place in spite of mass opposition , and the extension of the

security treaty in 1970, ensured that Japan remained tied to the United States. Over

the years, though, the SDF have gradually grown more robust and active, as seen in

the decision to start US–Japan comb ined exercises at the end of the 1970s, patrol the

sea lines of communication in the early 1980s, and play a more proactive military role

in the post-cold-war world.

This more proactive role is illustrated by the dispatch of minesweepers after the end

of the Gulf War in 1991, participation in United Nations Peace Keeping Operations

(PKO) from 1992, the refueling of US and other naval vessels in the war against

Afghanistan in 2001, and the deployment for the first time of SDF ground troops

involved in humanitarian work in the warlike situation in Iraq in early 2004. In

comparison with the 1950s and 1960s, in particular, this represented a fa r greater

military role for Japan in the world. The debate now centres on how, rather than

whether, Japan should play a role in the world using the SDF. Article 9 has served to

limit the military role played by Japan, although over time its interpretation has been

expanded by the government and its academic supporters.

What is often lacking in the debate on the Yoshida Doctrine and the increa singly

wider interpretation of Article 9, though, is the costs. The human costs are most

vividly evidenced in the deployment of US troops in Okinawa. While certain voices of

concern have been raised in the United States, Japan, and elsewhere,

the inhabitants

of Okinawa have borne the major domestic costs of the security treaty, as seen in the

environmental destruction caused by the bases and military acti vities on Okinawa; the

crimes of military personnel, including murder, rape, and robbery; and the generally

debilitating effects the location of nearly 75 percent of US bases on only 0.6 percent

of Japanese land has exerted on the economic, social, and political life of Okinawans.

Yet in the context of the overall US–Japan security relationship, the costs borne by the

people of Okinawa are usually excluded from the debate on Japan’s role in the world.

What alternatives have been suggested?

The Alternatives

The alternative to the Yoshida Doctrine put forward by the PIDG was a policy of

unarmed neutralism, not allowing any foreign power to establish bases in Japan,

whether US or Soviet. The Group was keenly aware of the ability of a state not simply

JAPAN IN THE WORLD 335

to be shaped by international relations, but to shape them: the fact that the world was

not one but two worlds, capitalist and communist, meant that Yoshida’s policy to side

with the capitalist world and permit the deployment of US troops would only

exacerbate international tensions. Indeed, the PIDG feared that, as a result of signing

a one-sided trea ty and allowing US troops to be based in Japan as part of the nation’s

security treaty obligations, the possibility of war between the ‘‘two worlds’’ would

become more likely. The alternative policy the Group proposed was rooted in an

analysis of the destructive power of nuclear weapons, which drew on Japan’s singular

experience of being atom-bombed, as well as the provisions of Article 9 of the

constitution. In short, the PIDG proposed that Japan’s role in the world should be

to promote peaceful coexistence between the East and West, not to risk increasing the

possibility of war by signing a security treaty with either of the two sides, and, by

pursuing such a policy, to ensure the nation’s peace. Indeed, from the perspective of

the PIDG, the signing of the US–Japan Security Treaty, and the provision of bases for

US forces in Japan, served not only to tie Japan into the Western side of the cold war

divide, but also to preclude the pursuit of the sort of independent foreign policy

possible for a neutral state. For these reasons, the Group remained opposed to the

US–Japan Security Treaty.

While the scholarly debate on Japan in the world was pushed forward by members

of the PIDG, the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) aimed to give concrete form to the policy

by making Japan a ‘‘peace state’’ – a call which tapped into anti-militarist norms at the

mass level. Although the party was never able to garner enough votes to form a

government, its opposition to the security treaty and the legitimacy of the SDF and its

proposal to pursue a policy of unarmed neutralism provided a concrete alternative to

the government’s policy of building up the military and strengthening security ties

with the United States. The combination of this alternative to the security treaty

existing in both the academic and political worlds helped to keep the issue alive,

although the end of the cold war soon saw the JSP abandon not only the policy of

unarmed neut ralism, but also opposition to the security treaty and the SDF.

On the other hand, the US scholarship on Japan that emerged in the early postwar

period was similarly concerned with the role of Japan in the world, but with the focus

placed squarely on a security relationship with the United States, or the practical

outcome of the foreign policy d ecisions made by the Yoshida government, rather

than the debates within Japan about the course the nation should chart in the cold

war world in order to ensure peace. The view of US academics was of a bifurcated

world, divided between capitalism and communism, with the alternative to American

alignment being seen not as neutralism but as communism. Thereafter, the US debate

has been frequently concerned with the lack of balance in the security relationship and

the need for Japan to take on a greater burden, although the general consensus seems

to be that the treaty is in Japan’s interest. Indeed, what is striking about the American

debate on the security policy pursued by Japan is the high degree of consensus on the

benefit of the security treaty to Japan and the need to deploy troops in Okinawa and

elsewhere, whereas this remains a point of contention in Japan. Thus, even though

the security treaty was revis ed in 1960, leading to a greater emphasis on mutuality,

criticism has continued to be leveled against Japan for not doing enough.

More concretely, as mainstream US scholarship has been dominated by realism,

Article 9 appears as an encumbrance, the ideas of the PIDG as ‘‘idealistic,’’ and both

336 GLENN D. HOOK

as a hindranc e to Japan playing a full role in support of the United States. Those US

scholars more interested in policy-making than realism, of course, often arrived at the

same conclusions simply by placing priority on the national interest. Or, as Cox has

said, ‘‘theory is always for some one, and for some purpose.’’

In the 1960s, for

instance, the security policy pursued by Japan was seen as a restriction on cooperation

with the US war in Vietnam: unlike Australia and South Korea, Japan did not dispatch

troops to support the US war effort. In the 1970s and 1980s, US concern was

manifest in the idea of Japan as a ‘‘free rider’’ which was seen to be benefiting from

the global order kept in place through US power rather than contributing to the

maintenance of that order. It was not until the post-cold-war period that major

academic voices in the United States were raised in favor of pulling the troops out

of Japan.

Nuclear Weapons

While a policy of unarmed neutrality was put forward by academics and taken up by

the JSP as an alternative to the US–Japan Security Treaty signed by Yoshida, as seen

above, another alternative emerged as part of the Japanese academic debate in the

1980s: nuc lear weapons. It is certainly true that, as far bac k as the late 1950s, Prime

Minister Kishi Nobusuke stated that nuclear weapons were constitutional, stirring

debate on the issue. It seems there was some investigation of the issue in later years,

too. At the time of Sato

Eisaku’s premiership, for instance, two reports issued in 1968

and 1970 and drafted by an unofficial study group headed by Ro

yama Michio

concluded that, although Japan had the potential to develop nuclear weapons, this

was not the recommended course of action.

The academic debate on Japan going nuclear, however, did not emerge into

the spotlight until the publication of Shimizu Ikutaro

’s Japan yo, kokka tare (Japan,

Be a State) in 1980, which called for the possession of nuclear weapons in order

to make Japan a state in the fullest sense of the word.

This created quite a stir, as

the overwhelming majority of academic specialists in international relations were

opposed to Japan’s possession of nucle ar weapons. One strand of opposi tion, repre-

sented by scholars such as Sakamoto Yoshikazu, was rooted in the same sort of

opposition as the PIDG: the threat of nuclear war and constitutional provisions.

The other strand, however, saw Japan’s security as best guaranteed by maintaining a

close security relationship with the nuclear superpower, the United States, not by

a Gaullist-type policy of greater independence based on Japan’s own nuclear capabil-

ity. As with Nagai Yonosuke, most agreed that the Yoshida Doctrine served

Japan well.

But the question of Japan going nuclear remains, and politicians have made

periodic calls for the debate to be revived. For instance, in October 1999 Nishimura

Shingo, defense vice minister, was fired by then prime ministe r Obuchi Keizo

for

calling for an airing of the issue in the weekly magazine Shukan Playboy. Again,

comments made in May 2002 by political leaders, Chief Cabinet Secretary Fukud a

Yasuo and Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe Shinzo

, suggesting that there might

be public support for Japan to develop nuclear weapons, again stirred controversy. As

in the past, however, little academic support for Japan taking the nuclear option

JAPAN IN THE WORLD 337

exists. As seen from the position of a specialist at the National Defense Academy, no

real support exists for the nuclear option, not least because of strong public antipathy

towards nuclear weapons.

As far as the American debate on the nuclear issue is concerned, opinion has been

split among those who have sought to explain Japan in the world by reference to the

structure of the international system, the rising economic power of Japan, and other

elements of a realist view of the world; those who see Japan as preferring not to

shoulder the economic and political costs of the nuclear option, preferring to rely

instead on the United States, which some see in the context of ‘‘burden-sharing’’ or

Japan as a ‘‘free rider’’; and, finally, those, often adopting a constructivist approach,

who see the war, the atomic bombings, and the occupation of Japan has having

changed the body politic and political norms, such that developing or possessing

nuclear weapons is anathema.

The realist approach, which sees Japan as the ‘‘next in line’’ to be a great power,

including the possession of nuclear weapons, is represented by Kenneth Waltz. For

Waltz, it would be a ‘‘structural anomaly’’ for Japan not to opt for such great power

status.

The ‘‘free rider’’ argument became particularly salient in the 1980s, when

the United States faced a series of challenges from key Japanese industries, although

the concern for burden-sharing continued into the 1990s and early twenty-first

century. Here it was often thought that the best path for Japan to follow was to

rely on the US nuclear umbrella and to share the burden, not to develop an

independent nuclear capability.

Finally, in the 1990s a number of mainly American

works drew attention to the role of anti-military norms and culture in limiting the

possibility of Japan pursuing the nuclear option.

In short, the debate on Japan’s

nuclear option has been significantly influenced by the type of approach adopted.

Japan as a Normal State

Given the resistance to the possession of nuclear weapons, then, the major debate to

emerge in the 1990s and early 2000s, stimulated by the then leader of the Liberal

Party Ozawa Ichiro

’s 1994 book Blueprint fo r a New Japan has been the idea of

Japan as a ‘‘normal state.’’

Here ‘‘normal state’’ functions as a euphemism for Japan

as a state willing to use its full range of power resources – including the military – in

order to realize its regional and global interests. More specifical ly, while the question

of what is ‘‘normal’’ has been su bject to scrutiny,

the idea of Japan as a normal state

served to stimulate a debate in the academic community and wider political world

over exactly what role Japan should play in the post-cold-war world, and to what

extent this would involve the use of the SDF.

Thus, the question of how to ensure the peace of the nation in the cold war world,

which pitted supporters of the security treaty against those in favor of unarmed

neutralism, has been replaced in the post-cold-war world with a debate over the

extent of Japan’s military cooperation with the United Sta tes and more broadly the

international community. In this sense, the end of the cold war shattered the basis at

the heart of the earlier debate on Japan in the world: on the one hand, if the cold war

no longer exists, what justification can the supporters of the security treaty offer in the

face of the collapse of the very enemy the treaty was forged to protect Japan against;

338 GLENN D. HOOK