A Useful Guide to the Evolution of Japanese Foreign Policy

The concept of strategic culture focuses on individual states rather than other possible contexts and expressions, for example sub-national including regional, or supra-national, including ‘regional’ at a different level. This emphasis on individual states makes the decision in the series “Oxford Studies in Grand Strategy” to produce a number of such works, first on Japan and, forthcoming, on Sweden, Germany and South Korea, most welcome.

This is very much a book by International Relations specialists, rather than historians, and should be considered accordingly. There is not an archival focus nor scope but rather, in what is in word length quite modest, a theoretical interrogation of past and present. In particular, examining Japan’s changing positions between Asian and Western power, between developing and advanced economy, and between small, middle and major power. The chronological scope is that from the 1868 Meiji Restoration to the present, with this period divided between key strategic sub-periods, but without any comparable consideration of earlier centuries. The theoretical focus is on the interplay of agency and structure, with decision-makers seeking to manage both international and domestic constraints on its developing goals. Japanese agency is emphasised. The authors also seek to pursue continuities in purpose in order to clarify the reasons for changes in content, notably international and domestic pressures.

In part, the authors offer a useful guide to Japanese foreign policy but there are significant gaps. For example, the years 1942–5 are not really covered. It is as if war means the end of foreign policy, which is not the case. Instead, these are years in which foreign policy very much goes into overdrive, whether toward allies, opponents, or neutrals. Thus, Japanese agency needs to be considered then. So also with the 1960s which receive inadequate attention. Instead, much of the discussion is on recent years which has the serious effect that it can appear somewhat presentist and, for that very reason, tentative in the face of the shocks of the present.

There is a more fundamental question about this book, namely whether the theoretical structure works adequately. Domestic and international are reified and counterpointed when, in practice, there is a far greater degree of overlap and interchange. Furthermore, the revelation that Japanese governments have agency will surprise few as it is readily apparent that blocs and great powers do not ‘direct’ and that, at every level, states have a degree of agency. This was particularly apparent after the debacle of 1944–5 in part thanks to the opportunities for manoeuvre created by the threats to American interests posed by Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War and, the following year, the launching of the Korean War. Indeed, the Far Eastern Question was at the fore anew, with Japan playing a major role, now indirectly, but still with considerable consequence. Possibly, rather than the focus of this book being on Japanese policymaking, it should be on the Far Eastern Question, a subcontinental rivalry that helped put the agency of all participants within constraints, and that continues to do so.

Our Reviewer: Jeremy Black, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Exeter, is a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of an impressive number of works in history and international affairs, frequently demonstrating unique interactions and trends among events, including The Great War and the Making of the Modern World, Combined Operations: A Global History of Amphibious and Airborne Warfare, and The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon. Works he has previously reviewed here include Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe, Why War?, Seapower in the Post-Modern World, Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions, Augustus the Strong, Military History for the Modern Strategist, The Great Siege of Malta, Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation, Superpower Britain, Josephine Baker’s Secret War, Captives and Companions. A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World, War and Power: Who Wins Wars—and Why, The Pacific’s New Navies, No More Napoleons, Republic and Empire. Crisis, Revolution, America’s Early Independence, The Fate of the Day, The Maginot Line: A New History, The Nuclear Age. An Epic Race for Arms, Power and Survival, Daring to Be Free: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World, Mexico: A 500-Year History, A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China, and On Strategists and Strategy.

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Note: Japan’s Grand Strategy is also available in e-editions.

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