Chapter One: Japan’s bridging role between Asia and the West: from the Cold War to the war in Ukraine

Abstract

Strategic links between Japan and Europe during the Cold War were limited. During this period the IISS helped bridge the gap between the two, exposing its membership base to the international affairs of Asia and Japan and providing Japanses scholars, strategists and diplomats with a platform from which to amplify their voices in the West. Analyses by these experts often appeared in IISS publications, but the Institute also gained key insights through its well-established conferences and lecture series. These initiatives illuminated Japanese strategic thinking and perspectives on contemporary critical issues in Japan’s and Asia’s foreign, security and defence policy.

This Adelphi book, through its collection of earlier analysis, helps the reader to understand the evolution of Japanese strategic thought from the 1960s until today, and shines a light on the continuities and changes in this thinking. New, original analysis of the material seeks to identify areas where such thinking was prescient and remains relevant to the contemporary strategic environment, and other areas where predictions failed or assumptions were proved wrong. These new essays were also informed by interviews of Japanese senior scholars and diplomats who spent time with the IISS. This book seeks to frame, educate and guide strategic thinking on the most pressing issues of today, both in and outside Japan and Asia, and will be of great interest to analysts, practitioners and students of international affairs.

Notes

1 Government of Japan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Address of his Excellency Mamoru Shigemitsu, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Japan, Before the United Nations General Assembly on the Occasion of Japan’s Admission to the United Nations on December 18, 1956’, https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/un/address5612.html.

2 Tanaka Akihiko, Japan in Asia: Post-Cold-War Diplomacy, translated by Jean Connell Hoff (Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2017), p. 86.

3 Hatano Sumio, One Hundred Fifty Years of Japanese Foreign Relations: from 1868 to 2018, translated by Carl Freire, Terry Gallagher and Tom Kain (Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2022), p. 398.

4 Sakamoto Kazuya, ‘Conditions of an Independent State: Japanese Diplomacy in the 1950s’, in Makoto Iokibe (ed.), The Diplomatic History of Postwar Japan, translated and annotated by Robert D. Eldridge (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 59.

5 Ibid.

6 Hatano Sumio, The Pacific War and Japan’s Diplomacy in Asia (Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2021), pp. 321–22.

7 Sakamoto, ‘Conditions of an Independent State: Japanese Diplomacy in the 1950s’, p. 65.

8 Hosoya Yuichi, ‘Japan’s National Identity in Postwar Diplomacy: The Three Basic Principles’, in Gilbert Rozman (ed.), East Asian National Identities: Common Roots and Chinese Exceptionalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), pp. 172–75.

9 Government of Japan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Address of his Excellency Mamoru Shigemitsu, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Japan, Before the United Nations General Assembly on the Occasion of Japan’s Admission to the United Nations on December 18, 1956’.

10 Hosoya, ‘Japan’s National Identity in Postwar Diplomacy’, p. 172; and Miyagi Taizo, Japan’s Quest for Stability in Southeast Asia: Navigating the Turning Points in Postwar Asia, translated by Hanabusa Midori (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 1–29.

11 Miyagi, Japan’s Quest for Stability in Southeast Asia, p. 3.

12 Sakamoto, ‘Conditions of an Independent State: Japanese Diplomacy in the 1950s’, p. 68.

13 Ibid.

14 Sado Akihiro, The Self-Defense Forces and Postwar Politics in Japan, translated by Noda Makito (Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2017), p. 49.

15 Government of Japan, Ministry of Defense, ‘Overview and Fundamental Concepts of National Defense’, https://www.mod.go.jp/en/d_act/d_policy/index.html#:~:text=The%20%22Basic%20Policy%20on%20National,and%20the%20Japan%2DU.S.%20security.

16 Kitaoka Shinichi, ‘Kishi Nobusuke: Frustrated Ambition’, in Watanabe Akio (ed.), The Prime Ministers of Postwar Japan, 1945–1995: Their Lives and Times, translated by Robert D. Eldridge (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016), pp. 108–9.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., p. 109.

19 Kosaka Masataka, Kaiyō Kokka Nihon no Kōsō [Japan’s Vision as a Maritime Country] (Tokyo: Chūokōron Shinsha, 2008), p. 249.

20 Michael J. Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism: Foreign Policy Challenges in an Era of Uncertain Power (New York: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 26–7.

21 Ito Kenichi, Japan’s Identity: Neither the West nor the East (Tokyo: The Japan Forum on International Relations, 1999), p. 1.

22 Kosaka Masataka, Saishō Yoshida Shigeru [On Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru] (Tokyo: Chūokōron Shinsha, 2006).

23 Alessio Patalano, Post-war Japan as a Sea Power: Imperial Legacy, Wartime Experience and the Making of a Navy (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), p. 108.

24 Iriye Akira, Japan and the Wider World: From the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present (London: Longman, 1997), p. 155.

25 Michael Howard, ‘IISS – the First Thirty Years: A General Overview’ (Adelphi Paper 235, 1989), in A Historical Sensibility: Sir Michael Howard and The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1958–2019 (Abingdon: Routledge for the IISS, 2020), pp. 281–95.

26 Kosaka Masataka, Options for Japan’s Foreign Policy, Adelphi Papers, no. 97 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1973), p. 1.

27 Sado, The Self-Defense Forces and Postwar Politics in Japan, pp. 96–7.

28 On the Japan–UK diplomatic relationship, see Hosoya Yuichi, ‘Nishigawa dōmei kara Kokusai Komyuniti e – Taiei Gaikō to Jiyūshugi Shokoku to no Kyōchō’ [From Western Alliance to the International Community: Diplomacy with the UK and Emphasis on Freemarket Countries], in Kokubun Ryosei (ed.), Nihon no Gaikō [Japan’s Diplomacy], vol. 4 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2013), pp. 219–44.

29 Hugh Cortazzi, ‘Margaret Thatcher, 1925–2013’, in Antony Best and Hugh Cortazzi (eds), British Foreign Secretaries and Japan 1850–1990: Aspects of the Evolution of British Foreign Policy (Folkestone: Renaissance Books, 2018), p. 283.

30 Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: HarperCollins, 2011), p. 412.

31 Ibid., pp. 683–84.

32 Nakasone Yasuhiro, Seiji to Jinsei: Nakasone Yasuhiro Kaikoroku [My Memoir, Politics and Life] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1992), p. 115.

33 Sado, The Self-Defense Forces and Postwar Politics in Japan, p. 139.

34 Ibid., pp. 139–40.

35 Hattori Ryuji, Kosaka Masataka: Sengo Nihon to Genjitsu Shugi [Kosaka Masataka: Postwar Japan and Realism] (Tokyo: Chūokōron Shinsha, 2018), pp. 246–48.

36 Kosaka Masataka, Gaikō Kankaku: Jidai no Owari to Nagai Hajimari [The Sense of Diplomacy: The End and the Long Start of an Era] (Tokyo: Chikura-Shobo, 2017), pp. 168–69.

37 Kosaka Masataka, ‘East Asia, the Pacific and the West: Strategic Trends and Implications: Part II’, in East Asia, the West and International Security: Prospects for Peace: Part I – Papers from the IISS 28th Annual Conference, Adelphi Papers, vol. 27, no. 216 (London: IISS, 1987), p. 11.

38 Prime Minister’s Office of Japan, ‘Press Conference by the Prime Minister Regarding Japan’s Response to the Situation in Ukraine’, 27 February 2022, https://japan.kantei.go.jp/101_kishida/statement/202202/_00014.html.

39 Prime Minister’s Office of Japan, ‘Keynote Address by Prime Minister Kishida Fumio at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue’, 10 June 2022, https://japan.kantei.go.jp/101_kishida/statement/202206/_00002.html.

40 Prime Minister’s Office of Japan, ‘Japan’s Decisions at History’s Turning Point’, Policy Speech by Prime Minister Kishida Fumio at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), 13 January 2023, https://japan.kantei.go.jp/101_kishida/statement/202301/_00005.html.