Caroline Rose

'Patriotism is not taboo': nationalism in China and Japan and implications for Sino–Japanese relations

The rise of nationalisms in Japan and China in the 1980s and 1990s aroused much interest in Western, Chinese and Japanese academic and journalistic circles and prompted some analysts to speculate about potential conflict between China and Japan. This article questions such arguments by examining nationalisms in China and Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. It identifies similar trends in the resurgence of state nationalism and cultural nationalism in both countries, and argues that, although élites in both countries were active in promoting patriotism in the 1980s and 1990s, their efforts had limited impact, whereas cultural nationalism, on the other hand, managed to capture the popular mood. The article suggests that, nonetheless, because both types of nationalism were predominantly inward-oriented responses to domestic and external changes, relations between China and Japan remained relatively stable.

The textbook issue: Domestic sources of Japan's foreign policy

Abstract The content of Japanese history textbooks became the focus of much media and academic attention after the internationalization of the issue in 1982 when Japan was accused by the Chinese government of attempting to re‐write its wartime invasion of China in school textbooks. The issue threatened to disrupt the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of Sino‐Japanese normalization and, according to some observers, set back Sino‐Japanese relations by ten years. In recent years Japanese textbooks have been seen in a more positive light, with progress being made on the inclusion of references to the comfort women and, more recently, Ienaga Saburōs partial victory in his long‐standing legal battle with the government. Some have argued that it was the events of 1982 which sparked off the movement to ‘liberalize’ Japanese textbooks, and that after that date descriptions of Japanese wartime activities in Asia became more ‘truthful’. This paper examines the events of the 1982 textbook issue, focusing on the...

Discourses on Japan and China in Africa: Mutual Mis-Alignment and the Prospects for Cooperation

Japanese and Chinese governmental initiatives in Africa since the 1990s have cast a spotlight on the nature of their respective interests and objectives on the continent. In particular, the speed with which China has advanced in Africa has led to observations in the English-language academic literature and media that China and Japan are engaged in a rivalry for resources, power and influence in Africa, and that Japan has been working hard to ‘catch up’ with China. This article questions this ‘strategic rivalry’ view by examining Japanese and Chinese academic studies of each others activities in Africa and outlining the main themes of Japans China-in-Africa discourse, and Chinas Japan-in-Africa discourse. It suggests that there appears to be less interest and anxiety in Japan about Chinas activities in Africa than some assessments infer, and that, by contrast, Chinas Japan-in-Africa discourse shows a greater interest in, and in some cases suspicions of, Japans objectives in Africa. The article also discusses the seemingly distant prospects for cooperation between China and Japan in Africa, in light of these respective discourses, while considering the tentative steps towards coordination in the form of such initiatives as the ‘Trilateral Consultation’ between China, Japan and South Korea and the development of new academic networks.

Japanese Role in PKO and Humanitarian Assistance

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs identifies the “two main pillars of Japan’s international peace efforts” as contributions to international humanitarian relief operations and participation in UN peacekeeping operations (PKO), and it could be argued that these efforts have constituted some of the more positive aspects in the evolution of Japan’s foreign policy in the 1990s. Prompted by international negative reaction to Japan’s immobility in the run up to and during the Gulf War, the implementation of the International Peace Cooperation Law (IPCL) in 1992 has resulted in a number of successful PKO missions and a greater commitment to humanitarian relief. This aspect of Japan’s foreign policy is in line with the concept of a UN-centered diplomacy, revived by Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki in 1990, and it could provide one way forward to a more proactive foreign policy in the twenty-first century. However, Japan’s participation in peacekeeping operations has not been without controversy both domestic and international, raising the sensitive issues of constitutional revision, the constitutionality of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) and their overseas deployment, and Japan’s role in the UN and in the international arena.

‘Managing China’: risk and risk management in Japan's China policy

Abstract This article considers the ways in which various risks, threats and opportunities posed to Japan by the ‘rise of China’ have been articulated and managed in post-Cold War Japan. It focuses in particular on the period since 2001, and more narrowly on the nature of threat perceptions and risk assessments that emerged during Koizumi Junichirōs prime ministership, but also considers some of the continuities in Japanese perceptions of China since Koizumis departure. It shows how the discourse in Japan on the ‘China threat’ has evolved since the 1990s to include assessments of a rising China which go beyond the traditional indicators of capabilities and intentions and which attempt to measure the risks (seen as both opportunities and dangers) posed by new challenges. It suggests, therefore, that the concept of risk helps to explain the multiple strategies adopted by the Japanese government as a means of ‘managing’ the rise of China.

The Evolving Relations between Japan and Africa: The Discourse of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD)

At a time when China’s growing interest in Africa is convulsing the discourse on the region’s international relations and economic development, Japan’s long-standing engagements with the African countries must not be overlooked. This Special Issue therefore highlights Japan’s leadership role in the attempts to devise, through the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), some sustainable correctives for Africa’s development challenges. The idea behind the Special Issue is to bring Japan firmly back into the debate about the unfolding synergies between Africa and the Asian drivers and to demonstrate in what ways Japan might be assisting to reappraise the dysfunctions in the developmental initiatives of the African countries, and where it might be failing. The project is also necessitated by the pressing need to take stock of the diverse currents of the TICAD process since its inception in 1993, and in light of the impending TICAD V Summit from 1 to 3 June 2013, which would mark the twentieth anniversary of the launch of the process. The six articles in the issue aim to bring readers up to speed in terms of Japan’s strategies for Africa’s socio-economic development, and thereby serve as a ‘road map’ between TICAD IV (in 2008) and TICAD V. They also alert readers to the evolving but complementary facets of the TICAD process. Observers of Japan’s relations with Africa will be aware that following the Second World War, economic interests essentially dictated Japan’s relations with the subSaharan African countries. Japanese foreign policy towards Africa from the 1960s to the early 1980s was based on neo-mercantilist policies central to which was the concept of ‘separating economics from politics’, seikei bunri, not unlike the well-rehearsed Chinese policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries. The ‘dual policy’ towards the region that emerged from this revolved around Japan’s resource interests in South Africa on the one hand, and the political necessity to build diplomatic relations with the postcolonial African states on the other. Because Japan’s economic interests in these postcolonial countries remained rather limited, its official development assistance (ODA) to the region was hardly designed to engender sustainable economic growth; aid to Africa was therefore disbursed without any overarching modalities for sustainable development. In essence ODA to the African states in the 1960s was designed to alleviate problems of trade friction, and in the 1970s to secure natural resources. Subsequently, Japan’s aid to sub-Saharan Africa

The Afterlives of Post-War Japanese Prime Ministers

ABSTRACT Despite growing interest over the last 20 years in the position and power of the Japanese prime minister, what he does after resigning from this position has been overlooked in the extant literatures in both English and Japanese. This is unfortunate because, to paraphrase former US President Bill Clinton, as an ex-leader “you lose your power but not your influence.” This article represents the first attempt to explore what post-war Japanese prime ministers have done after stepping down and what influence they have continued to exert. It does so by providing an empirical overview of the afterlives of Japan’s 33 post-war ex-prime ministers before then discussing the benefits and shortcomings of applying the comparative, conceptual literature on the role of former leaders in Western democracies to the specific case of Japan. After providing the necessary justification, it then focuses on three detailed and illuminating case studies of Nakasone Yasuhiro, Murayama Tomiichi and Fukuda Yasuo. It argues that Japanese prime ministers continue to exert influence in several informal ways.

Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China by Sheila A. Smith (review)

Relations between China and Japan, the world’s secondand third-largest economies, have attracted global attention in recent years, not least due to the rising tensions between the two countries over issues such as Japan’s historical revisionism and the unresolved territorial dispute over the Senkaku/ Diaoyu Islands. Academically, the fi eld has benefi ted over the last decade or so from a wealth of studies of various aspects of the relationship, from economics, through politics, to security (see, for example, Ming Wan, Richard C. Bush, James Reilly, Yinan He, Yew Meng Lai, Linus Hagström, and Jing Sun to name but a few authors of English-language sources). Sheila Smith’s contribution to this burgeoning fi eld focuses on the Japanese perspective, and her aim is to offer an insight into the way in which “Chinese infl uences on Japanese society are perceived and into the relations among the various domestic actors and agents shaping Japan’s domestic policymaking on China” (p. 16). The author argues that there is “a more complex array of interests” contributing to the formation of Japan’s China policies in the 2000s than had hitherto been the case. In particular, the role of the private sector and popular opinion are considered important elements infl uencing decision makers, and the book guides us through case studies of the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, food safety issues, the Yasukuni Shrine problem, and resource rivalry in the East China Sea as means of demonstrating how and why Japan’s policymakers dealt with the issues at hand. This is an ambitious task, given that most of the chosen case studies merit, and have indeed been the subject of, lengthy in-depth studies in their own right. Nonetheless, Smith does demonstrate the need to open up the black box of decision making in order to appreciate the complexity of Japan’s China policy over the last 10 to 15 years. The fi rst chapter sets the scene by introducing the main structure and themes of the book, before moving on to chapter 2, which explores the evolution of Japan-China relations since the end of World War II. The key message in this chapter is the changing infl uences on Japan’s China

The trust deficit in Sino-Japanese relations

Abstract Recent years have seen a deterioration in political relations between China and Japan, in particular over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands and history-related problems. Commentators have noted an attendant decline in trust between the two sides and have stressed the need for confidence-building measures in order to address the trust deficit. This article explores the origins of declining trust between the Chinese and Japanese leaderships. It argues that attempts to build a friendly and trusting relationship in the early post-war and post-normalisation periods began to fail in the 1980s, and have been in a gradual state of decline ever since. Using the concepts of trust and friendship, the article suggests that the lack of trust properties such as empathy, bonding, reliability and predictability have contributed to the deterioration of trust at both elite and popular levels.

The Search for Reconciliation: Sino-Japanese and German-Polish Relations since World War II (review)

September 2009 saw the landslide victory of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the general election. Not lost on observers of Sino-Japanese relations is the fact that the new prime minister of Japan, Hatoyama Yukio, is the grandson of Hatoyama Ichirō, prime minister in the 1950s and a keen advocate of Sino-Japanese reconciliation. Under (the new) Prime Minister Hatoyama’s stewardship, hopes are high that the relationship between China and Japan can move toward what Yinan He calls in her book “deep interstate reconciliation.” However, as her study illustrates, tremendous efforts will be required on both sides in order to rectify the problems accumulated over the last 70 years in the form of a yawning gap in historical memory. Developing a theory of national mythmaking, He sets out to disprove traditional realist thinking that “memories and myths are epiphenomenal, changing in accordance with the external environment” (p. 4). Rather, He argues that not only “international constraints, but also domestic political needs and societal context can shape the ways in which a nation remembers its past; once formed, historical memory can take on a life of its own” (p. 4). This is problematic since “national mythmaking . . . generates considerable memory divergence between nations and causes mistrust and mutual antipathy” (p. 9). Comparing the German-Polish case with that of China and Japan, but also touching upon other instances of bilateral reconciliation in the concluding chapter, He aims to demonstrate when interstate reconciliation is likely to occur and why it varies across cases (p. 5). After setting out the methodological framework in chapter 1, the author then considers the German-Polish success case in the second chapter, but the bulk of the book focuses on the evolution of postwar Sino-Japanese relations and the emergence and ongoing impact of the history problem. She breaks down the various phases of reconciliation to the 1950s and 1960s (“Initial Isolation”), 1972–81 (“The Honeymoon Period”), the 1980s (“An Old Feud Comes Back”), and the 1990s onward (“Volatility and Downward Spiral”).