Glenn D. Hook

Japanese Business Management: Restructuring for Low Growth and Globalization

In this study the views of Japans leading experts on the globalization of Japanese business, management and industrial relations explain how traditional Japanese-style management is responding to the changes following the collapse of the bubble economy. The areas covered include the changes made in management itself inside Japan and also how it is adapting itself when transferred overseas. The book demonstrates how management is moving towards a hybrid type in overseas operations and towards a western-style in Japan, where contractual principles are beginning to be given greater weight.

Microregionalism and World Order: Concepts, Approaches and Implications

Microregionalism is not new. A case can be made, for example, for understanding the late-nineteenth-century creation of the modern German state as the political spillover from multiple and interconnected processes of economic regionalization amongst the hanza (Rorig 1967).Similarly, in her contribution to this volume, Manoli shows how many of the contemporary features of Black Sea microregionalization repeat similar processes from a pre-state era. More recently, the formal creation of subnational and cross-national growth triangles within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has given a renewed impetus to the study of microregionalism (Thambipillai 1998). Informal subnational economic processes of interconnectedness across national borders in Europe (Morata 1997), across the US–Mexican border (Lowenthal and Burgess 1993), and in the ‘region states’ of East Asia (Hiroshi Kakazu, Min Tang and Myo Thant 1998) have added to the impetus to carry out sustained research on microregions

Intersecting risks and governing Okinawa: American bases and the unfinished war

Abstract This article investigates the internal risks posed by US military installations to the inhabitants of Okinawa as a result of the security policy adopted by the Japanese government to deal with the external risks and specific threats faced by Japan. Although these outposts of US power are viewed by supporters of the alliance as beneficial to the security of Japan, their existence and operation pose risks to the population, with the overwhelming burden imposed on the inhabitants of Okinawa, whether in terms of crimes, noise and environmental pollution or the erosion of solidarity among the population due to the divisive role foreign bases play. The article thus does not focus on the external risks posed to Japan by the hypothetical enemy of the day, as with the Soviet Union during the Cold War or North Korea today, but rather on the internal risks to the everyday lives and peace of Okinawans posed by the American presence. A key concern is how the risks of the bases are articulated by the inhabitants and mediated by the state as part of the national governing system of Japan. This system of governance allocates, distributes and locates the bases unequally, exposing Okinawa to disproportionate dangers and hazards, but offers compensation as a way to deal with the problems their existence and operation pose.

Japan’s Risky Frontiers: Territorial Sovereignty and Governance of the Senkaku Islands1

This article investigates Japan’s current role in the Senkaku Islands. The government maintains administrative control of these tiny, uninhabited islands and rocks at the frontier of Japan, but both the governments of China and Taiwan dispute Japanese claims to sovereignty and claim sovereignty over the islands themselves. Whilst much of the extant literature examines these competing claims, this article instead explores the relationship between risk, sovereignty and governance at the frontiers of Japan. It seeks to demonstrate in particular how the governance of Japan’s maritime frontiers reflects a broader process of the recalibration of risk by the Abe Shinzō government as part of ending the postwar regime. Its main purpose is twofold: first, to illuminate how the government carries out administrative control and governance of a remote, uninhabited territory when sovereignty is challenged and in dispute; and second, to elucidate how the government’s recalibration of risk generates a range of costs for the Japanese market and society as a result of the deterioration of relations with China arising from the way risk is being recalibrated.

Introduction Risk and security in Japan: from the international to the societal

The rationale for this special issue of the Japan Forum is twofold: first, to help to fill the lacunae in the literature on risk in Japan by examining the Koizumi Junichirō administration and beyond; and, second, to explore further how the administration’s adoption of neo-liberal answers to questions of political economy domestically and a more proactive military role internationally has reshaped the way risk is approached and deployed by policy-makers and other actors (Hook and Takeda 2007). It takes up risk at the international, national and societal levels, with a particularly focus on security. The four articles adopt a case-study approach, examining risk in relation to China and North Korea, at the international level, the intersection of risk at the international and societal levels, with a focus on the impact of American bases in Okinawa, and finally risk and terrorism/counterterrorism. The purpose of this introduction is to offer a wider, conceptual discussion of risk in order to set the context for the articles making up this special issue.

The American eagle in Okinawa: the politics of contested memory and the unfinished war

Abstract This article on contested memory and the ‘unfinished war’ in Okinawa explores the link between the memories of the battle of Okinawa and US military accidents in the prefecture, on the one hand, and the calls to reduce US installations, on the other. National government policy-makers and security managers view Okinawas outposts of American power as an essential ingredient in a security policy aimed at deterring potential enemies, whether these are identified as the Soviet Union during the Cold War, or a rising China and a nuclear-armed North Korea today. But the unequal distribution and concentration of US bases in the prefecture and the military accidents associated with their operation mean the memories of the battle of Okinawa and of US military accidents have become a political resource for opponents of the bases. The article demonstrates how these memories serve to embed Okinawans as victims of the national government as well as of the United States, manifest as a contestation between collective memory at the national and prefectural levels.

Introduction: the Political Economy of Subregionalism and World Order

The purpose of this book is to fill a lacuna in the empirical literature and to contribute to the theoretical debate on regionalism by bringing together in one volume analyses of the various forms that subregionalism is taking in the emerging world order. It seeks to explain the origins, developments and essential features of the subregionalist projects promoted by a number of the weaker states in Europe and Africa, in the Americas, and in East Asia. As most theoretical work on the ‘new’ regionalism of the late 1980s and post-Cold War era draws on the regionalist projects promoted by the big powers, with empirical work on the European Union (EU) and to a lesser extent the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) at the heart of these endeavours, our analyses of subregionalist projects promoted by the weak also should contribute to deepening our theoretical understanding of the trend towards regionalism in the contemporary world. Thus, the reader hopefully will find Subregionalism and World Order provides both theoretical and empirical insights on subregionalism in the nascent world order.

Excavating the power of memory in Japan

This special issue on excavating the power of memory in Japan explores how memory is contested in a number of divergent fields of research. Its temporal focus is on narrating the past and memory from the 1940s, including memory of the war then and in the post-war era. Much of the extant work in Japanese Studies has focused on the memory of the war and how this memory is contested across the boundaries of the state as well as domestically. Internationally, a particular area of concern has been the different interpretations, narratives and memory of the war in Japan compared with China and South Korea, as in disputes over the ‘rape of Nanking’ and the ‘comfort women’ (Yoshida 2006, Soh 2009). Another area of concern has been the comparison of the Japanese and German cases and their different approaches to the past (Berger 2012). Other, more recent, work has taken up the changing role of museums in commemorating the past in Japan, China and South Korea (Yoshida 2014). Domestically, work on the high degree of contestation over how history is interpreted and remembered highlights a lively debate over the Japanese past, not simply ‘amnesia’ (Seaton 2010). The point is reinforced by recent work detailing the role of civic groups in contesting the memory of the AsiaPacific war at the grassroots level (Szczepanska 2014). As seen most recently when Prime Minister Abe Shinzo went to Yasukuni shrine in December 2013, the differing interpretations, narrations and memories of the war are not locked away in an ivory tower, but rather exert a profound impact on the diplomatic relations between Japan and its two most important neighbours, China and South Korea. The lack of summits between Abe and the Chinese and Korean leaders are a clear indication of the diplomatic nadir affecting regional relations in the wake of the prime minister’s visit to the shrine. Whether Abe’s action represents a revival of Japanese militarism, on the road to Japan becoming the Harry Potter villain, Lord Voldemort, as charged by the Chinese ambassador to the UK (Daily Telegraph 1 January 2014), or rather represents the prime minister praying for peace, as his Japanese counterpart claimed a

Researching Microregional Integration: Towards New Frameworks of Analyses

The chapters in this volume provide a snapshot of various microregional processes and projects from across the globe. Clearly, the case studies do not cover every example from around the world and, in this sense, the volume is in no sense an attempt to provide a comprehensive account of microregionalism. Rather, it should be seen as a starting point for future comparative analysis. Indeed, by considering what is missing from the analyses in this volume, we hope to lay the foundations for future research agendas on microregionalism.

Japan and the war: Bombs, babies and brits

Robert K. Wilcox, Japans Secret War: Japans Race against Time to Build its own Atomic Bomb. Marlowe, New York, 1995. 268pp.