Asia Report #10 | June 2011
Over the past several years, foreign policy circles both inside and outside Japan have been anxious to determine whether Japan should or would develop new strategies to deal with a changing security environment in Asia. The catastrophic impact of the 3/11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster has only heightened the sense of anxiety over Japan’s future direction. At a time of great uncertainty about Japan’s future and the implications for its foreign policy, one might instead look to Japan’s national identity for signs of continuity and consistency.
For decades, Japan’s outlook and external behavior have been shaped by its identity as a “peace state” – a pacifist state associated with the so-called Yoshida Doctrine of cheap riding on U.S.-provided security while concentrating on economic development. That identity runs deep in the Japanese outlook, acting as both a guiding compass and an ideological constraint on state behavior. As the scholar Richard Samuels describes it, an identity is “a platform of ideas about a nation’s place in history and its people’s aspirations for the future.” For Japan, its identity as a peace state means that it is “essentially a reactive or adaptive state” which is not interested in becoming a great military power.
This peace state identity has been consistently evoked in Japanese discourse and followed in practice, even as Japanese defense policy has seen increased debate and contestation in recent years, argued Mike M. Mochizuki at an April 14 Policy Briefing on “Identity and Rising Asian Powers: Implications for Regional Cooperation,” organized by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. The strengthening of Japan-US cooperation since the Persian Gulf War has emphasized nonviolence and “mutual aid,” as did their joint humanitarian operations after 3/11. Japan’s commitment to nuclear restraint, despite security threats such as North Korea’s nuclear test in October 2006, can also be attributed in part to the Japanese identity as a nonnuclear peace state. Even constitutional revision movements have had to couch their proposals in the language of the peace state.
More recently, the National Defense Policy Guidelines announced last December also emphasized peacemaking. Granted, some may cast doubt on the peace principle, citing Japan’s recent recalibration of its defense policy that has included an increase in mobility to protect its southwest islands from China, the shifting of a squadron to Okinawa, a decision to procure more submarines, and greater emphasis on intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. Nevertheless, as Mochizuki pointed out, all of this has remained within the narrative of the peace state identity, and Japan continues to adhere to a minimal defense capacity, forgoing offensive capabilities and insisting on the doctrine of no use of force, except in very restrictive self-defense purposes.
Read the full report for “After the 3/11 Catastrophe: Whither the Japanese Peace State?” (PDF)
