In the Search for strategy and identity:
Strategic Culture and Japan’
s Security Policy
Bo-Yu Chen
(PhD student of Graduate Institute of Political Science, National Sun Yat Sen University)
Jian-Ting Chen
(Graduate student of Graduate Institute of Political Science, National Sun Yat Sen University)
Paperforthe“Asian Security Facing Hegemony: Nationalism, Immigration and Humanity”International Symposium
Jun 2, 2006
Introduction
In the late 1990s, weapons of mass destruction(WMD) terrorism has been the most important topic of international antiterrorism policies. After 911, the U.S. took preemptive policy to eliminate potential enemies which may secretly support terrorism. Being the ally with the U.S., Japan was asked to shift its defense policy, especially the function of SDF (Self-Defense Forces) in overseas dispatch. The most dramatic step taken by the prime minister was his decision in 2003, in the face of strong domestic opposition, to obtain the Diet approval for the deployment of Ground Self-Defense Force to southern Iraq to engage in humanitarian and reconstruction activities,putting Japaneseforcesinto a“semi-combat zone”for the first time.1 Some scholars argue that Japan’s domestic politic is increasingly revealing traits that mark the return to a right-wing nationalism. In analyzing Japan’s security policy, international relation theories, mainly realism and neo-realism, have offered plenty of explanations from the perspectives of power relation and international structure. As Inoguchi and Bacon’s survey reports, American approaches to IR are just beginning to take hold in Japanese academia.2 However, that orientation leads to a narrower scope of inquiry and might disregard alternative angles of analysis. Looking back to the past, the article argues that Japan has oscillated between the West and the East searching for its own strategy and identity since the late 19th century. From the perspective of strategic culture we argues that Japan’s security policy has been affected by its Asianism (Azia Shugi) emerging from Meiji Restoration, which constitutes of its conceptions of self and other in international relations.
Strategic Culture and Security Policy
Following a period of hostile indifference to “ideational explanations”the time for “ideas”seems to have come around once again in international relation studies. The “Orthodox”subfield of security studies also moves in a similar direction.
1 Rust Deming, “Japan’s Constitution and Defense Policy: Entering a New Era?”Strategic Forum, no.213, Nov. 2004, p.4.
2
Takashi Inoguchi and Paul Bacon, “The Study of International Relations in Japan: Toward a More International Discipline,”International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, no1, 2001, pp.1-20.
In current security analysis, “the site of security has spread from state to nation, from sovereignty to identity”.3 Strategy culture serves as an attempt to challenge the unitary rational actor assumption in security policy studies, based on the conviction that domestic political conditions could shape national security strategy. Jack Snyder, who brought the political culture argument into modern security studies, was the first man who developed a theory of strategy culture to interpret nuclear strategy.4
In security studies some culturalists are united against realism. They think that realism emphasizing factors such as material balance of power is an overrated body of theory. And cultural theories which stress ideational factors do better job of explaining world politics. 5However, some scholars from the perspective of mainstream international theories refute this argument. According to Michael Desch, cultural theories are sometimes useful as a supplement to realist theories instead of relegating them to the dustbin. He emphasizes that culture studies can be a supplement rather than an independent theory. Some scholars even synthesize culture with realism. For example, Alastair Johnston’s Culture Realism: Strategic Cultrue and Grand Strategy in Chinese History investigate Chinese strategic culture and causal linkages to China’s use of military force against external threats in the Ming Dynasty. Ironically, he found that while China does have characteristics of unique strategic cultures, these cultures actually exhibit classic elements of realpolitik.6
Mainstream international theories should not be abandoned, but we would like to stimulate a fuller integration of international studies with exciting new fields in order to deal with issues of diversity. Few culture scholars believe that debate between material frameworks and ideational ones really is an “either-or”theoretical dispute. Strategic culture in security studies provides alternative solutions to traditional analyses. Scholars today seem to take strategic culture as “a set of shared assumptions and decision rules that impose a degree of order on individual and group conceptions
3 Yosef Lapid, “Culture’s Ship: Returns and Departures in International Relations Theory,”in The
Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory, Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil eds, 1996, UK:
Lynne Rienner Publishers, p.19.
4 Jeffery S. Lantis, “Strategic Culture and National Security Policy,”International Studies Review, vol. 4, no.3,2002, p.94
5 Michale C. Desch, “Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies,”
International Security, vol. 23, no.1, Summer 1998, pp.1-4.
of their relationship to their social, organizational or political environment”.7 Here, we emphasize it as kind of self-other conceptions of a state, which may be institutionalized and shapes security policy.
We must also note that conceptions of self and other are not fixed but keep changing. Dramatic change only occurs when the type of behavior that a state’s political culture produces no longer meets its basic needs. When the contradiction between external conditions and political cultural tendencies becomes too great, culture will likely adapt.
When is a state more inclined to maintain and perpetuate common historical narratives than to legitimize necessary foreign policy behaviors inconsistent with tradition? According to Michael Desch and from a realist’s view, it depends on whether the structure is determinate or indeterminate to the state. When a state faces either external or internal threats, structure is determinative; when a state faces both, or neither, structure is indeterminate.
In a determinate structural environment, where states have only or at most a few satisfactory strategic choices, realist theories expect culture to serve mostly as a dependent or an intervening variable that usually reflects the structural environment, changing slowly enough to cause a lag between structural change and changes in state behavior. In indeterminate structural environments, where states have many optional choices, realist theories ought to have little trouble according culture, or any other domestic variable, a greater independent role in explaining state behavior. Meanwhile, in an indeterminate threat environment, it is necessary to look to other variables to explain various types of strategic behavior. Culture and other domestic variables may take on greater independent explanatory power in these cases.8
However, sometimes “threat”cannot be easily defined. Some threats are explicit while others may be implicit and we cannot always clearly identify the intention of the action from the opposite site. Realism could not detect the idea implied in actor’s behavior because it emphasizes too much on structural factors and power relations. Different conceptions of self and other may result in different actions. Sometimes the actor’s ideology changes, the structure changes. Nonetheless we
7
Ibid., pp.105-106.
cannot neglect material aspects while we analyze the security policy of the state, we must also note that strategic culture as “ideational explanations”helps us to see the full picture of international relations.
Japan’s strategic Culture: Exploring Frameworks for Analysis
Many observers have stated that Japanese foreign policy is immobile, and that Japan is a reactive state, unwilling to take risk or assert its interests in the world.9 From the perspective of strategic culture, Thomas Berger argues that in the short to medium term it is unlikely that Japan will seek to become a major military power, and it is attributable to Japan’s postwar culture of anti-militarism.10 Berger assumes that antimilitarist sentiments have become deeply institutionalized in Japan through a process of legitimated compromises. Japanese public opinion, despite the end of the Cold War and growing trade frictions with the United States, continues to favor a gradualist approach to defense policy and opposes any large increase in the Japanese defense budget. Past learning becomes sediment in the collective consciousness and relatively resilient to change. Japan’s SDF were created in 1954 fall under a severe set of restrictions in mission and armaments. There are a series of resolutions forbidding overseas troop deployments and these restrictions may have become a norm in Japanese political-military culture.
Thomas Berger also mentions that there exists an antinomy among Japanese while they face the world. The Japanese felt doubly victimized. On the one hand, they felt victimized by the United States and other foreign nations, which in the Japanese view had conducted a ruthless campaign of conquest in order to increase their own power. On the other hand, they also felt they had been victimized by the blind ambition of Japan’s wartime military leadership.11 The former may lead to the appeal to more autonomous status in world politics and even causes military expansion. On the contrary, the latter may result in the dominance of pacifism in Japan’s domestic society.
Berger does not deny that external events might let the present elites stoke the
9 Kent E. Calder, “Japanese Foreign Economic Policy Formation: Explaining the Reactive State,”
World Politics, vol.40, no.4, (July 1988), pp.517-41.
10 Thomas U. Berger, “From Sword to Chrysanthemum: Japan’s Culture of Anti-militarism,” International Security, vol. 17, no. 4, 1993, pp.119-150.
fires of ethnocentric nationalism in order to legitimate military expansion. Potential catalysts for change might be dramatic events or traumatic experiences that would discredit thoroughly core beliefs and values. Therefore, it seems that for Berger, structure of international relations remains its great influence on the behavior of the state. He suggests strengthening the U.S.-Japan security relationship to forestall such an eventuality. In suggestion of the US’s Japan policy, he asserts that it is in the interest of the United States to help Japan manage a slow and orderly evolution of this peculiar culture toward a more realistic stance with regard to security affairs.
From Meiji Restoration, the objectives of Japanese security policy have been a wealthy nation and a strong military. Those who analyze Japan’s strategic culture should investigate further why Japan launched the Sino-Japan War and afterwards the Pacific War. Besides Berger’s analysis, we argue that Japan’s strategic culture should be assessed through the concept of “Asianism”(Azia Shugi) in the history. According to Hazama Naoki, the professor of Kyoto University, the main context of the early stages of Asianism is to call for Asian unification in order to counter against the West, which all the states in Asia share equivalent relationship.12 However, the Asianism with this starting point, going through different transition process, turns out to be used as kind of aggression excuse by Japanese warlords. As a country situated in Asia, Japan’s strategic culture has been affected by Japan’s self-consciousness in Asia, which develops into diverse discourses of Asianism. The discourses of Asianism is not fixed, it changes according to Japan’s self and other conceptions in Asia.
Asianism as the root of Japan’s Strategic Culture
Like other Asian countries, Japan had experienced culture clash with the West over the technology culture, the institutional culture, and the spiritual culture. Japan, situated in the periphery of the Chinese culture circle, adjusted itself to western technology and economic institutions and became the first modernized country in Asia. As to spiritual culture and part of institutional culture, Japan seized its traditional values tightly and changed slowly. Eastern ethics is the foundation of
12
Hazama Naoki, “Shoki Azia Shugi Nitsuite no Shiteki Kousatu”(Historical investigation: The early stages of Asianism), Toua(East Asia), 2001, Tokyo: Kazankai.
Mikado government, which could not be violated under the westernization wave.13 Influenced by the western values, the “Freedom and democracy movement” (Ziyuminken Undou)in Japan’s civil society then could not last long because it would eventually threat the authority of Mikado. Since Meiji Restoration, the Japanese government took the initiative to introduce western technology. The modernization that Japan carried on was the policy transplanted from the West and moved toward a capitalist country. Facing the conflicts with western culture, Asianism emerged, which emphasized the importance of Eastern ethics and called for “Asian community”in order to resist western imperialism. Based on the oriental cultural identity, the initial stage of Asianism with the characteristic of “Asian community”advocated opposing the culture of the Western imperialist powers and called for the unity of Asian countries.14
The development of Asianism before WWII can roughly be divided into three stages. At the first stage(1878-1989), the main tune of the Asianism is that Asian countries should be united together toward modernization. The Sino-Japan War (1894-1895) is the turning point which divides the period into two stages. The former stage emphasized its close relationship with Asian countries which shared the common fate facing western imperialism. The latter stage stressed the importance of preventing China from being divided, which also served as Japan’s national interests. After Sino-Japan War, Japan’s Asianism became to change into considering its own expansion. On the second stage(1898-1928), there was great transition. After the Sino-Japan War, Japan, defeating China and annexing Korea afterwards, was puffed with ambition and regarded itself as the leader to other Asian countries. The “Great Asianism”in this stage called for development of Asia under Japan’s leadership. Though Japanese government still claimed that Asian countries should unite together, more and more promoters with the recommendation of “Continental Policy”made Japanese government believed that its invasion and expansion was legitimate. On the last stage(1928-1945), Asianism had already lost its own initial perception of Asia as
13 Bang He Sheng, “Dui Min Jian Li Nian De Ren Tong, Dui You Yi Si Xiang Jing Xun,”(Agreeing With the Idea of Civil Society, and the Warning to right wing thoughts.)
http://www.cc.org.cn/newcc/browwenzhang.php?articleid=5396
14
Ping Wan, Jindai Riben de Yaxiya Zhuyi(Asianism in Modern Japan), 2004, Beijing: Shangwu. Pp.5-7.
an integrated region, and turned into the tool of maximizing Japan’s national interests. The main concern of this period was “Co-prosperity Sphere”which contended that Asia should become part of Japan’s territory and under the lead of Mikado.15 Asianism had totally become kind of invasion caused great disaster of warfare.
Asianism is therefore diverse and complex, which could not easily defined as aggressiveness. Its transformation into a radical nationalism and the reason why the movement of civil society was totally neglected should be further explored. The threat of Western imperial forces in the 19 century could be seen as the event stimulating Japan to change its culture because the international structure was rather “determinative”(external threat from the Western imperialism) at the time for realism to be easily adopted. It seems that Asianism at the initial stage is just kind of resistance against the West, which emerged from strategic consideration trying to unite Asian country as a whole to counterbalance western forces.16 However, Japan faced a complex situation here which could not be well explained by realism. On the one hand, Japan was amazed at advanced knowledge and tried its best to “join the western clubs”and got its membership. On the other hand, due to its historical and geographical connection with Asia, Japan unsteadily searched for its own identity and strategy. Sine the Meiji Restoration a wealthy nation and a strong military have been the tradition objectives of Japanese security policy, and with the end of the Pacific War this maxim has been modified rather than abandoned. Since 1945, military security has been embedded in a broader definition of national security.17
The Evolution of Japan’s Strategic Culture: From Chrysanthemum to Sword Once Again?
Since 1945, external and internal structure of Japan has totally changed because Japan has been constrained by the US forces and postwar constitution. Pacifism seems to dominate Japan’s society since the time. As Peter Katzensstein and Thomas
15 Ibid., pp. 10-23. 16 Sheng Bang He, Ibid. 17
Peter J. Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara, “Japan’s National Security: Structures, Norms, and Politics,”International Security, vol. 17, no.4, Spring, 1993, p.115.
Berger’s arguments18, both state structure and social and legal norms explain why Japan’s security policy has eschewed the traditional trappings of military status and power. The Yoshida Doctrine, which emphasizes Japan’s economic prosperity, reinforces the strong political preferences against building up a powerful military. However, while Japan gradually gets stronger, so does its independent identity which seeks to more autonomy. At the same time, Japan’s torn identity between East and West century ago, would eventually become more acute again because of the rise of Chinese power. In the post-Cold War era, according to Michael Green, there are six trends worth watching19: A greater focus on balance of power; growing realism; a higher sensitivity to security; a more determined push for “independent”foreign policy; and a focus on Asia. Michael Green reminds us that even though the break in Japan’s trajectory after the end of the Pacific War was sharp, it is not irreversible. Even though the international structure changes, Japan in the search for identity and strategy in Asia remains unchanged.
In the aspects of security policy, the role of Japan’s SDF has been under changing. In Sep. 1997, Revised Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation calls for a review of the 1978 Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation. SDF operations no longer focus solely on the defense of the Japanese home islands.20After 911, the mission of the SDF has expanded further. In Oct. 2001, the Diet passed the Antiterrorism Special Measure Law, which authorized the SDF to provide logistical support to American and other militaries engaged in antiterrorist operations anywhere in the world. The SDF was confined to operate only in noncombat zones.21In 2003, Japan has enacted Iraq Special Measures Law which authorized the SDF to provide humanitarian aid and rehabilitation of Iraq. 22The Law limited SDF operations to noncombat zone, but allowed the forces to transport weapons and ammunition for other militaries.
18 Peter J. Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara, ibid., Thomas U. Berger, op. cit. 19
Michael Jonathan Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism：Foreign Policy Challenges in an Era Of Uncertain Power, New York : Palgrave, 2001, pp.6-8.
20
Peter J. Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara, “Japan and Asian-Pacific Security,”in J.J. Suh, Peter J. Katzenstein, and Allen Carlson eds., Rethinking Security in East Asia: Identity, Power and Efficiency. , 2004, Stanford University Press,. p.103
21 Tero Taisaku Tokubetsu Soti Ho(Antiterrorism Special Measure Law),
http://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/terro/law/hterrol.html
In 2004, Japan’s new National Defense Program Guidelines(NDPG) approved by the Cabinet tears down geographic constraints on missions of the SDF and allows troops to land in any country to fight a potential terrorist threat.23Although Japan’s
East Asian strategic Review 2006 mentioned that the basic concept of the new NDPG
is that merely providing against a full-scale invasion of Japan is not enough to cope with new threats and diverse situations in the 21st century, which is seeing the globalization of security, it is the first time China has been named a possible threat in a defense program outline.24 The program also implies that the SDF will be dispatched to fight terrorism wherever it may pose a threat to Japanese security. Another characteristic of the new NDPG is the emphasis it places on cooperation with Japan’s ally the United States and the international community and more active involvement in global security problems.
Will Japan take expediency of antiterrorism as the purpose of shifting Japan’s military mobility and choose to unsheathe its sword once again? Peter Katzenstein provides two explanatory factors which have shaped Japanese counterterrorism policy: “norms of appropriate behavior linked to conceptions of self and other on the one hand and institutionalized practices on the other. 25On the one hand, differences in self-conception lead one to expect different counterterrorist policies. And on the other hand, Japan’s counterterrorism policy has been shaped by two kinds of norms, namely, peace and human rights which have been rooted in post war society.26 Compared with the United States, Japan’s counterterrorism has been low key and seems to be less willing to respond to terrorism as a global problem.
Whether Japan will pick up its sword again relies on its root of strategic culture, namely, Asianism. The Japan-US alliance is growing stronger, but, on the
23 Toazia Senryaku kaikan 2006(East Asian strategic Review 2006), BōētyōBōēkenkyujō(The National Institute for Defense Studies), Japan, pp.225-226.
24 “
Outline points overseas for SDF to defend Japan,”The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 11, 2004. The new NDPG states that there is a need to pay attention to future trends of China in light of the modernization of its military and expansion of its maritime activity range. See Heisei Nanajyunendo IkōNi Kakaru
Bōēkēgaku No Ōtsuna,( National Defense Program Guidelines FY 2005-), available at
http://www.jda.go.jp/j/defense/policy/17taikou/taikou.htm
25 Peter Ktzenstein, “Same War- Different Views: Germany, Japan, and Counterterrorism,”
International Organization 57, Fall 2003, p.737.
26 Miyazaka Naoshi, “Terorisumu Taisaku Ni Okeru Senryaku Bunka,”(Strategic Culture of antiterrorism policy). 2002, Kokusaiseiji(International Politics) no.135. The Japan Association of International Politics. P.71.
other hand, a movement for creating and East Asian Community excluding the United States is gathering pace. Japan stands at the crossroad between East and West again. While Japan never give up the objectives of a wealthy and military nation from Meiji Restoration, the objectives has been modified or adapted to Japan’s role in Asia. Japan has emphasized on the construction of a unitary and prosperous Asia since 1990s. However, controversial junior high school history and social studies textbooks that downplay Japanese aggression in Asia, and Prime Minister Koizumi’s visit to the Yasukuni war shrine, which are seen to be the direction of conservatives and nationalists cast a could over mutual confidence with other Asian countries.27 Whatever its future development, the changing conceptions of Japan’s self and other in Asia deserves our utmost attention.
Conclusion:
Strategic culture offers a more plausible and powerful way of understanding the state’s security policy and it is definitely not the last resort. We assume that conceptions of self and other constitute Japan’s Asianism and become its root of strategic culture. Reviewing the relationship between Japan and Asia in the past, we found that Asianism was good-will at the early stages but end up with tragedy of Pacific War. The history of invasion makes Japan embarrassed and regretful nowadays while dealing with Asian affairs. Japan turns back to Asia once again now and many Asian countries expect Japan to keep the lessons of the past in mind, and return to its early Asianism which implies “Asian Community”:Asian countries and peoples share similar values and similar histories and should be united politically or culturally but not by force.
Japan is inclined to enhancing its development in Asia not only in consideration of national interests, but in the search for its own strategy and identity through the process of returning to Asia. In the evolution of Asianism in the past, we learnt that Japan alone was unable to confront the West, and it must unite Asian countries and cooperate with them. While Japan becomes more autonomous in its foreign policy,
Komori Yoichi, Tenno no Gyokuin Hosou, (The Imperial Broadcast)，2003, Tokyo: Gogatsu Shobou, pp.1-12
strengthening relationship with the Asian countries has come to its top priority. Besides positive participation in Asia, Japan even hopes to play a key role in the regional cooperation, and its relationship with China is out of question the most important. Japan’s direction is changing, but it moves on slowly in order to look for optimum equilibrium.
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