ABSTRACT
From the early twentieth century, Japan has been central to any conception of the Asia-Pacific as a region. In the build-up to and during the Pacific War this found expression primarily in the abortive attempt to impose an economic empire by force.1 After 1945 Japan emerged as the most dynamic economic centre of the region within a strategic and economic order established by the United States. Japan is more than a regional power. Its economy is of global significance and
geopolitically it is located at the junction of American, Russian and Chinese interests. For its part, Japan has been uncertain as to whether to regard itself as primarily a highly developed country that is part of the Western world, as in the Trilateral Commission interacting with Europe and North America, or as still very much an Asian power that is wary of Westernization and able in its own way to provide leadership to its Asian neighbours. In practice, however, Japan has played a relatively quiescent role in global affairs even where its own security interests may be seen to have been directly involved. This is largely a consequence of responsibility for its security having been assumed by the United States ever since its defeat in 1945. The relative quiescence has also been underpinned by domestic support for the principles of the 1947 ‘peace constitution’ and by the pattern of domestic politics that emerged after the end of the American occupation in 1952. Only with the end of the Cold War did that pattern of Japanese domestic politics begin to change, and in this new period Japan developed an international ambition that was expressed in a demand for a permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations, which was significantly qualified by a continued refusal to assume attendant military responsibilities. Throughout the period of the Cold War, the United States in effect guaranteed
the security of Japan and maintained an international free trade order that allowed Japan to pursue its own narrow commercial interests. Japan resisted all American attempts to persuade it to participate in collective security schemes and avoided involvement in international strategic affairs. Indeed, during the 1950s and 1960s Japan essentially followed the US lead in foreign affairs (while refusing to ‘share responsibilities’) and it was only in reaction to the 1971 ‘Nixon shocks’, in which he failed to inform them of his opening to China and of his abrupt withdrawal of the US dollar from the gold standard, that the Japanese began to develop a somewhat independent course. Even then the fundamental
neomercantilist approach did not greatly change, as Japanese foreign policy continued to be primarily reactive while seeking to avoid becoming embroiled in international conflicts. The impact upon Japan of having most of its security responsibilities under-
taken by the United States has been complex and many sided. Emerging out of the period of the US occupation that ended in 1952, the security arrangement that became central to American strategy in the Cold War era was first used by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru as a means by which Japan ‘gave exclusive priority to pursuing economic recovery and maintaining political stability … [while deferring] indefinitely the task of preparing the Japanese people themselves for a return to the harsh realities of international politics’.2 This set a course that became institutionalized. The neomercantilist policies initially adopted in the 1950s had profound effects upon the structure of domestic politics that in turn reinforced the character of those policies in dealing with the outside world. The Yoshida approach in effect sought to reach an accommodation between
those Japanese nationalists who found it demeaning for Japan to be confined to the status of dependency in security matters and those who adhered to the ethos of the 1947 ‘peace constitution’ which pledged Japan to foreswear war and the use or threat of force as an instrument of policy. Yoshida himself in later life came to regret the course that he had set. In 1963, nearly ten years after leaving office, he wrote:
For an independent Japan, which is among the first rank countries in economics, technology, and learning, to continue to be dependent on another country is a deformity (katawa) of the state. … I myself cannot escape responsibility for the use of the constitution as a pretext (tatemae) for this way of conducting national policy.3
