Introduction

This chapter traces the evolution of Japanese strategic thought from the beginning of the 1960s to the start of the third decade of the twenty-first century. The 1960s–1980s were marked by major events that changed the international balance of power and had a significant impact on Japan’s foreign-policy thinking. Three such examples stand out. Firstly, in October 1964, while Japan was hosting the summer Olympic Games, China became a nuclear power when it carried out its first nuclear test, conducting further tests in 1965–66 and detonating a thermonuclear bomb in 1967. Notwithstanding the considerable global flux of the past 60 or so years, the chapter identifies consistent ingredients in Japanese strategic thinking. One of the most important of these is the centrality of Japan’s perennial need to triangulate its relations between the great powers in the region, and the ebbs and flows of its views of these bilateral relationships.