ABSTRACT
The end of the Cold War has thrust Japan into strikingly new international conditions. Little in Japan’s 2,000 year history has prepared it for the challenges of this new era. Despite the recession and the turmoil in its banking system that followed the bursting of a speculative bubble in the 1990s, the fact is that Japan emerged from the end of the Cold War as one of the world’s great powers with expectations both at home and abroad that it will have a leadership role in the establishment of a new order in the Asia-Pacific region.
