ABSTRACT
Yumiko Tanaka’s essay deals with the impact of the transnational circulation of Japanese framings of war-time problems and solutions far from its shores. She offers an organizational, political, and discursive analysis of Japan’s attempt to reposition its identity for greater global recognition through the country’s multifaceted involvements in conflict zones. At issue are controversial projects to reconfigure the state as a civilian-military hybrid, contending languages for peace building, and the impact on Japan itself of even tentative experiments in emergency and reconstruction interventions, fostered by the new Gender Equality Bureau, that problematizes women’s patterns of poverty and involves “gender mainstreaming” in Afghanistan’s warzone. Tanaka appraises the growing militarization of Japanese peacekeeping, humanitarianism, and war-time reconstruction efforts with the involvement of the Japanese military Self-Defense Forces (SDF) in areas that have been the province of civilian technical cooperation through JICA. Inevitably the SDF itself will be scrutinized for its impact on Japan’s ODA and its global identity.
