Open AccessDissertation
Nationalism in Japan’s contemporary foreign policy: a consideration of the cases of China, North Korea, and India
TLDR
In this paper, the authors explored how political actors manipulated the concept of nationalism in foreign policy discourse and explored how the two administrations both used nationalism but in the pursuit of contrasting policies: an uncompromising stance to China and a conciliatory approach toward North Korea under the Koizumi administration, a hardline attitude against North Korea and the rapprochement with China by Abe, accompanied by a friendship-policy toward India.Abstract:
Under the Koizumi and Abe administrations, the deterioration of the Japan-China
relationship and growing tension between Japan and North Korea were often interpreted as
being caused by the rise of nationalism. This thesis aims to explore this question by looking at
Japan’s foreign policy in the region and uncovering how political actors manipulated the
concept of nationalism in foreign policy discourse. The methodology employs discourse
analysis on five case studies. It will be explored how the two administrations both used
nationalism but in the pursuit of contrasting policies: an uncompromising stance to China and
a conciliatory approach toward North Korea under the Koizumi administration, a hard-line
attitude against North Korea and the rapprochement with China by Abe, accompanied by a
friendship-policy toward India. These case studies show how the nationalism is used in the
competition between political leaders by articulating national identity in foreign policy.
Whereas this often appears as a kind of assertiveness from outside China, in the domestic
context leaders use nationalism to reconstruct Japan’s identity as a ‘peaceful nation’ through
foreign policy by highlighting differences from ‘other’s or by achieving historic reconciliation.
Such identity constructions are used to legitimize policy choices that are in themselves used to
marginalize other policy options and political actors. In this way, nationalism is utilized as a
kind of political capital in a domestic power relationship, as can be seen by Abe’s use of
foreign policy to set an agenda of ‘departure from the postwar regime’. In a similar way,
Koizumi’s unyielding stance against China was used to calm discontents among right-wing
traditionalists who were opposed to his reconciliatory approach to Pyongyang. On the other
hand, Abe also utilized a hard-line policy to the DPRK to offset his rapprochement with
China whilst he sought to prevent the improved relationship from becoming a source of
political capital for his rivals. The major insights of this thesis is thus to explain how Japan’s
foreign policy is shaped by the attempts of its political leaders to manipulate nationalism so as
articulating particular forms of national identity that enable them to achieve legitimacy for
their policy agendas, boost domestic credentials and marginalize their political rivals.read more
Citations
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Book
국제정치이론 = Theory of international politics
Kenneth Neal Waltz,건영 박 +1 more
TL;DR: The seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather, one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deformation as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Rise and Fall of Japan's LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions
TL;DR: The Rise and Fall of Japan's LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions by Ellis S. Krauss and RobERT J. PEKKANEN as discussed by the authors, 2010. 318 pp.
References
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Book ChapterDOI
The Construction of Antagonism: The History Problem in Japan’s Foreign Relations
TL;DR: The U.S.-Japan security treaty has been used by Japan to provide logistical support to the United States forces in the war in Afghanistan as mentioned in this paper, which is a welcome contrast to Japanese inaction during the Gulf campaign a decade earlier.
The battle for hearts and minds: Patriotic education in Japan in the 1990s and beyond
TL;DR: The attempts of the Ministry of Education and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (hereafter LDP) to tighten up the curriculum and the textbook screening process, and place more emphasis on patriotic education, for example, through textbook content, such as emphasizing the role of the emperor, downplaying Japan's aggression during the war, and so on, have been the subject of much criticism within Japanese educational circles and beyond.
Journal ArticleDOI
Explaining divergent responses to the North Korean abductions issue in Japan and South Korea
Brad Williams,Erik Mobrand +1 more
TL;DR: This paper examined the divergent approaches pursued by Japan and South Korea in their attempts to resolve an issue that is related to a fundamental responsibility of sovereign states: the protection of citizens, and they found that the key to understanding the divergence responses lies in the politicization of specific, ostensibly apolitical demands for the state to fulfill its duty to protect citizens.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Politics of Inclusion: The Case of the Baltic States
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the Baltic states' return to Europe through the prism of collective identity formation and argue that the European Union during the 1990s has been articulating a ''politics...