Organizer and Chair: Saadia M. Pekkanen, University of Washington

Discussant: Edward J. Lincoln, Council on Foreign Relations

Japanese foreign policy, both in the economic and security realm, has changed dramatically over the past decade. But what exactly are the changes? In which direction are they headed? This panel takes a close look at the changes across key foreign policy issues such as economic regionalism, trade forum-shopping, national security policy, militarization and constitutional revision. With respect to economic regionalism, what are the implications of Japan’s new FTA trade strategy (Urata)? With respect to the politics of international trade, how can we explain the Japanese government’s forum-shopping and its implications for the global trading regime over the long run (Pekkanen, Solis, Katada)? With respect to militarization and constitutional revision, how can we begin to understand the political import of debates on the subject, both domestically for Japanese discourses and for international security (Hook)? With respect to defense, Have both changing internal and external condition led to a fundamental reevaluation of Japan’s national security policy, which has been of a defensive nature for most of the postwar period (Hiwatari)? The goal of the panel is not only to assess the empirical changes in Japanese foreign policy over the past decade but also to extract implications for how they will affect the conduct of Japanese actors in the 21^st century.

Shujiro Urata, Waseda University, Japan

Japan had pursued trade liberalization under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) until the late 1990s, when it started to have an interest in bilateral and regional trade liberalization. This reflects a change in Japanese trade policy from a single-track approach based on GATTWTO multilateral trade liberalization to a multi-track approach including bilateral and plurilateral trade liberalization. Japan enacted its first free trade agreement (FTA) in November 2002 with Singapore, and second FTA in April 2005 with Mexico. Currently, Japan is negotiating FTAs with Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations.) The paper examines the motivation of Japan’s new trade strategy, possible impacts on Japanese and East Asian economies, and the obstacles for pursing the new trade strategy.

Saori N. Katada, University of Washington

The Japanese government today is actively choosing to pursue its economic diplomacy through bilateral venues, multilateral frameworks, and even regional settings. For Japan specialists, these high-profile forum choices to pursue trade liberalization and dispute resolution across forums are unprecedented and contrary to all expectations. We focus our analytical and empirical attention on the politics of forum-shopping. What elements specifically determine the Japanese government’s choice to pursue its economic diplomacy across forums? In this paper we develop a general explanation to explain forum-choices and then use it to evaluate Japan’s trade diplomacy across forums from 1955-2005. We contend that while a range of factors affect forum choices, the Japanese case suggests that the most critical variables for states involve a tradeoff between the scope and flexibility of any given forum. We end by assessing the implications of Japan’s forum shopping for global and regional trade relations.

Glenn D. Hook, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

This paper investigates one of the oldest questions in political science, namely, the relationship between the state and its citizens, by examining the changing meaning of the constitution in early twenty-first century Japan. It addresses the question of what the growing discourse of ‘self-responsibility" tells us about the transition in the nature of the Japanese state and its citizens’ exposure to international and domestic ‘risk.’ This discourse has emerged in the context of the dual pressures of globalization: on the one hand, the pressure on the Japanese state to actively carve out an international role as a ‘normal’ state; and, on the other, the pressure to react to the neo-liberal agenda and shrink its domestic role. The paper focuses on the international dimension of Japanese security policy in order to demonstrate the way in which, after the end of the Cold War, the Preamble has supplanted Article 9 as the yardstick by which to judge the legitimacy of Japan’s ‘international contribution’, increasingly viewed as being made by military means. The paper will conclude by arguing that, in order to understand the political import of the constitutional revision debates now taking place in Japan, it is essential to take into account the emergence of a discourse built around ‘self-responsibility’ and ‘risk’ as these two concepts are core to understanding how a change in the meaning of the constitution is now taking place in terms of Japanese security policy, even though a formal change in the words of the constitution has still to take place.

Yumi Hiwatari, Sophia University, Japan

The end of cold war forced Japan to reformulate its cold-war defense strategy which mostly focused on deterring the threat of Soviet Union. For the Japanese government, the past decade posed a question of reevaluating the new external environment and threats therein and overhauling its defense strategy. In addition to the changing external strategic environment, the end of LDP predominant party system and the current political reforms pursued by the Koizumi administration shape the unique domestic conditions under which Japan’s national security policy is formulated. Instead of the Soviet threat, Japan has to deal with rising China, North Korea’s nuclear ambition, and global threat of terrorism. This has increased the level of uncertainty and made its strategic calculation complicated. This paper focuses on Japan’s adaptation to the new external environment and its defense strategy for the 21st century by examining the major changes in the national security policy, such as the strengthening of the U.S.-Japan alliance, stipulation of the Guideline, issuance of the National Defense Program Outlines in 1996 and 2004, and several legislations for the expanding oversea missions of the Japan Self Defense Forces. I will extract elements that characterize Japan’s defense strategy and argue whether its exclusively defensive nature has been changing. I seek to establish more general variables for the 21st century defense strategy in order to find out whether there is any relationship between the changing external as well as internal environments and the contents of state’s defense strategy.