1st Edition
Japan’s Rise as a Regional and Global Power, 2013-2023 A Momentous Decade
Table of Contents
Part 1: Chronology
1. Launching the Big Shift in Japanese Strategic Thinking toward the Indo-Pacific, 2013-2016
Gilbert Rozman
2. Advancing Japanese Strategic Thinking toward the Indo-Pacific, 2017-2019
Gilbert Rozman
3. Realizing Japan’s Fulsome Embrace of Bipolarity, 2020-2022
Gilbert Rozman
Part 2: Regionalism
4. Tracking the Swings in a ‘Virtual Alliance’: Japan’s Policy toward the Korean Peninsula over a Decade
Brad Glosserman
5. Southeast Asia Tests the Allure of Japan’s Global Vision
Shihoko Goto
6. Tracking the Pathway to a ‘Quasi-Alliance’: Japan’s Policy toward Australia, 2013-2022
Satake Tomohiko
Part 3: Beyond Regionalism
7. Japan and Europe: A Marriage of Convenience Matures
Brad Glosserman
8. Japan’s Economic Turn to Europe
Brad Glosserman
9. The Impact of the Ukraine War: Japan’s Thinking on Russia, China, and India in 2023
Gilbert Rozman
Biography
Gilbert Rozman is the Emeritus Musgrave Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, USA, and Editor-in-chief of the Asan Forum.
Brad Glosserman is Deputy Director of and Visiting Professor at the Center for Rule-making Strategies, Tama University, and Senior Adviser at Pacific Forum, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
"The late Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s most significant legacy was successfully converting Japan from a one-trick global economic power into a top geopolitical force. From 2013 to 2023, Japan’s diplomatic role evolved dramatically thanks to the Abe Doctrine, a set of norms that transformed the country's focus from pacifism to a greater security consciousness, alert to external threats and prepared to defend itself and its allies militarily. After WW II, although Japan gradually became the world’s second largest economy, it did not acquire the equivalent political or military power due to defense prohibitions in its postwar constitution. However, in light of rising threats from China and Russia in the 2010s, Abe sought to shed Japan’s postwar tradition of reactive foreign policy subservience to the US. He achieved this by launching a massive shift in Japanese national identity in favor of national pride. Abe’s successor, Kishida Fumio, reinforced this approach, exerting leadership as an equal partner of the US and adopting Abe’s game-changing principle of a free and open Indo-Pacific. Together, Abe and Kishida stripped Japan of passivity, moving the country to adopt a leadership role on par with the US and forging a powerful Indo-Pacific architecture."
S. C. Hart, William and Mary
