The Foreign Policy of Modern Japan; Policymaking in Contemporary Japan

Edited by T. J. Pempel
Reviewed by Donald S. Zagoria

Both volumes explore in considerable detail the background of the Japanese foreign policymaking process. Of many excellent essays in both volumes, two exceptionally striking contributions in the Scalapino volume are by Masataka Kosaka and by Scalapino himself. Kosaka probes the roots and contradictions of Japan's defensive and nationalistic foreign economic policy, and Scalapino concludes that Japan "may find no sweeping alternatives to its present policies that would offer better opportunities."