Japan Is Back:Why Tokyo's New Assertiveness Is Good for Washington

These days, any book on Asia with the word "rising" in the title is likely to be about China. It was doubtless with that in mind that Kenneth Pyle decided on the clever title "Japan Rising" for his masterful new treatise on Japan's strategic culture. At a time when cabinet secretaries, CEOs, and journalists are rushing past Tokyo on their way to Beijing, Pyle reminds us that China is not the only actor making strategic choices that will shape Asia's future. As he notes in his introduction, "After more than half a century of national pacifism and isolationism, [Japan] is preparing to become a major player in the strategic struggles of the twenty-first century."

The more assertive Japan of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is often described by observers as "nationalistic" or even "remilitarizing." But beyond noting that the familiar moorings of Japanese pacifism and passivity seem to be eroding, few authors have been able to explain what the basis for current Japanese strategic thought might be. Pyle helps to fill that gap by spotlighting the enduring qualities of Japan's strategic culture and by elucidating Tokyo's long-running success at adjusting its domestic institutions and sources of relative power to get the most out of the prevailing international system. Taking the reader from the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry's black ships in Edo Bay in 1853 to the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere of the 1930s and 1940s and then to the postwar alliance with the United States, Pyle demonstrates how Japanese elites have maintained an intense focus on maximizing the nation's autonomy, rank, and honor. He also shows how they have remained attentive to the distribution of international power and adopted the hegemonic powers' most successful practices. In reading this elegantly presented history, one comes to appreciate that Japan is not returning to its realist roots; it never left them.

TRADITIONAL WAYS

One of the most striking elements of Pyle's account is the way in which Japan has consistently managed to do more with less. Pyle notes that from 1860 to 1938, when Japan was beginning to assert itself as a contender for dominance of half the globe, its share of global GDP only rose from 2.6 percent to 3.8 percent. Under the banner of "rich nation, strong army," the Meiji elite adopted those Western technologies and political institutions that served the purpose of rapid modernization and the goal of channeling leading-edge technologies into the imperial army and navy. In 1860, most Japanese military personnel still carried swords, spears, or halberds; by December 1940, Japan was designing, building, and deploying some of the most modern battleships and fighter aircraft in the world.

After suffering catastrophic defeat in 1945, Japan was forced to accommodate the U.S. occupation and a new U.S.-dominated international order. Pyle explains how the conservative elite operated to maintain Japan's core values while making necessary adjustments to maximize the country's relative strength. The architect of this postwar strategy, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, believed that the prewar leadership had not been sufficiently attentive to international power relations and had mismanaged Japan's sources of national strength. Yoshida closely aligned Tokyo with Washington and ensured that Japan's postwar focus remained on economic rebuilding, not remilitarization, even after the Eisenhower administration began to regret the imposition of the pacifist Article 9 of Japan's 1947 constitution. Yoshida and the conservative elite saw pacifism as a means to maximize Japan's national autonomy until the country had recovered. His successors ensured that Japan institutionalized Article 9 in domestic law as a break against entrapment in U.S. Cold War strategy. Yoshida was particularly concerned that Japan retain a relatively free hand to pursue commercial relations with China, which he was certain would eventually wean itself from Soviet influence. Later in his life, Yoshida expressed regret that Article 9 had become an excuse for Japanese passivity, including for banning collective defense efforts with the United States beyond the narrow purpose of defending Japan.

With the end of the Cold War, Japan's elite was again forced to adjust to a new international order. After five decades of strong economic growth, the nation seemed to possess the tools necessary to enhance its own position while remaining aligned with the world's sole superpower. Much of Japan's elite subscribed to the famous assertion of former Deputy Finance Minister Eisuke Sakakibara that the Japanese economy had "surpassed capitalism" and that, accordingly, Tokyo would be able to shape its strategic environment from a position of leadership within Asia without having to remilitarize. Instead, the 1990s saw a Japan paralyzed by inaction during the Gulf War, bereft of a credible economic model after the collapse of the bubble, unable to use economic interdependence to shape China's rapidly expanding strategic reach, and threatened by a North Korea bent on developing nuclear weapons.