Deconstructing the ‘Yoshida Doctrine’

Abstract

There is a consensus that the post-war Japanese foreign policy is based on the Yoshida Doctrine or Yoshida Line, which refers to the strategies of former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, who relied upon US military security, and maintained limited defense forces while focusing on economic recovery and growth. This paper reconsidered the Yoshida Doctrine, referencing multiple related arguments and evidence, reaching a conclusion that post-war Japanese foreign policy should not be called the Yoshida Doctrine or Yoshida Line. The Yoshida Doctrine is an analytical concept created by researchers in the 1980s to justify Japanese foreign policy. This was done in response to the domestic and foreign criticism of low-level military spending, despite the flourishing economy. The Yoshida Doctrine differs from other foreign policy doctrines and has no merit for being called a doctrine. Furthermore, the ideas supporting this doctrine are not based on definitive proof; rather, they merely represent Yoshida's image, and a spurious correlation, drawn between limited defense spending and high-economic growth. The analysis carried out in this study reveals that the Yoshida Doctrine is fundamentally flawed. As a result, this study insists that it is necessary to abandon the Yoshida Doctrine as a base for future research on Japanese diplomacy.

Pursuit of Autonomy: An Assessment of Japan’s Latent Counterspace Capabilities

“…The 1954 Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement further formalised the United States’ responsibility to protect Japan, a promise made in exchange for allowing the former to establish permanent military bases on Japanese territory (Teslik, 2006). Reliance on the United States for security further allowed it to concentrate on post-War economic recovery (Hoshiro, 2022). The idea served as the cornerstone of the Yoshida Doctrine (after the approach pioneered by former PM Shigeru Yoshida in the 1950s) which has been widely perceived as the fundamental guiding principle of Japan’s post-War foreign policy.…”