Japan as a “Normal Country”: Metamorphoses of Political Identity (Review and Analysis of Public Opinion Polls)

Abstract

The research was focused on the political identity dynamics of the Japanese people through their attitude towards specific political issues, concepts, and doctrines, through ideas about the role of their country in the world, their attitude to “constituent Others” and their military history, as well as the analysis of differences between identities at the macro and micro levels during the emergence of the official course towards transforming Japan into a “normal country”. The solution to this problem is relevant in regards to Russia building a constructive policy in relation to Japan. The article analyzes a series of special and longitudinal studies characterizing generational change over the past 20 years in order to determine how much Japanese political preferences have changed in reference points that reflect their political identity, and which of these points allow us to identify significant determinants. As a key determinant of these surveys, the authors selected the degree of stability of pacifist self-consciousness, while analyzing the cumulative effect of several major factors in the formation of pacifism as the core of Japanese political identity: a) the archetypal principle of harmony (wa), expressed in the tendency of the Japanese people to smoothen out potential conflicts and in the outstanding ability to adapt and to adopt, b) the long-term implications of the constructivist paradigm in political rhetoric concerning the problem of national security; c) the impact of pacifist cultural and political discourse; d) the victimization complex that has developed in the wake of the defeat; and e) the absence of a clear perception of military threat in the society. Together, they make us believe that pacifist self-identification has a large margin of stability, and speak to the bifurcation of the current political identity of the Japanese people, which is experiencing a multi-vector pressure of the ‘power’ strategy of political realism and value-oriented approaches of constructivism. The authors identify the main directions of stratification of the political identity of Japanese society, point to some emerging trends in the realm of ideas on security policy, draw conclusions about the real place and influence of reflection on the Russian-Japanese territorial issue in the structure of Japanese political identity.