Japan's Comprehensive Security Policy: A New East Asian Environment

Identity Theory and Foreign Policy: Explaining Japan’s Responses to the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 U.S. War in Iraq

“…Since the end of World War II, scholars of political science and international relations have been fascinated by Japan’s “identity.” Japan has been, for example, a “reactive state” content to assume a passive, low‐profile, chiefly economic role in world affairs, eschewing the use of military force as an instrument of state policy and relying on the United States for its security (Calder 1988; Yasutomo 1995); a “rising state” no longer content to let the United States dictate its foreign policy and more inclined to take on a proactive international role (Akaha 1991); and a “defensive state” pursuing a “low‐cost, low‐risk, benefit‐maximizing strategy” in pursuit of its national interests (Pharr 1993).…”

The Protection and Promotion of Human Security in East Asia

“…In the early 1980s, Japan adopted a ' comprehensive security' policy under the direction of Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki. Comprehensive security not only looked beyond the traditional security elements of individual self-defense by focusing on regional and global security arrangements but also stressed the need to take into account other aspects vital to national stability, such as food, energy, environment, communication, and social security, as well as emphasizing collective security institutions (Akaha, 1991;Radtke and Feddema, 2000). NTS agendas are now in vogue in other parts of the world and are often termed 'new security challenges'.…”

“…Comprehensive security not only looked beyond the traditional security elements of individual self-defense by focusing on regional and global security arrangements but also stressed the need to take into account other aspects vital to national stability such as food, energy, environment, communication, and social security (Akaha, 1991;Radtke and Feddema, 2000). It was an explicitly inclusive approach that emphasized multilateralism, and the concept as such can be traced to Japanese thinking on security as far back as the fifties (Long, 1999).…”

Temporality, Civic Engagement, and Alterity

“…78 As Japan became the world's largest ODA donor in 1989 ($8.97 billion), opinion polls recorded an all-time high of 81 percent of Japanese supporting Japan's ODA programme, 79 with only 1.2 percent indicating opposition to it. 80 With a predominantly Asia focus (not without criticism for the tied aid component of it), the Indian subcontinent has emerged as the largest recipient of Japan's developmental aid. With close to 35 percent of India's population living in poverty in 2006 (defined as earning a dollar a day), Japan's ODA to India exceeded 15 billion yen that year, much of it directed to ameliorating poverty and developing ''human security'' and economic growth.…”