Japanese Politics (Political Science)

This article addresses the question of how spatial difference manifests itself in International Relations discourses in an effort to theorize difference in international politics. In doing so, we focus on the concept of security in particular and demonstrate a paradox in its conceptualization. Despite the aspiration to capture global diversity, contemporary security discourses largely leave out the moment of subjectification in knowledge-construction. Rather, a form of subjectivity construction is promoted in these discourses, which is reliant on the other. In contrast, this article considers the unsynthesizable cognitive void between the self and the other through the work of the Japanese political scientist Maruyama Masao and his basso ostinato concept. By drafting it as a heuristic device to avoid the potential of determinism for which basso ostinato was criticized, we apply it to the concept of comprehensive security with the intention to demonstrate that ostensibly similar concepts can have different meanings in different times and spaces. In doing so, we aim to transcend the resulting misunderstandings that obstruct International Relations scholarship from contributing to what Amitav Acharya calls ‘Global IR’.

In an ever more globalized world, sustainable global development requires effective intercultural co-operations. This dialogue between non-western and western cultures is essential to identifying global solutions for global socio-political challenges.
Japan and International Relations, critiques the formation of non-western IR by assessing Japanese political concepts to contemporary International Relations discourses, to better understand knowledge exchanges in intercultural contexts. Each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of this dialogue, from international law and nationalism to concepts of peace and Daoism, this collection grapples with postcolonial questions of Japan’s indigenous IR theory.

Japan as Potential: Communicating across Boundaries for a Global International Relations: An Introduction, Felix Rösch and Atsuko Watanabe / Part I: Challenging International Law and towards a Global IR? Investigations into Japan’s Entry into the Westphalian System of Nation-States / Chapter 1. How Did Two Daos Perceive the International Differently? Atsuko Watanabe and Ariel Shangguan / Chapter 2. Japan's Early Challenge to Eurocentrism and the World Court, Tetsuya Toyoda / Chapter 3. Kōtarō Tanaka (1890-1974) and Global International Relations, Kevin M Doak / Part II. Empire-Building or in Search for Global Peace? Japanese Political Thought’s Encounter with the West / Chapter 4. Unlearning Asia: Fukuzawa’s Un-regionalism in the Late Nineteenth Century, Atsuko Watanabe / Chapter 5. Pursuing a More Dynamic Concept of Peace: Japanese Liberal Intellectuals' Responses to the Interwar Crisis, Seiko Mimaki / Chapter 6. Rethinking the Liberal/Pluralist Vision of Japan’s Colonial Studies, Ryoko Nakano / Part III. Local(ized) Japanese Political Concepts for a Twenty-First Century IR / Chapter 7. Who are the People? A History of Discourses on Political Collective Subjectivity in Post-War Japan, Eiji Oguma / Chapter 8. Amae as Emotional Interdependence: Analyzing Japan’s Nuclear Policy and US-Japan Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, Misato Matsuoka / Chapter 9. The Pitfalls in the Project of Overcoming Western Modernity: Rethinking the Lineage of the Japanese Historical Revisionism, Hiroyuki Tosa / Part IV. Forming an Imagined Community, yet Reaching People Globally? Japanese Popular Culture in Historical Perspective / Chapter 10. From Failure to Fame: Shōin Yoshida’s Shifting Role in the Mythology of Modern Japan, Sean O’Reilly / Chapter 11. Hayao Miyazaki as a Political Thinker: Culture, Soft Power, and Traditionalism beyond Nationalism, Kosuke Shimizu / Chapter 12. Who’s the Egg? Who’s the Wall? – Appropriating Haruki Murakami’s ‘Always on the Side of the Egg’ Speech in Hong Kong, Michael Tsang / Conclusion: Is there any Japanese International Relations Theory? Atsuko Watanabe and Felix Rösch /

Opening innovative ways to rethink global politics through the lens of Japanese political theory, this book explores the implications arising from the classic twin IR banners of anarchy and sovereignty, and instead focuses on the notions of difference and dialogue in order to elucidate the value-added of a global IR. It combines Japanese political thought and International Relations theory in a fresh and stimulating way, taking its cues from a close reading of historical and legal, as well as popular cultural sources. To this end, Rösch and Watanabe have succeeded in bringing together the best possible team of scholars in the fields of international law, international political theory and Japanese political theory, in particular from within Japan, but also from the anglophone world. The quality of this coherently structured volume is outstanding. It is a must read both in IR and political theory, as it has something to offer for different audiences: experts on Japanese external relations and readers interested in theories of IR, as well as those looking for novel sources on philosophical and anthropological thought on the contested notion of the global. This is scholarship of the finest kind!

Dirk Nabers, Professor for International Political Sociology, University of Kiel

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This book aims to overcome a difficulty that International Relations, the most international, but not necessarily global social science, is facing: by viewing Japan as ‘a potential’, it tries to put a global International Relations into practice. While this book looks at modern Japanese thought from an encompassing perspective, the chapters are surprisingly consistent in their concerted effort to elicit global implications from this local perspective. Dedicated students who are striving for going beyond conventional research and education will profit from reading this book. 

Shigeto Sonoda, Professor of Sociology, University of Tokyo

This book approaches the concept of tenkō (political conversion) as a response to the global crisis of interwar modernity, as opposed to a distinctly Japanese experience in postwar debates.

Tenkō connotes the expressions of ideological conversion performed by members of the Japanese Communist Party, starting in 1933, whereby they renounced Marxism and expressed support for Japan’s imperial expansion on the continent. Although tenkō has a significant presence in Japan’s postwar intellectual and literary histories, this multi-authored volume is one of the first in English-language scholarship to approach the phenomenon. International perspectives from both established and early career scholars show tenkō as inseparable from the global politics of empire, deeply marked by an age of mechanical reproduction, mediatization and the manipulation of language. Chapters draw on a wide range of interdisciplinary methodologies, from political theory and intellectual history to literary studies. In this way, tenkō is explored through new conceptual and analytical frameworks, including questions of gender and the role of affect in politics, implications that render the phenomenon distinctly relevant to the contemporary moment.

Tenkō: Cultures of Political Conversion in Transwar Japan will prove a valuable resource to students and scholars of Japanese and East Asian history, literature and politics.