Civilizations in World Politics by Katzenstein Peter J.;Peter J. Katzenstein;

Author:Katzenstein, Peter J.;Peter J. Katzenstein; [Katzenstein, Peter J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Japanese civilization in Asia

Before the Middle East mission articulated a vision of Japan’s special role in the Arab world, most observers focused on the shape of Japanese connections to the Pacific Rim. In an essay in a popular and well-received volume published during the heyday of concerns about Japan’s growing clout in the Bubble era, Shafiqul Islam wrote that the “growing Japanese economic presence in East Asia is fueling the perception that since the 1980s Japan has begun to do with peaceful economic means what it could not do by violent military means in the 1930s” (Islam 1993: 352). This oft-repeated view was more of an absent-minded shorthand in diplomatic and political economic circles than a carefully considered statement about Japanese diplomacy and economic activity in the years following the Plaza Accord. After all, despite the connections to Japan’s prewar fascist regime among the leadership of its postwar Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and however unsettling Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro’s occasional forays into racial theorizing,2 it would be hard to suggest that the Japan of 1988 was really no different from that of 1945, except for its choice of weapons. But, still, the shorthand persisted.

Islam was merely referring to the perception, not espousing it himself; he ultimately argued that Japan’s economic behavior in the 1980s was unexceptional, aimed by different actors as a rational way to maximize economic and diplomatic benefits while minimizing costs. But his references to the then popular but now moribund notion of “Japan Inc.” remind us of one of the key stories about Japan that emerged during the spectacular transformation of its international image, from timid American ally to a voluble and even menacing global presence. Japan had, in this popular version, learned methodological lessons in World War II, but had not really changed its goals. Military means for regional domination had failed, but economic tools might carry the day, through the conquering of foreign import markets and the rapid spread of Japanese capital around the Asia-Pacific. In this version, other postwar transformations – the consolidation of democratic institutions, the development of large-scale and sometimes combative social movements, the spread of wealth across a broad (but not as broad as often described) middle class – were rendered less important than the idea of some kind of durable Japanese drive for power, one seemingly determined less by the agency of individual actors, or by the structure of the regional state system, than by an unspoken but collective will. For American and European exporters, mid-level local managers in Japanese-owned businesses in Asia, and pundits concerned about the potential decline of American primacy in the face of this Asian challenge, the notion of Japan Inc. or of a Japanese “system” (see van Wolferen 1990), one that could replace the seemingly inapt use of the simple idea of a “state,” helped to explain the otherwise inexplicable replacement of American power by a country without an overseas military presence or a visibly strategy-minded leader.

This perception was very much of its era, and

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