The Face of Another
Glenn Kembrey explores the different faces of Japanese power.
Edith Cresson, a French Prime Minister in the early 1990s, once described the Japanese as “yellow ants trying to take over the world”. From her perspective, Japanese people were “little yellow men” who “stay up all night thinking about ways to screw the Americans and Europeans”. Racism aside, the comment reveals the different faces of power involved in international politics since the end of the Cold War. How is it that Japan, a nation that has constitutionally renounced the use of force as a sovereign right, was feared for its potential to dominate the world stage?
Japan’s Challenge to Classical Realism
Classical realist theorists such as Hans Morgenthau and John Mearsheimer would have informed Madame Cresson that the only way of “taking over the world” is through the development of hard power or military muscle. In his thesis on international relations, Morgenthau states: “in international politics, armed strength is the most important material factor making for the political power of the nation.”
Moreover, realists maintain that power is fungible. Consequently, it should have been only a matter of time before Japanese leaders woke up to the reality of thousands of years of Western theory on international affairs – stretching back to Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue – and promptly converted their country’s economic and technological superiority into military might.
Why did Japan fail to live up to realist expectations of how a global power should act, and what does this reveal about the “new face of power” in international politics? There are two important factors that help to explain why Japan has bucked the realist trend of turning money into muscle. First, Article 9 in the Constitution, imposed on Japan during the U.S. occupation, creates entrenched legal barriers to the re-militarisation of Japan.
Second, the Japanese public has a widespread normative commitment to a pacifist foreign policy, which is partially attributable to the collective memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese experience therefore demonstrates that a state’s foreign policy on an international level can be constrained by domestic factors such as law and public opinion.
Economic Expansion
But the origins of Madame Cresson’s comments remain to be explained. Specifically, she was articulating France’s concern about the dominance of the Japanese car manufacturing industry during the Japanese ‘bubble’, which threatened European manufacturing firms. More broadly, the comments indicate a general fear of Japanese economic influence. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Japanese companies used their commanding position in global financial markets to drive a financial stake into the cultural icons of the West; for example, Sony purchased CBS Records, and Columbia Pictures shortly thereafter.
Japanese soft power operates by virtue of Japan’s status as the first non-Western state to achieve (and surpass) Western levels of industrialisation and prosperity.
However, Japanese expansion is more usefully conceived as an opportunity rather than a threat. In a 2009 report to the Australian Government agency Austrade, Peter Drysdale noted: “The Japanese market is no longer confined to Japan itself. It is a huge international market generated by the activities of Japanese business and investors, especially via production networks in Asia.” As Drysdale argues, Australian firms have the opportunity to integrate with Japanese supply chains and business networks in Asia.
Soft Power
Japan has also sought to compliment its economic expansion with a healthy dose of soft power. Joseph Nye, a professor at Harvard University, defines soft power as “attractive power” wielded with the intention of “getting others to want the outcomes you want”. There are two essential ingredients to soft power: an ability to attract others and the exploitation of this attraction to support broader objectives.
Clearly, the Japanese charm offensive and promotion of “Cool Japan” satisfies the first criterion of Nye’s definition of “soft power”. Throughout Asia, as well as in the United States, Europe and Australia, Japanese popular culture industries – such as manga, anime, J-dramas and J-pop – are flourishing, offering the only serious global challenge to the dominance of American popular culture. In April 2009, as part of a 15 trillion yen stimulus package, the Japanese government announced plans to increase its exports of “soft power” industries from two per cent of total exports to 18 per cent over the next decade, creating half a million jobs along the way. The spread of Japanese soft power abroad is a product of both state and private sector initiatives.
However, the notion of foreigners eating sumo-size servings of sushi while singing J-pop in karaoke bars around the world does not in itself achieve the political ends desired as a result of employing soft power, which is at the heart of Nye’s goal-oriented concept. After all, as Nye states, “soft power rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others”. Whilst manga may help kick-start the Japanese economy, is it useful in achieving political goals in the international arena?
To some extent, Japanese soft power operates by virtue of Japan’s status as the first non-Western state to achieve (and surpass) Western levels of industrialisation and prosperity. Ezra Vogel, the author of Japan as Number One, considers Japan to be a model of industrial development for the “four little dragons” of East Asia: Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea. In all of these places, Japanese popular culture and language study continue to boom.
Despite the lack of a standing army since World War II, Japan has had a strong international presence on questions of trade, finance, the environment and culture.
Throughout the 1990s, Japan was also the world’s largest provider of Official Development Assistance (ODA), most of which targeted East and Southeast Asia. Developing countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia, to which Japan remains the top bilateral donor, have invited Japanese policy experts from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to share Japanese secrets of how to industrialise without compromising cultural and ecological integrity: both cherished Japanese values. All of this has provided both political stability and further investment opportunities for Japan in Asia.
Japan has historically offered an alternative paradigm to that of the West for development assistance. Bill Pritchard, Chief Investigator of the Building Institutional Capacity in Asia Project, has observed that Japanese advocacy of ‘untied’ infrastructure-based funding is in contrast to Western ODA, which uses loans that are ‘tied’ to social and educational goals. Untied loans allow developing countries to select their own national priorities, as Japan did during its own industrialisation.
However, generous ODA funding and popular culture is of little use to Japan in defending its national security in the sometimes-volatile East Asian region. Japan has unresolved territorial disputes with both China and Russia. The series of missiles shot by North Korea over the Tohoku region of Japan in April 2009 led some to call for the development of conventional capabilities that would enable Japan to pre-emptively strike North Korean launchers. It is also possible that the weakness of Japanese hard power may undermine the effectiveness of its soft power.
The Future of Japanese Power
On 30 August 2009, Yukio Hatoyama’s centre-left DPJ trounced the incumbent Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The victory signals an end to 54 years of mostly uninterrupted LDP power. During the election, the DPJ mainly campaigned on domestic issues. Consequently, the significance of the DPJ’s election for Japanese foreign policy remains unclear.
However, the DPJ has signalled that it intends to forge a more equitable relationship with the United States; for example, by refusing to provide logistical support to American global military ‘adventures’ that lack UN backing. Ichiro Ozawa, the DPJ’s Secretary General and former leader, has pushed for Japan to become a “normal country” by revision of Article 9 of its Constitution, which prohibits an act of war by the state. Ozawa and others have argued that this would end “the politics of indecision”.
Since being elected, Hatoyama has promised that Japan, responsible for seven per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, will aim for a 25 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions, compared with 1990 levels, by 2020. This announcement sets the stage for Japan, the producer of the world’s leading environmental technologies such as advanced solar panels and hybrid cars, to play a leading role in the international climate change negotiations to be held in Copenhagen in December 2010.
Hatoyama’s foreign policy will focus on Japan’s role in East Asia. The DPJ has called for the creation of a regional cooperative institution in the Asia-Pacific, predicated on the denuclearisation of East Asia. The creation of a regional currency similar to the Euro has also been considered as another possible long-term goal of the DPJ, which would further bind China into regional institutions.
With the economic rise of China and India, and the relative decline in U.S. influence in the wake of the global economic crisis, Asia is looking increasingly multi-polar. Professor Yoshihide Soeya of Keio University has argued that, due to its small population and lack of natural resources, Japan should be content with the status of “middle power”. From this viewpoint, rather than becoming preoccupied with the potential threat of Chinese military modernisation, Japan should work with the U.S. as well as Australia – another “middle power” – to develop plans for coping with the economic and environmental consequences of Chinese and Indian development. A similar path was proposed by Malcolm Cook and Andrew Shearer in the 2009 report Going Global: A New Australia-Japan Agenda for Multilateral Cooperation for the Lowy Institute.
Today, Madame Cresson may be more fearful of Chinese business “ants”, rather than the Japanese variant. But her original comments on Japan were significant. Despite the lack of a standing army since World War II, Japan has had a strong international presence on questions of trade, finance, the environment and culture. As the Obama Administration moves in the direction of multilateralism, and the election of the DPJ provides an opportunity for political renewal, space exists for Japan to clarify its role in the world as a “middle power”. The way in which Japan chooses to do so will most likely involve a combination of economic and foreign policy reforms: clearly illustrating the multi-faceted nature of power in international politics.
