Rewrite this paragraph addressing direct quotes (copy-paste) from the following source:

Soft and Hard Balancing
Japan's response to China's rise has included various soft balancing measures, such as economic partnerships and diplomatic initiatives. However, these efforts have yielded mixed results. Japan's attempts at "soft containment" have had limited success in impeding China's regional dominance. Consequently, Japan has also explored more robust hard balancing options. This shift is evident in the establishment of the National Security Council in 2013 and the subsequent decision to enable the exercise of collective self-defense. This development marks a significant departure from Japan's post-war pacifism, reflecting a more assertive security posture in response to China's maritime activities and regional ambitions​


source:

Article
Japan’s ‘Resentful Realism’ and Balancing
China’s Rise
Christopher W. Hughes†,*
†
Christopher W. Hughes is Professor of International Politics and Japanese Studies at the
Department of Politics and International Studies, the University of Warwick.
*Corressponding author. Email: <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_EMAIL_ADDRESS>.
Abstract
Japan has long been regarded by mainstream International Relations theories as a
status quo power intent on pursuing an immobilist international strategy towards
China characterized by hedging rather than any move to active balancing. The article
argues that the conditions that are thought to encourage hedging behaviour—the
predictability of other states’ intentions, the malleability of intentions through
engagement, domestic preferences that obviate balancing, and a favourable
offence–defence balance—are now deteriorating in the case of Japan’s strategy towards China. The consequence is that evidence is mounting of Japan’s shift towards
active ‘soft’ and incipient ‘hard’ balancing of China through a policy of active ‘encirclement’ of China diplomatically, the build-up of Japanese national military capabilities aimed to counter China’s access denial and power projection, and the
strengthening of the US–Japan alliance. This shift has become particularly evident
since the 2010 trawler incident, and the return to power in 2012 of Prime Minister
Abe Shinzo. The consequences of Japan’s shifting strategy are not yet clear. Japan 
may be moving towards a form of ‘Resentful Realism’ that does not add new equilibrium to regional security but is actually more destabilizing and poses risks for China
and the USA, especially as Japan’s own security intentions become more opaque.
These conclusions, in turn, invite a reconsideration of the comfortable theoretical
consensus on Japan as an eternal status quo power.
Japan an Incipient Balancer vis-a-vis China’s Rise? 
Might Japan’s international strategy shift radically, or indeed is it already beginning a radical shift in response to China’s rise? How might such a shift exert impact, long-term, on
Sino–Japanese security relations, and US-led attempts to ‘rebalance’ the regional security
order? Might Japanese ‘Revisionist’ governments even actively and overtly balance against
China? Japan clearly maintains a fundamental interest in the rise of China, possible associated disturbances in the overall international system and East Asian regional order and,
VC The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Institute of Modern International Relations,
Tsinghua University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_EMAIL_ADDRESS>.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, 109–150
doi: 10.1093/cjip/pow004
Advance Access Publication Date: 28 April 2016
Article
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
most especially, the prospect of US unipolarity being displaced by a new multipolarity, or
even China’s eventual challenge for hegemonic dominance.1
Japan’s vital interest in these developments is, of course, intensified all the more by its
close geographical proximity to China, and interdependence of political, economic, and security interests; and by its position in the post-war period as essentially a status quo power
supportive of the continuation of the US-led international order, and bound to the US by an
ever-deepening alliance relationship. The expectation should be that any shifts in the USled international and regional systems in which Japan has been so firmly embedded, and as
precipitated by China, should pose questions about the precipitation of a similar counterreaction from Japan. The more radical the impact of China on the regional order, the more
proportionately radical Japan’s response might be. Japan may choose to channel its response via the US–Japan alliance, and this may bolster the US security presence in the AsiaPacific. Alternatively, if Chinese hegemony is truly perceived as on the cards, then this
might be considered as necessitating Japan’s initiation of a counter-hegemonic strategy, either in conjunction with or separate from the USA—all with potential ramifications for
stability as the two largest East Asian states contend over the shape of the regional security
order.
Thus far, however, Japan’s reaction to China’s rise has been regarded—so the public argument goes for the majority of Japanese and US policymakers and commentators—as
highly restrained, and as demonstrating no fundamental change in Japanese international
strategy.2 Japanese policymakers, such as current Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, even as they 
work to revise national security strategies and military capabilities to guard against China’s
rise—most notably the Abe government’s passing in September 2015 of extensive legislation to overturn the 60-year-old ban on the exercise of collective self-defence to expand the
range of military support for the US–Japan alliance—utilize language to describe such strategy as a ‘Proactive Contribution to Peace’ (sekkyoku-teki heiwashugi), so to stress essential
continuity with the demilitarized post-war past rather than change.
1 For an excellent overview of the arguments on China’s rise and the prospects for the displacement of US hegemony, see Thomas J. Christensen, The China Challenge: Shaping the
Choices of a Rising Power (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2015), pp. 63–94.
2 Reinhard Drifte, Japan’s Security Relations with China Since 1989: From Balancing to
Bandwagoning? (London: Routledge, 2003); Mike M. Mochizuki, ‘China-Japan Relations:
Downward Spiral or a New Equilibrium?’, in David Shambaugh, ed., Power Shift: China and
Asia’s New Dynamics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 135–50; David C.
Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2007), pp. 154–82, 199; James Manicom and Andrew O’Neil, ‘Sino-Japanese Strategic
Relations: Will Rivalry Lead to Confrontation?’, Australian Journal of International Affairs,
Vol. 63, No. 2 (2009), pp. 213–32; Yoshihide Soeya, ‘A “Normal” Middle Power: Interpreting
Changes in Japanese Security Policy in the 1990s and After’, in Yoshihide Soeya, Masayuki
Tadakoro, and David A. Welch, eds., Japan As A ‘Normal’ Country? A Nation in Search of its
Place in the World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), pp. 72–97; Aaron L. Friedberg,
A Contest for Supremacy: China, America and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York:
W. W. Norton and Company, 2011), pp. 211–13; Linus Hagstro¨m, ‘Rethinking Japan’s China
Policy: Japan as an Accommodator in the Rise of China, 1978-2011’, Journal of East Asian
Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2012), pp. 215–50.
110 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
Abe has argued in National Diet policy speeches that ‘the peaceful rise of China offers
a great opportunity for Japan as well as for the international community. Under the principle of a “Mutually Beneficial Relationship Based on Common Strategic Interests” (senryaku-teki gokei kankei), we will further strengthen the trend of improving relations’.3
Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) maintains the official position that, despite
various bilateral ‘differences’, especially over territorial and maritime security, ‘Stable
Japan-China relations are essential not only to the citizens of both countries, but also to
the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region as whole. Accordingly, based on the concept of the “Mutually Beneficial Relationship Based on Common Strategic Interests”, the
Government of Japan will promote the development of Japan-China relations from a
broad perspective through continued dialogues and cooperation at various levels.’4
Japan’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) of 2013 stressed that, even in response to
China’s perceived attempts to change the status quo by coercion in the East and South
China Seas, ‘Japan will urge China to exercise self-restraint and will continue to respond
firmly but in a calm manner without escalation’, so claiming that it would not be the
power to break the status quo.5 Meanwhile, US–Japan alliance managers and insiders
flatly reiterate the mantra that Japan remains a disciplined partner in any hedging strategy towards China.6
From the perspective of Neo-realism, many analysts agree that Japan has so far failed to
react to the changing international structure or to display either significant balancing, or
less probable bandwagoning behaviour, vis-a-vis China’s rise. Japan’s apparent lack of a
balancing impulse appears to defy the conventional Neo-realist predictions of state behaviour and to continue to fulfil its characterization as a ‘structural anomaly’.7 In the absence
of a compelling Neo-realist analysis, in recent years much explanation of Japan’s international relations has lapsed into Constructivist perspectives, which stress the primacy of
deep-rooted domestic anti-militaristic norms and principles over international structural
pressures.8 For the Constructivist take on Japan, therefore, the emphasis has been on continuity and stasis in Japan’s international strategy, to the point where its security policy is
3 Prime Minister of Japan, ‘Policy Speech by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the 190th Session
of the Diet’, 22 January, 2016, http://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/statement/201601/1215627_
10999.html.
4 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, Diplomatic Bluebook 2015 (Tokyo: Ministry of Foreign
Affairs Japan, 2015), p. 52.
5 Cabinet Office Japan, National Security Strategy, 17 December, 2013, http://www.cas.go.jp/
jp/siryou/131217anzenhoshou/nss-e.pdf, p. 25.
6 Richard L. Armitage and Joseph S. Nye, The US-Japan Alliance: Anchoring Stability in Asia
(Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2012), http://csis.org/files/
publication/120810_Armitage_USJapanAlliance_Web.pdf, pp. 8–10.
7 Kenneth A. Waltz, ‘The Emerging Structure of International Politics’, International Security,
Vol. 18, No. 2 (1993), pp. 44–79.
8 Peter J. Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara, ‘Japan’s National Security: Structures, Norms, and
Policies’, International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1993), pp. 84–118; Thomas U. Berger, Cultures
of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1998); Andrew L. Oros, Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity, and the
Evolution of Security Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 111
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
claimed as akin to an ‘immovable object’.9 Meanwhile, although Neo-liberal
Institutionalism has been more marginal as a distinct perspective applied to Japan, especially given the dominance of Constructivism and its ‘positive’ norms of anti-militarism
that offer crossover with key tenets of Liberalism-type outcomes, it too has emphasized
continuity in Japanese international strategy, or ‘Cautious Liberalism’, marked again by a
lack of impulse to pursue balancing.10
In the midst of this Constructivist stranglehold on the study of Japan’s international and
security orientation, the best traction Neo-realism and its variants has been able to gain on
the debate has been to introduce explanations that essentially corroborate the consensus on
Japan’s lack of propensity to diverge from its post-war security stance and to avoid active
balancing. Japan has been evaluated as pursuing various ‘Realist’-oriented strategies to respond to China’s rise, such as a Japanese-specific variant of ‘Defensive Realism’, which sees
Japan concentrating on ‘homeland defence’ through the acquisition of ‘defensive’ weaponry
and the eschewing of broader international security objectives outside its own territory that
would involve influencing the balance of power.11 Japan has also been categorized as pursuing a ‘buck-passing’ strategy and essentially passive reliance on the USA to cope with
China’s rise.12
More prevalently, Japan has been perceived as moving towards a strategy of ‘Reluctant
Realism’, with a gradualistic propensity to work with its US ally to meet common security
challenges.13 ‘Reluctant Realism’ is the view that perhaps edges closest to suggesting that
Japan might cautiously consider balancing China, but in all these variants of Neo-realism/
Realism, Japan is regarded as largely passive in responding to China’s rise, and likely to balance solely via the mechanism of the US–Japan alliance and never individually. In fact,
most Neo-realist/Realist views settle on the argument that at the very most Japan is set to
hedge rather than balance against China’s rise, or in one important formulation to practice
‘cooperative engagement with a soft hedge’.14
9 Richard H. Friman, Peter J. Katzenstein, David Leheny, and Nobuo Okawara, ‘Immovable
Object? Japan’s Security Policy in East Asia’, in Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi,
eds., Beyond Japan: The Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2006), pp. 85–107.
10 Thomas U. Berger, ‘Japan’s International Relations: The Political and Security Dimensions’,
in Samuel S. Kim, ed., The International Relations of Northeast Asia (New York: Rowman
and Littlefield, 2004), pp. 101–34.
11 Paul Midford, Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism?
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).
12 Jennifer Lind, ‘Pacifism or Passing the Buck? Testing Theories of Japanese Security
Policy’, International Security, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2004), pp. 92–121.
13 Michael Jonathan Green, ‘Managing Chinese Power: The View from Japan’, in Alastair Iain
Johnson and Robert S. Ross, eds., Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power
(London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 159–72; Michael J. Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism: Foreign
Policy Challenges in an Era of Uncertain Power (New York: Palgrave, 2001).
14 Mike M. Mochizuki, ‘Japan’s Shifting Strategy Toward the Rise of China’, Journal of
Strategic Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4–5 (2007), pp. 739–76; Evelyn Goh, ‘How Japan Matters in the
Evolving East Asian Security Order’, International Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 4 (2011), pp. 895–96;
Michael J. Green, ‘Japan, India and the Strategic Triangle with China’, in Ashley J. Tellis,
112 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
The somewhat curious implicit consensus among the supposedly contending perspectives of Neo-realism, Constructivism, and Liberalism that Japan has been, continues to be,
and will likely remain, highly restrained in responding to China’s rise might seem to render
redundant any further discussion of a possibly more radical Japanese reaction, including
the impulse to balance more actively. Japan’s ‘Yoshida Doctrine’—classically formulated as
a concentration on economic engagement, an ‘exclusively defence-oriented’ security posture, and reliance on the shield of US hegemony—would appear to be a highly entrenched
grand strategy for Japanese policymakers.15
But in spite of the need to recognize the inevitable continuities and inertia in the pursuit
of any grand strategy, alternative analyses have in recent years pointed to the signs that
Japan is capable of, and is actually embarking on, a trajectory of radical change in its international strategy, even though this is occurring in such incremental steps as to be almost
imperceptible at times to paradigms that tend to search for more dramatic shifts. Japan’s
ever-growing flirtation since the early 2000s with ‘Revisionist’ Liberal Democratic Party
(LDP) regimes, and to boot a brief-lived Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) regime, with
strong emphases on national defence reform and breaching past anti-militaristic principles
to achieve a ‘normal’ security role (or, more straightforwardly put, remilitarization of security policy) coupled with ever-intensifying and seemingly intractable security frictions
with China, obliges even the most diehard of Constructivists and Liberals to take stock of
whether their status quo perspectives can still be reconciled with these increasingly dynamic
and long-term developments.16 Most particularly, the advent since 2012 of Abe Shinzo’s 
arch-revisionist LDP administration and its systematic dismantlement of the post-war constraints on Japan’s exercise of military power—including the 2015 breach of the ban on the
exercise of collective self-defence, in large part a direct reaction to Sino–Japanese tensions
over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and maritime security—indicates a Japanese propensity to search for a new grand strategy, including the turning point of an incipient shift
to balancing behaviour against China.
In turn, even if Constructivism and Liberalism have been slow to recognize and account
for these developments, the changing security dynamics within and surrounding Japan have
opened up space for Neo-realist analysis to consider whether its estimations of a restrained
Japanese response to China’s rise also remain accurate, and if a shift to balancing might be
increasingly apropos to this perspective’s basic assumptions about state behaviour in a
more fluid international system. Neo-realist-oriented analyses have thus recently begun to
appear which venture to argue that Japan is inching towards balancing against the rise of
Travis Tanner and Jessica Keough, eds., Strategic Asia 2011-12: Asia Responds to its Rising
Powers (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2011), pp. 131–59.
15 Sun-Ki Chai, ‘Entrenching the Yoshida Doctrine: Three Techniques for Institutionalization’,
International Organization, Vol. 51, No. 3 (1997), pp. 389–412; Richard J. Samuels,
Machiavelli’s Children: Leaders and their Legacies in Italy and Japan (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2003), pp. 200–11.
16 Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Reemergence as a ‘Normal’ Military Power (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004); Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Remilitarisation (London:
Routledge, 2009); Jeffrey Hornung, ‘With a Left Like This, Who Needs the Right?’, Japan
Chair Platform, 11 February, 2011, http://csis.org/files/publication/110211_Hornung.pdf.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 113
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
China.17 Nonetheless, it is perhaps fair to say that these analyses remain on the margins of
the debate and have yet to decisively challenge the mainstream Neo-realism–
Constructivism–Liberalism consensus on Japan’s lack of propensity to balance China.
They are perhaps hampered in this effort by the tendency to observe the first symptoms of
balancing behaviour in terms of the build-up of diplomatic and military activities and capabilities, but are then less able to follow through with focus and precision on explaining why and
when this behaviour may actually occur, so depriving their analysis of the theoretical and empirical impetus necessary to overturn the default status quo view that very much focuses on
why change is improbable. The result is that, despite there being pressing theoretical and empirical indicators suggesting the necessity, avenues for investigation, and the feasibility of
such an exercise, there are still no sustained attempts in much of the Japan-centred debate to
break down the consensus over the essential immutability of Japan’s international strategy
and the apparent refusal to consider that it is shifting to balance China.18
The consequent objective of this article is to pick up on these emergent arguments that
test the current consensus and to engage squarely in an attempt to determine the likelihood
of Japan shifting to balance against China, and the consequences for Sino–Japanese
17 John J. Mearsheimer, ‘China’s Unpeaceful Rise’, Current History, Vol. 105, No. 690 (2006), pp.
160–62; Robert S. Ross, ‘Balance of Power Politics and the Rise of China: Accommodation
and Balancing in East Asia’, Security Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2010), pp. 387–89; Jae Ho
Chung, ‘East Asia Responds to the Rise of China: Patterns and Variations’, Pacific Affairs,
Vol. 82, No. 2 (2009), pp. 657–75; Derek McDougall, ‘Responses to “Rising China” in the East
Asia Region: Soft Balancing with Accommodation’, Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 21,
No. 73 (2012), pp. 8–9; Bjørn Elias Mikalsen Grønning, ‘Japan’s Shifting Military Priorities:
Counterbalancing China’s Rise’, Asian Security, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2014), pp. 1–21; Jeffrey W.
Hornung, ‘Japan’s Growing Hard Hedge Against China’, Asian Security, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2014),
pp. 97–122; Jeffrey W. Hornung, ‘Japan’s Pushback of China’, The Washington Quarterly,
Vol. 38, No. 1 (2015), pp. 167–83.
18 Japan’s shift to balance China has, though, been observed in Chinese academic literature.
For exmaples of recent analysis that argue Japan is beginning to compete against, balance
and even contain China, see Miao Ji and Li Fujian, ‘Zhanlue jieju yu zhanlue tiaoshi: Ri Ao
dui Zhongguo jueqi de fanying’ (‘Strategic Vigliance and Adaptation: Japan’s and Australia’s
Responses to the Rise of China’), Waijiao pinglun (Foreign Affairs Review), No. 1 (2014), pp.
70–89; Wang Shan, ‘Shipingxi Anbei zhengquan “baituo zhanhou tizhi” de waijiao jucuo’
(‘A Preliminary Review of the Abe Administration’s Diplomatic Initiatives to “Escape the
Postwar Regime” ’), Xiandai guoji guanxi (Contemporary International Relations), No. 9
(2013), pp. 39–43; Zhu Haiyan, ‘Ri Ao guanxi “tongmenghua” de xinfazhan jiqi qianjing’
(‘New Developments and the Prospect of “Alliance Orientation” in Japan-Australia
Relations’), Xiandai guoji guanxi (Contemporary International Relations), No. 8 (2014), pp.
44–51; Chen Xin, ‘Qianxi Anbei “zhanlue waijiao” ’ (‘A Brief Analysis of Abe’s “Strategic
Diplomacy” ’), Xiandai guoji guanxi (Contemporary International Relations), No. 9 (2014), pp.
15–22; Yang Guanghai, ‘Riben jieru nanhai zhengduan de xindongxiang ji xintedian’ (‘New
Directions and Features of Japan’s Intervention in the South China Sea Dispute’), Heping yu
fazhan (Peace and Development), No. 5 (2015), pp. 96–113; Shi Yongming, ‘Cong diqu zhixu
goujian kan Riben de xin anbao fa’an’ (‘Examining Japan’s New Security Legislation from
the Perspective of Regional Order Building’), Heping yu fazhan (Peace and Development),
No. 6 (2015), pp. 1–14.
114 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
relations, for Japan’s overall international strategy, and for East Asian security more
widely. The article asks whether it is now possible to credibly envisage, or indeed already
observe, a shift from a restrained hedging stance to one more approximating to soft-balancing and incipient ‘hard balancing’. More specifically, the article asks, by revisiting much of
the theoretical analysis concerning Japan to date, and in noting the difficulty of challenging
the consensus without greater precision on explaining how deviation from the status quo
will occur, whether it can be discerned under exactly what conditions, and when Japan is
likely to shift, or is already shifting, towards active balancing.
The article undertakes this project by considering four sets of key conditions found in
extant theory that indicate when a state which has traditionally not pursued balancing behaviour then begins to turn to this strategy. These are found in varieties of Neo-realism,
Neo-classical Realism, and to some extent Liberalism, and are, namely: the ability of states
to read accurately or otherwise the benign or malign strategic intentions of states that they
may then need to balance against; the faith of states in their capacity to mould the intentions of other states in a benign direction; assessments about the changing distribution of
offensive versus defensive capabilities that might induce balancing behaviour; and the transformation of the domestic policymaking process away from past tendencies to
‘underbalancing’.19
This reinvestigation of the existing orthodoxy on Japan’s restrained and hedging stance
towards China, and the concomitant propensity for Japanese balancing behaviour, is important in two main ways. First, determining if Japan is likely to move towards balancing,
and under what conditions and when, has significant policy implications for regional security. It may reveal the likely intensity of any Japanese balancing behaviour, and its impact on
Sino–Japanese security relations, as well as on US security strategy in the region and the
evolution of the overall regional security order. Japan’s repurposing of its strategy towards
China and subsequent own potential balancing strategy raises questions on the degree of its
conformity with the current US ‘rebalance’ strategy towards the Asia-Pacific. Conversely,
in looking to discover the underlying conditions that might precipitate Japanese balancing
of China, this investigation should reveal the causes of bilateral tensions and how these
might be mitigated or even averted.
Secondly, an attempt to investigate Japan’s propensity for change, characterized by incipient balancing behaviour, produces an important contribution to the theoretical debates
on Japanese international strategy. As already noted, the tendency of much scholarship on
Japan has been to emphasize stasis or general ‘immobilism’ in its security policy, but if the
ensuing article can reveal the conditions which will result, or have already resulted, in
Japan’s shifting from a hedging to a balancing stance, then this will oblige reconsideration
of the current Constructivist, Liberal, and Neo-realist interpretations which at times have
bordered on dogma in their holding to a picture of continuity and moderation in Japanese
security policy, even in the face of mounting signs of Japanese remilitarization.20
19 Randall L. Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
20 J. A. A. Stockwin, ‘Dynamic and Immobilist Aspects of Japanese politics’, in J. A. A.
Stockwin, Alan Rix, Aurelia George, James Horne, Daiichi Ito, and <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON>, eds,
Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan (London: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 1–21.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 115
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
The purpose of this article is certainly not to suggest that any of these perspectives is theoretically bankrupt, but more to argue for the need for ‘analytical eclecticism’.21 But it also
argues for an eclecticism or consensual approach that is not stuck in a rut of arguing for continuity when the evidence is patently increasing of change in Japan’s surrounding international structure and domestic policy processes that should generate change in its international
and security strategy. This is especially so when the logic of many of these perspectives’ own
assumptions indicates the conditions for, and thus is in conformity with, the evidence for the
possibility of Japan deviating from its post-war course of international strategy.
The broader conclusion this article drives towards in considering Japan’s propensity for
change in international strategy and a shift towards balancing behaviour is that Japan is
now adopting a posture which might be termed ‘Resentful Realism’, rather than the more
prevalent ‘Reluctant Realism’ model.22 Japan, in contrast to Reluctant Realism’s positing
of a restrained Japanese security stance closely and largely satisfactorily aligned with the
USA, is now flirting with a more unpredictable form of security policy. This Japanese security stance is driven predominantly by concerns about China’s rise, and will surely involve to
a great extent close alignment with US hedging and balancing strategies towards China.
Nonetheless, Japan’s ‘Resentful Realism’ is likely at the same time to be characterized by
heightened Japanese concerns vis-a-vis not just China but also the robustness of US security
guarantees, and especially entrapment and abandonment concerns.
The result is a Japan that will feel obliged to experiment with aspirations for greater
international autonomy, and fluctuate between hedging and hard balancing towards China.
All of this may make Japan not only a more ‘Realist’ power ready to balance, but also one
that is far less consistent in the execution of balancing strategies. In addition, Japan’s
‘Resentful Realism’ will differ from standard Realist balancing impulses because it is likely
to acquire a new unpredictability, given that it is more emotionally charged with
Revisionist sentiments that indeed resent dependence on the USA or surpassing by China as
detrimental to national morale, and producing in turn strong and uncertain counterreactions. Thus, contrary to the hopes of many in Japan and the USA that have advocated a
more ‘normal’ security policy, these changes will actually make Japan a destabilizing rather
than stabilizing presence in the regional security landscape. This can only further exacerbate the condition of already precarious Sino–Japanese security relations.
Explaining Impulses and Shifts Towards Balancing and Away from
Hedging
If many of the theories already currently applied to explaining Japan’s international strategy have concluded that it has adopted a restrained and hedging posture to eschew overt
balancing, it is a logical inverse corollary that these perspectives must provide insights into
the conditions and timing for both ceasing to hedge and pivoting towards a balancing
21 Peter J. Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara, ‘Japan, Asia-Pacific Security, and the Case for
Analytical Eclecticism’, International Security, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2001), pp. 153–85; Yasuhiro
Izumikawa, ‘Explaining Japanese Antimilitarism: Normative and Realist Constraints on
Japan’s Security Policy’, International Security, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2010), pp. 123–60.
22 Christopher W. Hughes, ‘The Democratic Party of Japan’s New (But Failing) Grand Security
Strategy: From “Reluctant Realism” to “Resentful Realism”?’ Journal of Japanese Studies,
Vol. 38, No. 1 (2012), pp. 109–40.
116 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
strategy. Variants of Neo-realism and Liberalism indicate a number of ways in which ‘secondary states’ or ‘second-tier powers’ such as Japan may react to changes in the distribution
of capabilities and the international structure—manifested in adjustments to the balance of
power, or more drastically systemic power transitions and hegemonic rises and falls—and
how these may precipitate reconsiderations of grand strategies.23
Offensive Realism presents the default position that states confronting changes in the
international structure and disadvantageous movements in relative gains will seek to initiate
balancing to restore equilibrium, or if this is not possible, more rarely bandwagoning behaviour.24 For Offensive Realism, the underlying conditions to precipitate balancing are
concerns over disadvantageous movements in relative capabilities and gains, the assumption that security is scarce, and that states must consequently maximize power to overcome
these challenges. States will seek to ‘hard balance’ both internally through the build-up of
their own national and autonomous military capabilities, and externally through the aggregation of capabilities with alliance and coalition partners, even if this entails attendant risks
of entrapment and abandonment imposed by the senior ally.25 Offensive Realism has also
indicated that great powers or secondary states might pursue a ‘soft balance’ against an
existing hegemonic or rising power, through agendas designed to diplomatically, economically, and less often militarily, complicate their exercise of dominance.26
If Offensive Realism represents the type of balancing position that states may gravitate
towards under certain, and perhaps extreme, conditions, then Defensive Realism, as another variant of Neo-realism, indicates the alternative conditions that may pertain for states
to pursue more restrained balancing and alternative strategies of hedging. Again, the logical
inverse corollary applies that the deterioration or absence of these conditions for refraining
from hedging should generate balancing behaviour along the lines of Offensive Realism’s
predictions.
Defensive Realism argues that states view changes in relative capabilities as less concerning and security less scarce, and thus may undertake less radical balancing behaviour, based
on several assumptions. First, states in considering the need to balance against capabilities
will take into account the geographic variables in enhancing their security, and most importantly the perceived ‘offence-defence balance’ between military technologies, provided
either through a state’s internal capabilities or externally by an ally, with a defensive superiority that tends to restrain the need for Offensive Realism-type active balancing.27
23 Ross, ‘Balance of Power Politics and the Rise of China’, pp. 355–95.
24 John, J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton and
Company, 2001).
25 Glenn H. Snyder, ‘The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics’, World Politics, Vol. 36, No. 4
(1984), pp. 461–95.
26 T. V. Paul, ‘Soft Balancing in the Age of US Primacy’, International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1
(2005), pp. 46–71; Robert Pape, ‘Soft Balancing against the United States’, International
Security, Vol. 30. No. 1 (2005), pp. 7–45; Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, ‘Hard Times
for Soft Balancing’, International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2005), pp. 72–108.
27 Robert Jervis, ‘Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma’, World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2
(1978), pp.167–214; Jack S. Levy, ‘The Offensive/Defensive Balance of Military Technology:
A Theoretical and Historical Analysis’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1984),
pp. 219–38; Sean M. Lynn-Jones, ‘Offense-Defense Theory and its Critics’, Security Studies,
Vol. 4, No. 4 (1995), pp. 660–91; Charles L. Glaser and Chaim Kaufmann, ‘What is the
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 117
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
Secondly, states are seen to balance not just capabilities but also threats and intentions.28
Somewhat surprisingly, despite Defensive Realism’s emphasis on the perception of threat as
the key trigger for balancing behaviour, it has not always been precise or fulsome in defining under what conditions or in line with what ‘indices’ another state’s behaviour may be
perceived as threatening.29 More recent analysis, though, has begun to pinpoint more
exactly these detailed conditions for sensing threats.
States will evaluate the benign or malign intentions of states, judged through a menu of
criteria including knowledge of the predictability of and compatibility with other states’
political leadership and ideologies; their observation of bilateral agreements and treaties;
their commitment to economic partnerships; and their meaningful cooperative participation in multilateral institutions.30 In addition, states may evaluate the intentions of other
states as benign or malign based on the degree to which they are perceived as malleable and
their capacity to influence them through means such as political and economic
engagement.31
Neo-classical Realism adds to Defensive Realism’s analysis of intentions by arguing that
states may refrain from balancing, or mistakenly ‘underbalance’ despite strategic needs, due
to domestic political conditions. These conditions comprise: elite consensus or fragmentation concerning the nature and response to potential threats; degrees of wider social cohesion in agreeing or dissenting over the nature of the threat and response; and the degree of
the legitimacy of the state’s government, entailing, according to Neo-classical Realism, a
higher degree of legitimacy leading to a higher preparedness to balance robustly.32
The presence of these conditions of an offence–defence balance privileging defensive
technologies; a reading of other states’ intentions as benign and as subject to malleability;
and a domestic consensus unfavourable to reading intentions as strictly malign, should thus
limit inclinations to actively hard or soft balance, and open up space for alternative strategies, or more specifically hedging. Thus, in line with Defensive Realism’s assumptions,
states may pursue minimalist balancing internally and externally, but also strategies of
Offense-Defense Balance and Can We Measure It?’, International Security, Vol. 22, No. 4
(1998), pp. 44–82; Stephen Van Evera, ‘Offense, Defense, and the Causes of War’,
International Security, Vol. 22, No. 4 (1998), pp. 5–42; Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, ‘Seeking Security
Under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited’, International Security, Vol. 25, No. 3 (2000–
2001), pp. 136–41; Robert S. Ross, ‘The Geography of Peace: East Asia in the Twenty-First
Century’, International Security, Vol. 23, No. 4 (1999), pp. 109–11.
28 Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp.
17–49.
29 For early studies in the Defensive Realism tradition to elaborate the indices that impact on
the image and thus threat perception of states, see Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in
International Relations, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
30 David M. Edelstein, ‘Managing Uncertainty: Beliefs about Intentions and the Rise of Great
Powers’, Security Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2002), pp. 10–13; Steve Chan, Looking for Balance:
China, the United States and Power Balancing in East Asia (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2012).
31 Edelstein, ‘Managing Uncertainty’, pp. 13–14.
32 Schweller, Unanswered Threats, pp. 11–12; Randall Schweller, ‘Unanswered Threats: a
Neoclassical Realist Theory of Underbalancing’, International Security, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2004),
pp. 159–201.
118 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
engagement, or in the case of smaller states ‘omni-enmeshment’ to influence and moderate
the behaviour of other states to obviate the need for harder balancing.33
It is in these engagement strategies that elements of Defensive Realism crossover with
strains of Liberal perspectives on state strategies to respond to hegemonic power transitions. For even though Liberalism clearly starts with very different assumptions about state
preoccupations with absolute rather than relative gains, it does share similar assumptions
that other states’ behaviour can be influenced through engagement, as with Defensive
Realism’s recognition of the possibilities of hedging to effect state objectives.34 Indeed, this
type of crossover between Defensive Realism and Liberalism in possible scenarios of power
transition can be found in the concept of the US’s ‘Liberal Grand Strategy’ as a means to induce rising states such as China to demonstrate their benign intentions, act as ‘status quo
powers’, and conform to the existing liberal hegemonic order.35 Liberalism’s belief in the
utility of engagement to respond to rising powers corresponds to Defensive Realism’s stress
on the importance of the comprehensibility and malleability of the intentions of other
states, and thus focuses on attempts to shape benign intentions through a number of mechanisms: the promotion of economic interdependence to raise the costs of conflict; seeking to
embed other states in regional and multilateral institutions; and supporting the development of pluralistic and liberal values in other states’ domestic political systems to promote
the conditions for cooperation.
In combination, therefore, Defensive Realism and Liberalism indicate a range of overarching conditions and facilitating sub-conditions—superiority of defensive capabilities,
predictability, and malleability of other states’ intentions, domestic political constraints illdisposed to balancing, and the believed utility of various engagement mechanisms—that if
prevalent enable states to exercise hedging strategies. Conversely, though, if any of these
conditions deteriorates or is absent, then it is probable a state may shift gear back to a form
of default Offensive Realism and soft and hard balancing.
These conditions and Japan’s correspondence to them in the case of China are
summarized in Table 1. The next sections of this article move on to examine the extent
to which Japan has in the past and continues to devise its China policy in the presence
of these conditions, thus enabling it to maintain a Defensive Realist-Liberal Grand
Strategy type of international strategy characterized by hedging, or whether these conditions are indeed eroding and so obliging Japan to shift more towards a balancing
strategy.
33 Evelyn Goh, ‘Great Powers and Hierarchical Order in Southeast Asia’, International
Security, Vol. 32, No. 3 (2007/2008), pp. 113–57.
34 David A. Lake, ‘Great Power Hierarchies and Strategies in Twenty First Century World
Politics’, in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse and Beth A. Simmons, eds., Handbook of
International Relations, (London: Sage, 2002), pp. 555–79.
35 G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis and Transformation of the American
World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 333–60; Barry Buzan, ‘China
in International Society: Is “Peaceful Rise” Possible?’, Chinese Journal of International
Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2010), pp. 5–36; Alastair Iain Johnson, ‘Is China a Status Quo Power?’,
International Security, Vol. 27, No. 4 (2003), pp. 5–56.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 119
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
Table 1. Japan’s Degree of Conformity with the Prevalence or Absence of Conditions that Determine the Predilection to Engage, Hedge and Balance vis-a-vis
China
Theoretical
paradigm
Overall determining
conditions
Facilitating conditions Cold War and early
post-Cold War
degree of
prevalence/absence
Strategic predilection:
engagement/hedging/
soft and hard
balancing
Later post-Cold War
and contemporary
period degree of
prevalence/absence
Strategic predilection:
engagement/hedging/
soft and hard
balacing
Defensive Realism Offence–defence balance
favourable
Dominance of national defence
capabilities
Prevalent
Engagement/
hedging
Deteriorating
Soft balancing/
incipient hard
balancing
Deteriorating
Intentions perceived as
benign
Predictability/compatibility of bilateral leaderships and ideologies Prevalent Deteriorating/absent
Observation of bilateral treaties and
agreements
Emerging/Prevalent Deteriorating
Commitment to bilateral economic
partnerships
Emerging/Prevalent Deteriorating
Cooperative participation in multilateral frameworks Emerging Deteriorating
Intentions perceived as malleable towards benignity Prevalent Deteriorating/absent
Domestic politics disposed to
‘underbalancing’
Political elites’ consensus on potential threats as minimal Prevalent Deteriorating/absent
Societal consensus on nature of potential threats as minimal Prevalent Deteriorating/absent
Liberalism Intentions perceived as malleable towards benignity Economic interdependency out- weighing costs of conflict Prevalent Deteriorating
Embedding of relations in cooperative multilateral and regional
frameworks
Emerging Deteriorating
Development of complementary political and societal pluralistic values Emerging Deteriorating/absent
120 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
Japan’s Past Hedging Strategy Towards China
If Japan’s international strategy is evaluated throughout most of the post-war period up until
the first decade of the new millennium—and thus at the point when it perhaps received the
most sustained analysis and the theoretical orthodoxies were put in place that carry over to
the present day—it can be said very much to conform to a restrained balancing or hedging
stance in response to the emerging transformation of the surrounding regional system.
Japan’s ‘Yoshida Doctrine’ as grand strategy has in many ways been a classic manifestation
of hedging and the ‘Pragmatist’ approach, made possible by a set of conditions conducive to
restrained alignment and balancing with the USA and engagement of a rising China.36
Reading and Moulding China’s Intentions
In terms of Defensive Realism’s facilitating conditions, Japan’s sense of the need to consider
balancing for much of this period was clearly mitigated by the belief that China actually posed
little meaningful threat because of its largely benign, or at the very least carefully contained malign intentions. Japan’s political leadership during the Cold War period was predominantly preoccupied with the threat from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which was
viewed as holding genuinely malign intentions, even stretching to the likelihood of nuclear attack and territorial invasion. By contrast, the majority of Japanese policymakers generally regarded the Communist Party of China (CCP) as a regime focused on political and economic
survival and state-building after prolonged periods of civil war, foreign interventions, and confrontations with the USSR and USA, and one that would prove vital to work with for Japan’s
own economic prosperity in the long run.37 Instead, rather than domestic policy opinion, the
greater complication for Japan’s relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was the
US–Japan security treaty, and as the corollary the necessary maintenance of relations with
Taiwan and the lack of normalized diplomatic relations with the mainland.38
Nevertheless, Japan and China were able throughout much of the Cold War, and especially
after US–China rapprochement and the normalization of Sino–Japanese relations in 1972 and
the Sino–Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1978, to read each other’s intentions and
to establish a relatively comfortable modus vivendi. Japan’s political and bureaucratic leaders, if
measured against Defensive Realism’s criteria for assessing other states’ intentions, shared confidence that they maintained sufficiently close personal connections or ‘pipes’ with the CCP to
predict state ideology and benign intentions.39 In particular, the LDP’s Tanaka–Takeshita and
Ikeda–Miyazawa factions, the former responsible for the normalization of ties, felt they knew
China’s key leaders well enough to negotiate and defuse any tensions.
36 For the ‘Yoshida Doctrine’ as pursued by Japan’s strategic ‘Pragmatists’ see Richard J.
Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2007), pp. 31–33.
37 Ming Wan, Sino-Japanese Relations: Interaction, Logic and Transformation (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 99–105.
38 Glenn D. Hook, Julie Gilson, Christopher W. Hughes, and Hugo Dobson, Japan’s
International Relations: Politics, Economics and Security (London: Routledge, 2011), pp.
166–68.
39 Iwanaga Kenkichiro, Sengo Nihon no Seito to Gaik  o (Postwar Japanese Political Parties
and Diplomacy) (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1985); Wan, Sino-Japanese Relations,
pp. 101–05.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 121
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
Japanese leaders, along with the rest of the region, were taken aback by China’s internal
convulsions during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, and were cognizant
of the CCP’s periodic launching of ‘people’s diplomacy’ and domestic anti-Japanese historical sentiment to pressure Japan over relations with the USA and Taiwan. At the same time,
though, Japan’s policymakers were confident that communist and anti-Japanese ideology
was subordinated to a pragmatic Chinese need to engage with Japan economically and to
assist in building influence against the USSR in the midst of the Sino–Soviet split. Japan and
China’s leadership were thus able to shelve issues of nationalist contention such as colonial
history and territorial disputes.40 Both sides also enjoyed confidence that the 1972 Joint
Communique´ and the Sino–Japanese peace treaty were agreements that worked to establish
common principles for interaction, including no explicit references to, and thus no politicization of history; non-interference; non-aggression; the peaceful resolution of disputes;
and the non-pursuit of hegemony by either state.41
Moreover, not only did Japanese policymakers feel that they could through this ‘1972
system’ of bilateral relations gauge China’s intentions, but they also held a conviction that
these intentions could be subject to malleability.42 The CCP was perceived as a regime utilizing communist ideology to unify China rather than inherently holding to this ideology itself. Japanese policymakers were particularly optimistic that China could be encouraged to
forge closer bilateral ties and reintegrate itself into the regional order following the end of
the Cultural Revolution and the instalment in power of Deng Xiaoping and the ‘second
generation’ of leadership, and the regime’s subsequent concentration on ‘opening up’ and
economic reform. Japanese leaders were convinced from the 1980s onwards that they possessed the opportunity and the political but above all economic capacity to influence
China’s international strategy through supporting its domestic reformers and economic engagement. Japan’s confidence in the movement towards reform and how this would promote cooperative relations was such that it was even at the forefront of efforts to avoid the
international isolation of China after the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989.
Domestic Consensus
Japan’s interest to engage China and avoid any move towards containment was reinforced
in this period by a general domestic policy consensus. The majority of policymakers
involved in relations with China, including the LDP’s ‘mainstream’ Tanaka–Takeshita and
Ikeda–Miyazawa factions, and other political parties such as the Komeit  o (later New 
Komeit  o); and MOFA, and especially its then powerful China and Mongolia Division, fa- 
voured engagement to induce cooperation.43 For sure, there were more ‘Revisionist’ elements of Japan’s political leadership in the LDP, such as the Kishi (later Machimura, and
40 Thomas U. Berger, War, Guilt, and Politics After World War II (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 2012), pp. 161–64; James Reilly, Strong Society, Smart State: The Rise of
Public Opinion in China’s Japan Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012),
pp. 55–97.
41 Ryosei Kokubun, ‘Changing Japanese Strategic Thought Toward China’, in Gilbert Rozman,
Kazuhiko Togo and Joseph P. Ferguson, eds., Japanese Strategic Thought Toward Asia
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 137–58.
42 Wan, Sino-Japanese Relations, pp. 84–86.
43 Tanaka Akihiko, Nicchu Kankei 1945-1990  (Sino-Japanese Relations 1945-1990) (Tokyo:
Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1996), pp. 189–207.
122 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
now Hosoda) faction, that regarded China as a genuine communist threat and source of instability a la the pre-war period, and favoured capitalist Taiwan instead, but these were
largely pushed aside by the mainstream of the LDP.44 Similarly, at the broader societal
level, Japanese public opinion in this period maintained a very positive, for some even
‘romanticized’ view, of Sino–Japanese relations, underpinned by a sense of common language and race (dobun d  oshu  ).45 Just as importantly, the Japanese business community was
supportive of engagement, and deeply interested in the emerging trade and investment
opportunities in the Chinese market.46
Based on this view of the intelligibility and malleability of China’s intentions, Japan attempted to generate benign interaction through various conomic engagement mechanisms and
its own type of mini-Grand Liberal Strategy. Japan’s government sought to undergird the conditions for economic engagement through its very substantial provision of Official Development
Assistance (ODA) from 1979 to 2008, totalling from 1979 to 2005 ¥3.13 trillion in loan aid,
¥145.7 billion in grant aid, and ¥144.6 billion in technical cooperation.47 This ODA, coupled
with Japanese industry’s need for offshore productions sites and markets, led to a progressive expansion of Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) and bilateral trade, resulting in China
becoming Japan’s largest trading partner by 2007 and the largest cumulative investor in China,
while as of 2014 Japan was China’s second largest individual national trade partner.
Offence–Defence Balance
Japan’s pursuit of the engagement of China was reinforced above all by the ‘offence-defence
capabilities’ balance. Japan’s relative geographical proximity to China and any sense of
threat was mitigated, of course, by the maritime sea space between the two states. But for
the entire Cold War and into the first two decades of the new millennium Japanese policymakers were confident that the balance of defensive capabilities, both conventional and
nuclear, was fully in Japan’s favour. The Japan Self Defense Forces (JSDF) by the mid1980s, primarily to counter the threat of Soviet expansionism in East Asia, had developed
maritime and air capabilities that enabled it to control and defend the territorial space
around the Japanese archipelago. Japan’s internal capabilities complemented and reinforced the overwhelming military power of the USA in the region, channelled via the US–
Japan security treaty and its evolution into an overt ‘alliance relationship’ by the 1980s.48
Japanese policymakers were doubly relaxed about China’s military posture because they
44 Christopher W. Hughes, ‘Japan’s Policy Towards China: Domestic Structural Change,
Globalization, History and Nationalism’, in Christopher M. Dent, ed., China, Japan and
Regional Leadership in East Asia (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2008), pp. 37–51.
45 Michael J. Green and Benjamin L. Self, ‘Japan’s Changing China Policy’, Survival: The IISS
Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 2 (1996), pp. 35–58; Chalmers Johnson, ‘Patterns of Japan’s Relations
With China, 1952-1982’, in Chalmers Johnson, ed., Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the
Developmental State (New York: Norton, 1995), pp. 235–63.
46 Akio Takahara, ‘A Japanese Perspective on China’s Rise’, in Robert S. Ross and Zhu Feng,
eds., China’s Ascent: Power, Security and the Future of International Politics (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2008), pp. 219–23.
47 Reinhard Drifte, ‘The Ending of Japan’s ODA Loan Programme to China—All’s Well That
Ends Well?’, Asia-Pacific Review, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2006), p. 94.
48 Tanaka Akihiko, Anzen Hosho: Sengo 50nen no Mosaku  (Security Policy: A Fifty Year
Search in the Postwar Period) (Tokyo: Yomiuri Shimbunsha, 1997), pp. 281–304.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 123
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
understood the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) principal roles to be the preservation of internal regime security and immediate territorial integrity vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, and possessed only limited maritime and air power projection beyond its existing borders. Even
China’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and delivery systems from the 1960s onwards failed
to perturb seriously Japan’s defence planners, given the PLA’s limited number of missiles and
warheads, and most importantly the perceived solidity of US extended nuclear deterrence.49
Japan’s concerns over China’s military posture certainly did increase from the mid1990s onwards, with the PLA’s growing budgets and modernization, and the Chinese
state’s willingness to project military power in pursuit of its national interests, as manifested in the 1995 and 1996 Taiwan Straits crises which occurred in close proximity to
Japan’s territorial waters. Nonetheless, Japanese policymakers still saw China’s security activity as somewhat geographically distant in being concentrated around Taiwan, and drew
confidence from Japan’s continuing conventional superiority and the US’s demonstrated
ability to project power and intervene in potential regional conflicts, as with its deployment
of the US Seventh Fleet around Taiwan.
Japan and the USA did begin to shift somewhat towards hedging against a rising China
from the early post-Cold War period and mid-1990s onwards, but for Japan this was indeed highly constrained internal and external balancing. In fact, Japan’s international strategy was directed almost as much towards hedging against entrapment and abandonment by
the USA in potential Taiwan or North Korea contingencies as it was against hedging
against China.
Japan’s policymakers were concerned that the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis risked
their embroilment in another Korean Peninsula conflict, as the USA sought to activate the
US–Japan alliance to provide logistical support, but at the same time were aware that their
lack of preparedness for the interoperability of JSDF and alliance capabilities risked the opposite problem of the USA discarding Japan as a useful ally. Similarly, the Taiwan Straits
crisis, although not generating direct US calls for Japanese assistance, clearly posed questions about the extent to which Japan should support the USA militarily without becoming
entrapped in any unwelcome Sino–US conflict over Taiwan. Japan’s eventual response was
the revision of its National Defence Program Outline (NDPO) in 1996, and the revision of
the US–Japan Defence Guidelines between 1997 and 1999: the former beginning to re-gear
JSDF doctrines and capabilities to deal with threats other than the now defunct Soviet
Union, and the latter beginning to fill in the areas of interoperability between the JSDF and
US military and the logistical support provided by Japan in regional contingencies.
At the same time, though, Japan attempted to maintain strategic ambiguity by refusing
to specify the exact geographical extent of its military commitments in a regional contingency, and to thereby constrain any US balancing of China by allowing the USA to take for
granted Japanese military support, or any attempts by China to destabilize the status quo
by being able to divine the extent of Japan’s support for the USA.50 Japan thus continued
its ‘dual hedge’ tactics both inside and outside the alliance.51
49 Christopher W. Hughes, ‘North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons: Implications for the Nuclear
Ambitions of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan’, Asia Policy, No. 3 (2007), p. 84.
50 Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Economic Power and Security: Japan and North Korea
(London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 187–203.
51 Eric Heginbotham and Richard J. Samuels, ‘Japan’s Dual Hedge’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81,
No. 5 (2002), pp. 110–21.
124 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
All in all, Japan’s international strategy post-Cold War, and from the 1990s into the
early 2000s, can be said to have corresponded to a form of ‘circumscribed balancing’,
‘Liberal Deterrence’, or ‘Reluctant Realism’, as it edged towards some balancing against a
rising China but without overcommitting to this strategy or the USA.52 The Defensive
Realist and Constructivist analysis is thus correct, in that Japan’s balancing was highly constrained and embedded within a far more dominant strategy of hedging, based on the reading and influencing of China’s intentions. In this period, somewhat ironically, despite their
ostensibly different societal differences, Japan and China were both status quo powers and
pragmatic in their bilateral dealings. The occasional spat over history textbooks was experienced, as in 1982, but by and large the concentration was on economic engagement.
Japan’s grand strategy and the approach to China within it was summed up in Prime
Minister Yoshida’s famous dictum that: ‘Red or white, China remains our next-door neighbour. Geography and economic laws will, I believe, prevail in the long run over any ideological differences and artificial trade barriers.’53
Japan’s Shifting Calculus over China’s Intentions and Capabilities
Japan’s international strategy vis-a-vis China into the mid-2000s might be characterized by
hedging behaviour, but the vital question is whether or not the conditions that made this
strategy possible are now deteriorating to the point of engineering a shift, even if incremental and at times fitful, in Japan’s policy towards a more active balancing strategy. For it is
arguable that evidence is mounting that most of the key conditions identified by Defensive
Realism and Liberalism as accounting for Japan’s past constraints are now coming under
severe stress as the 1972 system for bilateral interaction unravels.
China’s Intentions as Non-transparent and Malign, and Changing Domestic
Consensus
First, Japanese policymakers’ confidence in their capacity to read China’s probable intentions has been progressively undermined. In part, this is the result of the transition in
China’s leadership from the third to fourth, and then fifth generations, mirrored by a similar process of the turnover of party factional and regime leadership in Japan, so leading to a
straightforward breakdown of personal lines of communications.54 The LDP’s younger
generation of leaders lack good personal relations with their Chinese counterparts, steeped
52 Christopher P. Twomey, ‘Japan, a Circumscribed Balancer: Building on Defensive Realism to
Make Predictions about East Asian Security’, Security Studies, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2000), pp. 167–
205; Chikako Kawakatsu Ueki, ‘Liberal Deterrence of China: Challenges in Achieving Japan’s
China policy’, in Takashi Inoguchi, G. John Ikenberry, and Yoichiro Sato, eds., The US-Japan
Security Alliance: Regional Multilateralism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2007),
pp. 137–55.
53 Shigeru Yoshida, ‘Japan and the Crisis in Asia’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 29, No. 2 (1951), p. 179.
54 Prime Minister Koizumi’s 2002 Task Force on Foreign Relations noted the lack of regime stability in both countries and consequent lack of interchange of policy elites and at societal
levels as a particular weakness of the foundation of Sino–Japanese relations, see Taigai
Kankei Tasukufosu, 21isseiki Nihon Gaiko no Kihon Senryaku: Arata na Jidai, Arata na 
Bijon, Arata no Gaiko (Japan’s Basic Diplomatic Strategy in the Twenty First Century: New
Era, New Vision, New Diplomacy), 28 November, 2002, http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/kakugiket
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 125
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
increasingly instead, as many are, in US–Japan policymaking networks. Most strikingly,
with the exception of Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo (2007–2008), who has served whilst in
office and then later behind the scenes as an important conduit for attempts to reboot Sino–
Japanese ties, LDP prime ministers from Koizumi Junichiro (2001–2006) onwards have all 
struggled to build and sustain a relationship with their Chinese counter-parts.55
Koizumi, of course, was to position himself as the ultimate persona non grata with
China’s leadership, unable to effect a full bilateral summit for five years. Abe Shinzo
(2006–2007) and Aso Tar  o (2008–2009) have both been regarded with suspicion as anti- 
Chinese. Aso notably as foreign minister in 2005 publicly remarked that China’s military 
modernization build-up was ‘on course to pose a considerable threat’ to Japan.56 Abe, although more guarded in his public statements on China as befits a two-time prime minister,
nevertheless detailed his suspicions in December 2012, just before returning to the premiership. Abe noted that China’s maritime activities would lead to the South China Sea becoming ‘Lake Beijing’, and compared China’s activities to those of the Soviet Union during the
Cold War, saying that they were sufficient to ‘scare’ its neighbours, and that ‘Japan must
not yield’ to Chinese coercion in the East China Sea.57 Abe in his second administration has
experienced an inability similar to his successors to establish personal contacts with his
counterpart—having been unable after taking office to hold a bilateral summit first with
Hu Jintao, and then only managing, nearly two years after taking power, a rather frosty
first summit with Xi Jinping at the Beijing Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
meeting in November 2014.
Many younger DPJ politicians have shared with the LDP a new suspicion of China. For
example, Maehara Seiji, a noted security hawk and former DPJ foreign minister, when serving as leader of the DPJ at a public forum in Washington, DC in December 2005, described
China’s military build-up as a ‘realistic threat’ (genjitsu na kyoi  ) to Japan.58 The DPJ’s
‘elder statesmen’ former leader Ozawa Ichiro and Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio (2009– 
2010) did attempt to rebuild these connections through initiatives to expand bilateral eliteto-elite visits.59 But the DPJ’s implosion after its brief spell in power from 2009 to 2012,
tei/2002/1128tf.html, pp. 39–40; Sheila A. Smith, Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics
and a Rising China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), pp. 50–51, 245–46.
55 For Fukuda’s role in preparing the way for Abe’s summit with Xi Jinping in 2014, see Yomiuri
Shimbun Seijibu, Abe Kantei Vs Shu Kinpei: Gekika Suru Nicch  u Gaik  o Sens  o (Prime
Minister Abe’s Administration Versus Xi Jinping: Intensifying the Sino-Japanese Diplomatic
War) (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2015), pp. 29–32.
56 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, ‘Press Conference by Foreign Minister Aso Taro’, http://
www.mofa.go.jp/announce/fm_press/2005/12/1222.html.
57 Abe Shinzo, ‘Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond’, 27 December, 2012, Project Syndicate,
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a-strategic-alliance-for-japan-and-india-byshinzo-abe.
58 Maehara Seiji, ‘Minshuto no Mezasu Kokkasho to Gaiko Bijyon’ (Japanese Transcript of
CSIS Japan Chair Forum: DPJ’s Vision on Domestic and Foreign Policy), 8 December, 2005,
http://csis.org/files/attachments/051208_maeharajapremarks.pdf, p. 3.
59 Ozawa famously led delegations of 45 DPJ National Diet members and 390 other general
participants to China in December 2007 whilst in opposition, and then after the DPJ took
power led 143 DPJ Diet members and 496 participants to Beijing in December 2009, leading
to accusations of the DPJ bandwaggoning with China and turning away from the USA.
126 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
and the taking over of that party by lawmakers similar to the LDP in being less well connected to China, including prime ministers Kan Naoto (2010–2011) and Noda Yoshihiko
(2011–2012), has compounded Japanese policymakers’ inherent lack of ability to read the
intentions of China’s leadership.60
Meanwhile, Japanese bureaucratic-level interaction with regard to China has also become more constrained in the post-Cold War period. MOFA’s China and Mongolia
Division has retreated in influence compared to the rise of the North American Affairs
Bureau as gatekeeper of the US–Japan alliance. Instead, much of the direction of Japan’s
policy towards China has been directed recently by Yachi Shotar  o, a former MOFA Vice- 
Minister for Foreign Affairs, now Director of the National Security Council, and one of
Abe’s key foreign policy advisors.
The Japanese leaderships’ lack of acquaintance with their Chinese counterparts is symptomatic of, and compounds a larger structural change in relations which has made it harder
for Japan to understand China’s intentions. Japan’s leaders perceive that China’s leadership
transition and rapid economic development, and the accompanying challenges to the competency and legitimacy of the CCP to continue to govern, have triggered shifts in China’s
domestic and international ideology. As Prime Minister Abe’s 2015 advisory panel on
Japan’s history and international role noted, the CCP’s effective abandonment of communism as a mainstay ideology in favour of ‘patriotic education’ to boost its domestic legitimacy has inevitably overspilled to exert negative impact on Sino–Japanese relations.61 The
promotion of ‘patriotic education’ based on the recovery of national pride after past external aggressions is necessarily co-axial with the promotion of previously suppressed antiJapanese sentiment.62
China’s shift towards nationalism, in turn, has also been seen to engender a drive for restoration of territorial integrity, including not just Taiwan but also China’s disputed territorial claims with Japan and ASEAN states in the East China Sea and South China Sea, and
even more worryingly a potential drive towards displacing the US-led order in the region
and the assumption of hegemonic status in the Asia-Pacific.63 The LDP, for instance, has
argued that China is engaged in a ‘struggle for hegemony’ (haken sodatsu  ) in East Asia.64
Hughes, ‘The Democratic Party of Japan’s New (But Failing) Grand Security Strategy’,
p. 129.
60 Daniel Sneider, ‘The New Asianism: Japanese Foreign Policy’, in Kenji E. Kushida and Phillip
Y Lipscy, eds., Japan Under the DPJ: The Politics of Transition and Governance (Stanford:
The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center/Brookings Institution Press, 2013),
pp. 384–91.
61 Advisory Panel on the History of the 20th century and on Japan’s Role and the World Order
in the 21st century, Report of the Advisory Panel on the History of the 20th Century and on
Japan’s Role and the World Order in the 21st Century, 6 August, 2015, http://japan.kantei.go.
jp/97_abe/actions/201508/6article3.html, pp. 23–24.
62 Mori Kazuko, Nicchu Kankei: Sengo Kara Shinjidai E  (Japan-China Relations: From the
Postwar to a New Era) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 2006), pp. 154–68.
63 Taylor Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial
Disputes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 267–72.
64 Jiyu Minshuto Seimu Chosakai Kokubo Bukai, ‘Teigen Shinboei Keikaku no Taiko ni Tsuite:
Kokka no Heiwa, Dokuritsu to Kokumin no Anzen, Anshin Kakuho no Saranaru Shinten’
(Regarding Proposals for a New National Defence Programme Outline: Attaining Further
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 127
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
Koizumi’s foreign policy task force talked of Sino–Japanese relations now moving from a
situation of ‘collaboration and co-existence’ to one of potential ‘competition and friction.65
Japanese perceptions of China’s increasing ideological estrangement have been reinforced by concerns over a new Chinese unwillingness to demonstrate benign intentions by
committing to bilateral and international agreements and conventions. From the Japanese
viewpoint, China has in recent years consistently intimated that it is prepared to transgress
the principles of the 1978 Sino–Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship concerning the
shelving of colonial history issues and the non-use of force in international disputes, and
failed to abide by other bilateral agreements related to respect for Japanese intellectual
property and food export safety standards. Hence, Japanese leaders have consistently
stressed in any interactions possible with their counterparts that they want continued ties to
be predicated on adherence to the ‘four basic documents’ issued between the two sides in
the post-war period, namely the 1972 Joint Statement of 1972, 1978 Treaty of Peace and
Friendship, 1998 Joint Declaration, and 2008 Joint Statement on Strengthening Exchange
and Cooperation.66
More recently, Japanese policymakers have been disturbed by the Chinese central government’s apparent willingness to allow local courts to revisit provisions of the 1978 peace
treaty under which China has waived its right to colonial compensation. In April 2014, the
Shanghai Maritime Court impounded a Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) ship as a means to demand compensation from the parent company for failure to fulfil payments for the leasing
of Chinese ships in the 1930s. Mitsui OSK Lines eventually negotiated a private payment of
around US$30 million. The Shanghai case followed a Beijing court’s acceptance of the hearing the same year of a case pursuing damages against Japan for forced labour in the colonial
period. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide remarked in an April 2015 press conference
on the MOL incident that, ‘the series of responses that China has made in connection with
this matter, including the latest seizure notice, may undermine the very foundation of the
spirit of the normalization of Japan-China diplomatic relations espoused in the 1972 Joint
Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of
China’.67
Japanese policymakers have been further disappointed by the apparent reluctance of
China to contribute to the maintenance of the ‘mutually beneficial relationship based on
common strategic interests’ that Prime Minister Abe initiated at the start of his first period
of office in 2006, to restore bilateral ties after Koizumi’s premiership, and that was then followed through by successive LDP and DPJ prime ministers. From the Japanese perspective,
China has failed to reciprocate on attempts to reboot ties through bilateral summitry to
promote mutual trust, people-to-people exchanges, and cooperation in the wider AsiaPacific region over issues such as North Korea’s nuclearization.
Japan and China have attempted to move ahead with multilateral cooperation in the
form of the Japan–China–Republic of Korea (ROK) Trilateral Cooperation Dialogue
Advances of the Peace State, Autonomy and Safety of the People, and Reasurance), 14
June, 2010, https://www.jimin.jp/policy/policy_topics/pdf/seisaku-017.pdf, p. 3.
65 Tasukufosu, Japan’s Basic Diplomatic Strategy in the Twenty First Century, p. 14.
66 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, ‘Japan-China Summit Meeting’, 10 November, 2014,
http:://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/c_m1/cn/page4e_000151.html.
67 Prime Minister’s Office Japan, ‘Press Conference by the Chief Cabinet Secretary’, 21 April,
2015, http://japan.kantei.go.jp/tyoukanpress/201404/21_a.html.
128 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
(TCD) since 2008, and have progressed certain elements of functional cooperation on the
environment, finance, and negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA).68 However,
deeper trilateral cooperation has been stymied by the stand off in Japan–China relations,
and to some extent Japan–South Korea relations over issues of history and territory. The result is that TCD summits were held in abeyance from 2012 to 2015 and the Japan–China–
ROK FTA negotiations slowed to a near standstill. China and South Korea only agreed in
September 2015 to restart the TCD summits. But Xi and President Park Guen-hye made
this decision bilaterally without first consulting with Japan, and during Park’s attendance
of events in Beijing to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the defeat of Japan and
end of World War II, so perhaps providing not the most auspicious of environments for the
rebooting of the TCD. The first TCD summit for over three years held in Seoul on
November 1, 2015, including a bilateral meeting between Abe and Chinese premier Li
Keqiang, sought to restore some normality to ties with an agreement to restart various trilateral economic and political cooperation projects, but the summit was also overshadowed
by Chinese and South Korean suspicions, and insistence that Japan demonstrate correct behaviour on issues of history.69
Similarly, in regard to broader multilateral cooperation in the region, Japanese concerns
over China’s meaningful and benign intentions have heightened. Japan and China continue
to cooperate in the financial arena through their role in the ASEAN-Plus-Three’s Chiang
Mai Initiative. But increasingly worrying for Japan is China’s initiation of the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to function as an apparent counter-institution to the
Asian Development Bank (ADB) traditionally led by Japan, and with perceived poorer
standards of governance in loanmaking, and resulting in Japan’s declining, along with the
USA, the invitation to join.70 Abe commented provocatively on the AIIB plan that, ‘a company that borrows money from a bad loan shark will end up losing its future’, so implying
that Asian states would be at the mercy of malign Chinese influence.71
For Japan, the most alarming evidence of the growing malignity of China’s intentions is
its assertion of territorial and resource interests in the East China, South China Sea, and the
sea lines of security (SLOC) in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond to the Persian Gulf.
Japanese policymakers argue that China first overturned the status quo and the agreed
shelving of territorial disputes with its 1992 Law on the Territorial Sea that explicitly lays
claim to Japanese controlled areas in the East China Sea, and has since failed to conform to
other established bilateral agreements on maritime cooperation.72 These Japanese concerns
have been made manifest by China’s expanding area of maritime operations and constant
68 Hidetaka Yoshimatsu, ‘Regional Cooperation in Northeast Asia: Searching for the Mode of
Governance’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2010), pp. 253–56.
69 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, ‘Joint Declaration for Peace and Cooperation in
Northeast Asia’, 1 November, 2015, http://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/rp/page1e_000058.html.
70 ‘Japan Reluctant to Join China-led New Asian Investment Bank’, Mainichi Shimbun, 24 July,
2014, http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20140706p2g00m0bu007000c.html.
71 ‘Japan Flip-Flops on AIIB Policy’, Nikkei Asian Review, 27 April, 2015, http://asia.nikkei.com/
Politics-Economy/International-Relations/Japan-flip-flops-on-AIIB-policy?page¼2.
72 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, ‘Japanese Territory: Senkaku Islands’, 4 April, 2014, http://
www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/c_m1/senkaku/page1we_000010.html; Reinhard Drifte, ‘The Senkaku/
Diaoyu Islands Territorial Dispute Between Japan and China: Between the Materialization
of the ‘China Threat’ and Japan ‘Reversing the Outcome of World War II’?’, UNISCI
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 129
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
dispatch of fishing vessels, ‘research ships,’ and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)
vessels into Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu
Islands south of Okinawa Prefecture. These tensions reached a new high in 2010 with the
DPJ administration’s decision not only to detain but also indict the captain of a Chinese
trawler for attempting to ram a Japan Coast Guard (JCG) vessel that had warned his ship
off from operating in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Island waters, so sparking a major diplomatic
row with China.
Sino–Japanese relations have since escalated further from late 2012 onwards, with the
decision of the DPJ government to purchase from their private owner, and in effect ‘nationalize’, two of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and thus assert clear de jure as well as de facto
control. In response, China has significantly upped the level of its maritime activity around
the islands, and in November 2013 established an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ)
overlapping that of Japan’s extending around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and thus further
raising the bilateral ante on the territorial dispute. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato
Katsunobu summed up Japan’s alarm and position in his response: ‘The Government of
Japan expressed deep concern about China’s establishment of such a zone and obliging its
own rules within the zone, which are profoundly dangerous acts that unilaterally change
the status quo in the East China Sea, escalating the situation, and that may cause unintended consequences in the East China Sea.’73
Japan–China tensions further north in the East China Sea have been intensified by overlapping EEZs and territorial claims to gas field resources. Despite Japan and China reaching an agreement in principle in 2008, as one outcome of the ‘mutually beneficial
relationship based on common strategic interests’, for the joint development of sections of
the gas fields, there has been much Japanese frustration at China’s apparent reluctance
since to respond to calls to move forward with bilateral development plans, and the suspicion remains that China is already moving to exert unilateral exploitation of the fields.74
The Japan Ministry of Defence’s (JMOD) Defence of Japan 2015 white paper—its release
in July 2015 arguably timed to coincide with ongoing National Diet debates on the exercise
of collective self-defence, and with sections on the China threat beefed up at the request of
the LDP—first provided the public news that China had started to construct new gas platforms in the East China Sea and that the Japanese government would continue to lodge
‘protests against China’s unilateral development’.75 In addition, Japanese policymakers
have seen China’s refusal to recognize as an islet Japan’s territory of Okinotorishima in the
Discussion Papers, No. 32, May 2013, http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/unisci/revis
tas/UNISCIDP32-1DRIFTE.pdf, pp. 21–24.
73 Prime Minister’s Office Japan, ‘Press Conference by the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary’,
25 November, 2013, http://japan.kantei.go.jp/tyoukanpress/201311/25_a.html.
74 Anami Yusuke, ‘Senryaku-teki gokei Kankei no Mosaku to Higashi Shinakai Mondai’
(Searching for a Mutually Beneficial Strategic Partnership and the Issue of the East China
Sea), in Takahara Akio and Hattori Ryuji, eds., Nicchu Kankeishi 1972-2012 I: Seiji  (The
History of Japan-China Relations 1972-2012 I: Politics)(Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai,
2012), pp. 459–469; James Manicom, China, Japan and Maritime Order in the East China
Sea: Bridging Troubled Waters (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), pp.
122–57.
75 Japan Ministry of Defence, Defence of Japan 2015, http://www.mod.go.jp/e/publ/w_paper/
pdf/2015/DOJ2015_Digest_part1_web.pdf, p. 5.
130 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
Philippine Sea, and its thereby attempted negation of Japan’s claims to the surrounding
EEZ, as another challenge to the territorial status quo. Japan has responded by announcing
in February 2016 that it would spend ¥13 billion to rebuild an observation platform on the
islet to assert its sovereignty.76
Japan and China were able to achieve at the Abe–Xi summit in November 2014 some
level of bilateral equilibrium on the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute with the issuing of a ‘joint
statement’ by both sides, as the product of considerable behind-the-scenes diplomatic negotiation. The ‘joint statement’ was not really joint at all, as it was two separate statements
on the issue of the islands: Tokyo maintained its stance that there was no dispute in its eyes
but that the two countries held different ‘views’; and Beijing that there were differing ‘positions’ so holding to its stance of not relenting on the existence of a dispute.77 This diplomatic linguistic device enabled Japan and China at least to move forward with long-mooted
attempts to create a bilateral crisis-management mechanism in the East China Sea, and
there was some decline in Chinese maritime incursions around the islands in 2015.
Nevertheless, the dispute remains an issue at a level of constant high-tension in Sino–
Japanese relations. The JMOD’s 2015 Defence white paper states that China’s activities in
the East China and South China Sea were attempts to ‘alter the status quo by force’.78
Secondly, Japan’s waning confidence in the benign nature of China’s intentions has been
matched by a declining confidence in its capacity to effect any malleability in those intentions. Japanese consistent economic engagement of China since the 1970s, including the
disbursement of ODA, is acknowledged as without doubt promoting Chinese development
and bilateral interdependence. However, Japan’s ODA provision has been regarded as having diminishing returns in influencing, most crucially, Chinese political behaviour. Japan’s
suspension of ODA grants in protest at China’s nuclear testing in 1995 and its failure to
change Chinese behaviour was a portent of the limited utility of ODA as a lever of
influence.79
Japan’s extension of bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI), production, and trading
linkages has clearly been a factor in restraining China’s behaviour towards Japan, even in the
midst of the deepest tensions over history and territory. Nevertheless, there are signs of possible declines in the condition of this economic interdependency. For although Japan’s trade
interdependency with China in terms of shares of exports and imports has remained steady at
around 18% and 22%, respectively, over the last half-decade, Japanese outward FDI has
begun to decline rapidly in recent years. From an historic high of US$13.5 billion of Japanese
FDI in China in 2012, investment flows fell to US$9.1 billion in 2013, and halved to US$6.7
76 ‘Okinotorishima Kansoku Kyoten Tatekae, Koroka, 20nen Kansei Mezasu’ (Rebuilding the
Ageing Observation Platform for Okinotorishima, Aiming for Completion in 2020), Asahi
Shimbun, 1 February, 2016, http://digital.asahi.com/articles/DA3S12188086.html.
77 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, ‘Joint Statement of the ASEAN-Japan Commemorative
Summit: “Hand in Hand Facing Regional and Global Challenges” ’, 14 December, 2013, http://
www.mofa.go.jp/files/000022451.pdf.
78 Boeisho, Boei Hakush  o 2015  (Defense of Japan White Paper) (Tokyo: Zaimusho
Insatsukyoku, 2015), p. 35.
79 Saori N. Katada, ‘Why Did Japan Suspend Foreign Aid to China? Japan’s Foreign Aid
Decision-Making and Sources of Aid Sanction’, Social Science Japan Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1
(2001), pp. 39–58.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 131
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
billion in 2014. In part, the decline is accounted for by China’s economic slowdown, but also
in large part by political tensions affecting business confidence.80 The Sino–Japanese investment relationship and level of interdependency has also shown signs of declining not only absolutely, but also relatively as Japanese FDI begins to shift to other regions in East Asia.
Japanese FDI in the Newly Industrialized Economies-4 (NIES) of Hong Kong, Taiwan, South
Korea, and Singapore exceeded that in China for the first time in 2014 at US$13.9 billion;
and investment in the ASEAN-4 of Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines also
outstripped that in China in 2014 at U.S.$11 billion (Figure 1).
Moreover, Japanese policymakers worry that aspects of the economic relationship are
approaching one of asymmetric interdependence now tilted towards China.81 China’s perceived willingness to resort to ‘economic warfare’ to achieve political and security ends was
for Japan demonstrated by the alleged Chinese embargo on rare earth exports imposed after
the 2010 tensions over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, thus serving as a portent of how China
might increasingly have the upper hand in the bilateral economic relationship.82
Moreover, Japan’s own economic relative decline vis-a-vis China has meant that it feels
it simply lacks sufficient capacity to exercise effective influence. Japan’s cessation of all
ODA to China except for limited environmental cooperation after 2008 was justified on
the basis that the programme had largely achieved its objectives. But the ending was due to
0
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
14,000
16,000
18,000
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
U.S.$ Millions
China NES-4 ASEAN-4 Vietnam India
Fig. 1 Japan’s FDI Flows in East Asia (2004–2014).
Source: JETRO
80 JETRO, ‘Nihon no Chokusetsu Toshi (Kokusai Shushi Besu, Netto, Furo)’ (Japan’s Foreign
Direct Investment [International Income and Expenditure Basis, Net, Flow]), http://www.
jetro.go.jp/world/japan/stats/fdi.html.
81 Advisory Panel on the History of the 20th century, Report of the Advisory Panel, p. 24.
82 Linus Hagstro¨m, ‘ “Power Shift” in East Asia? A critical Reappraisal of Narratives on the
Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands Incident in 2010’, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 5,
No. 3 (2012), pp. 282–83.
132 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
Japanese awareness that there were no longer the budgetary resources to provide large-scale
ODA, and that its utility in light of China’s new found economic power was highly
questionable.
Thirdly, failing Japanese confidence in the predictability and malleability of China’s intentions has been reinforced by an evolving domestic consensus at elite and societal levels
regarding the future course of Sino–Japanese relations, and which has contributed to the
obviating of any previous ‘underbalancing’ impulses. For just as China has experienced a
deep-seated domestic political transformation that has influenced its international strategy,
so in Japan there has been a similar process of regime shift.83 Japan’s LDP, in power for
close to 60 years in the post-war period, has struggled to prove its competency to govern
during a ‘lost decade’ of economic decline that has actually now stretched to almost a quarter of a century. The result has been the displacement of the LDP mainstream old guard and
the domination of the party since the early 2000s by the revisionist Machimura–Hosoda
faction.84 The LDP then turned to a more nationalist ideology to enhance its legitimacy.
This began to be manifested under Koizumi’s administration and his insistence on visiting
the Yasukuni Shrine. Abe’s first administration was marked by a degree of pragmatism
with his crafting with China in 2007 of the ‘mutually beneficial strategic partnership’ to try
to re-right bilateral relations. However, since returning to power in 2012, Abe has revealed
himself as an arch-revisionist, so creating the conditions for the exacerbation of tensions
with China.
Abe has espoused an ideological programme that seeks to overturn the post-war settlement imposed on Japan after its defeat in the Pacific War and US-led Occupation, and
which is believed to have suppressed Japanese national identity and independence. Abe and
other Revisionists wish to revise Article 9 and the Constitution as a whole, as well as historical interpretations of Japan as a colonial aggressor that are seen to constrain its exercise of
military power for national security ends and prevent Japan from recovering great power
international status. Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in December 2013 only confirmed
for China and South Korea his status as a Revisionist and stopped in its tracks any diplomatic attempts to reboot bilateral ties.85
The ‘Abe Statement’ released on 14 August 2015 on the eve of the 70th anniversary of
the end of World War II might have been an occasion to alleviate significantly historical
tensions. In the end, the statement, although highly skilful in not handing China any easy
means to exert diplomatic leverage over Japan, because it contained the key phraseology of
acknowledging past ‘aggression’, ‘colonial rule’, ‘heartfelt apology’, and ‘remorse’, and
thus generally upheld previous government statements on the colonial wartime periods, did
little to address mutual suspicions over history. The statement contained a long preamble
about history, indicating that Japan had to respond to the onrush of Western colonialism,
how Japan’s victory in the Russo–Japanese war gave hope of self-determination to Asian
states, and how Japan was in a sense forced into the Pacific War by the creation of Western
83 T. J. Pempel, Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).
84 Christian G. Winkler, ‘Rising Right? Ideology and the 2012 House of Representatives
Election’, in Robert Pekkanen, Steven R. Reed and Ethan Scheiner, eds., Japan Decides
2012: The Japanese General Election (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 201–12.
85 Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Foreign and Security Policy Under the ‘Abe Doctrine’: New
Dynamism or New Dead End? (New York: Palgrave, 2015), pp. 72–75.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 133
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
economic blocs in the interwar period—all intimating classic right-wing justifications for
Japan having fought to liberate East Asia and a defensive war against the West, and in
which Japan was as much a casualty as other countries. Moreover, Abe preferred to talk of
Japan’s past statements on history in general, and studiously avoided using the first person
to say that he himself sought to apologize or uphold past positions. Abe also remarked that
‘further generations to come’ should not be ‘predestined to apologize’, so signifying his
view that a line should now be drawn under any further acts of Japanese contrition for the
war.86 Even though Chinese policymakers’commentary on the ‘Abe Statement’ was relatively muted, the reaction of China’s official media and social media was far more critical
of Abe’s perceived reluctance to make a clear break with and apology for its past militarism.87 Meanwhile, as noted above, the DPJ, despite purveying a more pro-China stance
under its older leaders, has also undergone internal changes that have brought to the fore
younger and more nationalist-oriented politicians, many of whom share suspicions similar
to their conservative LDP counterparts regarding China’s intentions.
At the general societal level, there has also occurred a general turn away from viewing
China’s intentions towards Japan as benign, precipitated by tensions over history, territory,
and other issues such as food safety scares, all of which reinforce the perception of China as
an untrustworthy partner.88 A series of opinion polls taken over a long period by Japan’s
Cabinet Office, for instance, show that the proportion of the public that felt no sense of affinity with China, already strongly on the rise since 2004 when there had been a rough parity with those that did feel a sense of affinity at around the high 40% mark, had by 2014
risen to 83 percent. By contrast, the level of Japanese that do feel a sense of affinity with
China has continued to fall since 2004, reaching an all-time low in the survey period of
15% in 2014 (Figure 2). 89 This decline in Japanese public feeling vis-a-vis China is not to
say that the majority in Japan has necessarily lined up with the more radical Revisionist sentiments, and it is clear that public opinion was also generally against Koizumi and Abe’s
visits to Yasukuni.90 However, the most disturbing conclusion from the polling information
is that, if at least there is no open antipathy towards China, there is perhaps indifference
and a fatigue over what are seen as cynical Chinese demands for Japan to submit on history
and territory.
The consequence is that Japanese policymakers and citizenry, whilst themselves perhaps
unconsciously mirroring Chinese behaviour by dabbling in their own revisionist and nationalist stances, view their counterparts as shifting from a position of pragmatism to one of
86 Shinzo Abe, ‘Statement by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the Seventieth Anniversary of
World WarII ’, 14 August, 2015, http://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/statement/201508/0814state
ment.html.
87 Marie-Alice McLean-Dreyfus, ‘How Did Chinese Media React to Abe’s World War II
Speech?’, The Interpreter, 17 August, 2015, http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2015/08/17/
How-did-Chinese-media-react-to-Abe-World-War-II-speech.aspx.
88 Paul O’Shea, ‘Dodgy Dumplings and Lethal Liver: Risk, Food Terrorism, and Sino-Japanese
Relations’, The Pacific Review, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2015), pp. 303–21.
89 Naikakufu Daijin Kanbo Seifu Kohoshitsu, Gaiko ni kansuru Yoron Ch  osa  (Public Opinon Poll
Regarding Diplomacy), 22 December, 2014, http://survey.gov-online.go.jp/h26/h26-gaiko/zh/
z08.html.
90 Mong Cheung, ‘Political Survival and the Yasukuni Controversy in Sino-Japanese Relations’,
Pacific Review, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2010), p. 537.
134 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
revisionism and dissatisfaction with the status quo. China is seen as intent to threaten the
regional order and on the way to developing into a fundamentally malign international
presence. The extent of Japanese suspicions of China’s intent was demonstrated by the exchanges of critiques between influential policymakers in January 2014. At the start of the
month, the Chinese and Japanese ambassadors to the UK entered into an extraordinary
spat, describing their respective countries in Daily Telegraph editorials as threats to regional
stability and ‘Asia’s Voldemort’.91 Later in the month, during a media meeting on the sidelines of the Davos World Economic Summit, Abe caused an international stir by seeming to
suggest that Japan–China relations were comparable to those of Great Britain and
Germany before World War I, when there was a lack of direct communication over intentions, and when economic interdependency was insufficient to prevent the occurrence of
conflict.92
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
%
Sense of affinity with China No sense of affinity with China
Fig. 2 Japanese Public Regarding a Sense of Affinity with China (1978–2014).
Source: Japan Cabinet Office
91 Liu Xiaoming, ‘Britain and China Won the War Together’, The Daily Telegraph, 1 January,
2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/10546442/Liu-Xiaoming-China-and-Britain-wonthe-war-together.html; Keiichi Hayashi, ‘China Risks Becoming Asia’s Voldemort’, The Daily
Telegraph, 5 January, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/
10552351/China-risks-becoming-Asias-Voldemort.html.
92 ‘Shusho Hatsugen Obei Hamon Nicch  u Guhatsu Shototsu Media Kennen’ (‘Prime Minister’s
Remarks Concerning Inadvertent Sino-Japanese Clash Attracts Western Media Interest’),
Asahi Shimbun, 25 January, 2014, http://digital.asahi.com/articles/DA3S10943750.html.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 135
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
The Offence–Defence Balance Tilts Away from Japan
Japan’s anxieties about China’s intentions have been matched and thus exacerbated by perceived shifts in the offence–defence capabilities balance, both internal and external.
Japanese policymakers have revised significantly upwards their estimates of China’s military capabilities in the post-Cold War period, given the PLA’s double-digit expansion of
budgets and military modernization programmes. The consistent assertion of Japanese policymakers has been that China’s defence build-up lacks transparency, thereby adding to the
problems of reading its intentions, but what is readily apparent is the PLA’s determination
to acquire for the first-time capabilities that threaten Japan’s core security interests.93 In
view of China’s new military capabilities, coupled with expanded Chinese territorial ambitions that go beyond just Taiwan, Japan now feels a new proximity to standing on the military frontline against China.94
Japanese analysts argue that the PLA is procuring capabilities that serve the immediate
asymmetric warfare ends of anti-access area denial (A2/AD) in the sea and airspace surrounding China, and is attempting through a campaign of constant military and psychological intimidation to wrest from Japan de facto control of disputed islands and maritime
space.95 In turn, Japanese policymakers fear that, longer term, China’s military build-up is
designed for the more symmetric warfare ends of penetrating offensively air, sea, and land
defences locally; ‘area control’ over the ‘first island chain’; the neutralization of the
Japanese and US naval presence; and to project military force on a par with that of other
great powers in the Asia-Pacific and beyond.
The Japan Air Self Defence Force (ASDF) has long been accustomed to maintaining
qualitative superiority among the region’s powers, but the People’s Liberation Army Air
Force (PLAAF) has begun for the first time to pose air defence challenges to Japan. The
PLAAF’s introduction since the late 1990s of fourth-generation fighters, in the shape of the
J-10, J-11B, Su-27, Su-30MKK, and Su-30MK2, and the fact that by 2014 the inventory
proportion of these fighters had risen to around one-third, has raised concerns that the
93 Advisory groups to the prime minister for the formulation of the National Defence
Programme Guidelines (NDPG) and NSS have consistently expressed such concerns, see
Anzen Hosho to Boeiryoku ni Kansuru Kondankai, Anzen Hosho to B  oeiryoku ni Kansuru 
Kondankai Hokokush  o (Council on Security and Defense Capability Report), August 2009,
http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/ampobouei2/200908houkoku.pdf, p. 12; Aratana Jidai no
Anzen Hosho to Boeiryoku ni Kansuru Kondankai, Aratana Jidai ni Okeru Nihon no Anzen
Hosho to B  oeiryoku no Sh  orai K  os o ‘Heiwa S  oz o Kokka’ o Mezashite  (Joint Vision for
Future Security and Defense Capabilities in the New Era: Toward a Peace Creating Nation),
August 2010, https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/shin-ampobouei2010/houkokusyo.pdf, p. 8;
Cabinet Office Japan, National Security Strategy, p. 12.
94 Richard C. Bush, The Perils of Proximity: China-Japan Security Relations (Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution Press, 2010), pp. 63–86.
95 Boeisho, Nihon Boei Hakusho 2014  (Defense of Japan White Paper 2014) (Tokyo: Zaimusho
Insatsukyoku, 2014), pp. 33, 45. Kawamura Sumihiko, ‘Tosho Boei no Shomondai’(‘Multiple
Defense Issues’), in Yachi Shotaro, ed., <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON> to B  oei Seisaku  (Japan’s
Security and Defence Policy) (Tokyo: Wedge, 2013), pp. 97–120; Thomas J. Christensen,
‘Posing Problems Without Catching Up: China’s Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security
Policy’, International Security, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2001), pp. 5–40.
136 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
ASDF’s ageing fleet of F4-Js and F-15Js may be rapidly losing its edge of air superiority.96
PLA Second Artillery Corps’ ballistic missile forces, in the shape of DF-15/CSS-6 and DF-3/
CSS-2 intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM), although clearly directed primarily at
Taiwan rather than Japan, pose concerns due to their capability to strike JSDF and US Air
Force (USAF), US Navy (USN), and US Marine Corps (USMC) forces stationed in Japan
itself.
The Maritime Self Defence Force (MSDF) concerns about China revolve around its
modernization of a range of anti-access and blue water maritime capabilities. The PLAN’s
introduction of the Kilo, Yuan, and Song-class diesel-powered and Shang-class nuclearpowered submarines with quieting technologies complicate the MSDF’s traditional defensive role of keeping the seas surrounding Japan free from enemy submarines for the US
Seventh Fleet to concentrate on effective projection of offensive power. The PLAN’s
Luyang-class and Luzhou-class guided missile destroyers that play a fleet air defence role,
combined with Sovremenny-class ‘anti-ship destroyers’ capable of targeting US aircraft carriers, and the introduction of Jiangkai-class guided missile frigates with ‘stealth’ characteristics, demonstrate China’s potential to deploy modern fleet formations, and thus to seriously
complicate Japanese and US naval dominance in the region.
China’s pursuit of aircraft carriers through the refit of the ex-Soviet Varyag as its new
Liaoning carrier, commissioned in 2012, and speculation in 2015 that it is laying down the
hull for a second-indigenous carrier, has generated intense interest in Japan; for while it is
recognized that Chinese carriers are likely to lag far behind in capability those of the USA,
it is nevertheless read as yet another sign of determination to pursue offensive power projection and to challenge the US’s effective monopoly in this area. An additional concern for
Japanese planners is China’s upgrading through Yuzhao-class landing ships of its amphibious warfare capabilities, which might form part of a contingency plan to seize Japanese
southern islands.
Japanese concerns over the PLA’s potential to surpass the JSDF’s internal balancing
capabilities are exacerbated further by the increasing Chinese challenge to the US role as an
external balancer. Japanese policymakers have for the first time in the post-war period
begun to doubt seriously whether the USA possesses the necessary military power to counter the Chinese probing and access-denial strategies that have most direct impact on Japan’s
security in regard to territorial disputes and SLOC security. There are fears that China’s
A2/AD strategy may impose costs on the US military that might prevent its intervention in
regional contingencies similar to that carried out in the 1995–1996 Taiwan Straits crisis.
China’s ability to strike USAF Kadena in Okinawa, or USAF, USN, and USMC assets at
Iwakuni, Misawa, and Yokota in Honshu, is perceived in the event of a crisis to threaten in- 
capacitation of US forces.97
96 U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2014 Report to Congress of the U.S.-
China Economic and Security Review Commission, 113th Congress, 2nd session,
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2014, p. 309, http://origin.www.uscc.gov/
sites/default/files/annual_reports/Complete%20Report.PDF.
97 David A. Shlapak, ‘The Red Rockets’ Glare: Implications of Improvements in PRC Air and
Missile Strike Capabilities’, in Roger Cliff, Philip Saunders, and Scott Harald, eds., New
Opportunities and Challenges for Taiwan’s Security (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation,
2011), p. 75.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 137
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
Even more worrying for Japan long term is China’s development of anti-ship ballistic
missiles (ASBM) capable of striking US aircraft carriers operating out of Japan and in the
Asia-Pacific, which might severely undermine the US force projection and deterrent posture
in the region.98 Japanese policymakers hold out considerable hopes that the US’s Air-Sea
Battle Concept will overcome China’s A2/AD, but are concerned about whether or not the
USA is deploying the full range of naval and air capabilities necessary to effect what is not
yet a clear-cut strategy, and whether or not it has sufficient budgetary capacity to truly
pivot its military might to the Asia-Pacific to counter China’s rising power.99
Japanese anxieties about the sufficiency of the US’s extant military capabilities to control the ‘global commons’ and enable intervention in the East Asia theatre have in turn
raised questions about the impact this might have on broader US political and military security guarantees to Japan.100 Japanese policymakers now fear the heightened prospect of
US abandonment in a situation of strategic accommodation between the USA and China,
and if the USA deems Japan’s security interests as falling short of the necessary threshold
for convergence with its own core interests to warrant mobilization of its forces in Japan’s
defence. This risk is seen as especially likely if, in light of Chinese A2/AD strategies, the cost
of deployment of US forces is constantly rising. The lingering suspicion of some Japanese
analysts is that the defence of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, even though included under the
scope of Article 5 of the bilateral security treaty due to being under Japanese administration, and having drawn renewed reassurances from the USA in this regard since 2010, could
be just such an issue wherein the USA would hesitate to intervene on Japan’s behalf for fear
of putting at risk the entire Sino–US relationship; and especially if China were to seize the
islands, thus raising the prospect of the USA and Japan’s attempting to recover the territories from China in a full-scale conflict rather than initial deterrence of aggression.101
Hence, even though President Obama reiterated during his state visit to Japan in April
2014 on the occasion of his press conference with Abe that Article 5 of the security treaty
covered all territories under Japanese administration, including the Senkaku/Diaoyu
98 Boeishohen, Boei Hakusho 2011  (Defense of Japan White Paper 2011) (Tokyo: Zaimusho
Insatsukyoku, 2011), p. 81.
99 Yoichi Kato, ‘Japan’s Response to New US Defence Strategy: “Welcome But...’ ”, PacNet,
No. 17, Pacific Forum CSIS, 15 March 2012, http://csis.org/files/publication/Pac1217.pdf;
Michael McDevitt, ‘The Evolving Maritime Security Environment in East Asia: Implications
for the US-Japan Alliance’, PacNet, No. 33, Pacific Forum CSIS, 31 March, 2012, http://
csis.org/publication/pacnet-33-evolving-maritime-security-environment-east-asia-implica
tions-us-japan-alliance.
100 For an excellent analysis of the USA’s increasingly hard-pressed capabilities to intervene
in regional contingencies in East Asia, see Eric Heginbotham, ed., The U.S.-China Military
Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power 1996-2017 (Santa
Monica: RAND Corporation, 2015), pp. 323–42.
101 Magosaki Ukeru, ‘Nichibei Domei o Zettai Shisubekarazu: Beigun ga Nihon o Mamoru to
Kagiranai Riyu’ (The US.-Japan Alliance Cannot be Relied On: The Reasons for the US
Military’s Limited Defence of Japan), in Bungei Shunjuhen, ed., Nihon no Ronten 2012
(Japan’s Debating Points 2012) (Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 2012), pp. 120–23; Magosaki Ukeru,
Fuyukai no Genjitsu: Ch  ugoku no Taikokuka, Beikoku no Senryaku Tenkan  (The
Uncomfortable Truth: China’s Rise to Great Power, The US’s Strategic Change) (Tokyo:
Kodansha Gendai Shinsho, 2012), pp. 130–34.
138 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
Islands, thus becoming the first US president to state this position publicly, he simultaneously tempered this by stating that the USA would make no new security pledges to Japan,
that it was important as well for the USA to maintain good relations with China, and that
the USA looked to Japan and China to reach a diplomatic resolution to territorial issues.
Moreover, in response to the question from a reporter that immediately followed about the
credibility of US security guarantees to Japan against the background of the USA’s inability
to prevent Russia’s effective territorial annexation of Ukraine, Obama noted that there
should be no automatic expectation of the US’s military intervention in such disputes, and
that it instead preferred to adopt the diplomatic approaches.102 Japanese policymakers,
while gaining reassurance from the president’s statements, could thus also infer a strong
and continued risk of abandonment.
Japan Shifts from Hedging to Incipient Balancing
Japan’s eroding confidence in the benign intentions of China and the offence–defence capabilities balance now very much approximates to the logic and conditions contained within
Defensive Realism and Liberalism which would explain states’ potential shift from hedging
towards more assertive balancing in international strategy. The evidence by virtue of
Japan’s recent international behaviour validates this logic, as it has indeed moved towards
‘soft’ and incipient ‘hard’ balancing vis-a-vis China.
‘Soft’ Containment and Balancing
Japanese ‘soft balancing’ of China is apparent in newly vigorous diplomacy campaigns that
seek to complicate and where possible check growing Chinese influence in East Asia and
other regions. Under the leadership of the Revisionists, Japan has attempted to augment its
international reputation, often in deliberate contradistinction to China, thus to hinder its
rival’s potential hegemonic rise. Abe and Aso have in their respective terms in office sought 
to articulate a new ‘values-oriented diplomacy’, stressing Japan’s internationalism and promotion of democracy, liberal market economy, human rights, and rule of law, in implicit
contrast to the authoritarianism of China. Abe enunciated during his first administration
the concept of the ‘Arc of Freedom and Prosperity’ stretching from Northeast Asia through
Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Central Europe, and the Baltic states, whose
alleged cohesion is attributable to the promotion among these states of ‘universal values’.103 In his 2012 campaign to recover the LDP leadership and premiership, Abe then
switched to the similar concept of a ‘Democratic Security Diamond’, including Japan, the
USA, Australia, and India, again formulated in apparent opposition to China’s refusal,
demonstrated in its behaviour, to abide by international conventions and norms.104
Abe has in his latest stint in office endorsed these values-oriented type concepts through
diplomatic visits to states on China’s periphery, many of which share common cause with
Japan in their anxiety over China’s rise and its territorial intentions. By the end of his first
102 Office of the Press Secretary White House, ‘Joint Press Conference with President Obama
and Prime Minister Abe of Japan’, 24 April, 2014, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-of
fice/2014/04/24/joint-press-conference-president-obama-and-prime-minister-abe-japan.
103 Christopher W. Hughes, ‘Japan’s Response to China’s Rise: Regional Engagement, Global
Containment, Dangers of Collision’, International Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 4 (2008), pp. 837–54.
104 Abe, ‘Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond’.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 139
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
year in office, Abe had visited all 10 of the ASEAN states. Abe’s visit to Myanmar in May
2013 was the first in 36 years by a Japanese prime minister to this strategically important
country previously closer to China in diplomatic orientation, and Japan and Myanmar
have indeed pledged enhanced security dialogue and defence exchanges. Throughout all
these visits, Abe again asserted a range of shared values and hopes for enhanced cooperation that were raised in implicit opposition to China’s rising presence in the region. Abe
has reinforced security cooperation with economic assistance: Japan pledged at the Japan–
ASEAN Commemorative Summit in Tokyo in December 2013 close to US$20 billion in
ODA to ASEAN Member States. In addition, to counter China’s AIIB proposal, in May
2015 Abe announced US$110 billion in aid for Asian infrastructure projects via the ADB
and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, its disbursement speeded up by a one
year rather than three-year decision-making turnaround.105
Japanese leaders have sought, in particular, to join hands with ASEAN Member States in
emphasizing the importance of international norms and laws covering the freedom of maritime navigation and handling of territorial disputes in the South China Sea and beyond.106
Japan has supported ASEAN, bilaterally and collectively, in calling for all states to adhere to
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Declaration on the
Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, so attempting to create a unified legal front to
counter China’s so-called ‘law-fare’ campaign in the region, and to isolate it over its ADIZ
declaration. Japan has agreed to further develop ‘strategic partnerships’ with Vietnam,
Thailand, and Indonesia, and to strengthen dialogue on security issues. Japan, Malaysia,
Vietnam, and the Philippines have focused especially on maritime security cooperation in the
South China Sea, Japan having agreed to provide the Philippine coast guard with 10 patrol
boats and to survey their provision also to Vietnam.107
Japan demonstrated its potential maritime presence in the South China Sea through its
dispatch of more than 1000 JSDF personnel and three MSDF vessels for relief operations
around the Leyte Gulf after the 2013 Haiyan cyclone disaster in the Philippines. President
Benigno Aquino, during his visit to Japan in June 2015, also stated that his government
would initiate talks with Japan on a Visiting Forces Agreement that would allow the JSDF
to use Philippine bases.108 Abe expressed support for US Freedom of Navigation (FON) operations in November 2015 during the US–Japan summit at the Philippines APEC, saying
that as the South China Sea, ‘influenced Japan’s own security, continued attention would
be devoted to it and investigation of JSDF activities’, so hinting that Japan could join FON
in line with interpretations of collective self-defence.109
105 Anthony Fensom, ‘Japan Ups the Ante on AIIB’, The Diplomat, 23 May, 2015, http://thediplo
mat.com/2015/05/japan-ups-ante-on-aiib/.
106 Shinzo Abe, ‘The Bounty of the Open Seas: Five New Principles for Japanese diplomacy’,
Jakarta, 18 January 2013, http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/pm/abe/abe_0118e.html.
107 Corey J. Wallace, ‘Japan’s Strategic Pivot South: Diversifying the Dual Hedge’, International
Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2013), pp. 488–95; Paul Midford, ‘Japan’s Approach
to Maritime Security in the South China Sea’, Asian Survey, Vol. 55, No. 3 (2015), pp. 541–42.
108 ‘Philippines Wants Defence Pact for Japanese Troops’, Asahi Shimbun, 5 June, 2015,
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201506050092.
109 ‘Minamishinakai de Katsudo, Kento: Shusho “Josei o Chushi Suru” ’ (‘Investigation,
Activities in the South China Sea: The Prime Minister “Will Consider Intently the
Situation” ’), Asahi Shimbun, 20 November, 2015, p. 3.
140 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
Japan has furthermore pursued in recent years a new round of resource and energy diplomacy to counter China’s rising influence in these areas, and especially to obviate its dependency on the rare earth supplies that China threatened to embargo in 2010. Abe
remarked in 2012 that, ‘India’s government has shown its political savvy by forging an
agreement to provide Japan with rare earth materials—a vital component in many manufacturing processes—after China chose to use its supplies of rare earths as a diplomatic
stick.’110 Japan has attempted to reengage with the resource-rich Central Asian republics
often thought to form China’s ‘backyard’ through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
process. It was Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutar  o’s 1988 Silk Road Action Plan that first 
led to Japan becoming the region’s largest ODA donor. Foreign Minister Kawaguchi
Yuriko made the first visit by a high-ranking Japanese minister to Central Asia in 2004;
Koizumi then visited the region in 2006, and METI minister Amari Akira in April 2007.
Abe visited Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan in October
2015, becoming the first Japanese prime minister to visit all five central Asian republics,
and pledged close to ¥26 billion in grants and loans for state-building and democracy consolidation and for developing gas and nuclear energy in the region. Abe’s visits to Mongolia
in 2013 and 2015 were similarly aimed at expanding Japan’s resource supplies. Overall,
Japan has in recent years attempted to demonstrate a presence in Central Asia that precludes China’s monopolization of the region through its own Silk Road Initiatives.
In the Middle East, Japan has looked to counter China’s potential hold on energy resources by forging closer bilateral ties. Abe made visits in April 2007 to Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Qatar, and Egypt: the first by a Japanese premier to
Saudi Arabia for four years, the first to the UAE and Qatar for 29 years, and the first-ever
to Kuwait. Abe sought promises from these states of stable and sustained supplies of oil and
gas. In addition, in 2006 Japan launched Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Upon returning to power, in the space of
just over one year Abe paid visits to all of the GCC states—Saudi Arabia and the UAE in
May, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar in August 2013, and Oman in January 2014—again prospecting for economic and energy cooperation deals.
Meanwhile, China’s growing influence in Africa has led to a corresponding resurgence
of Japanese interest in the continent. Japan pledged in 2008 to double ODA to African
states by 2012 via the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD)
process. Japan has reinvigorated TICAD as a counter to the China–Africa Summit, and elaborated a concept of development that provides a so-called middle course between the
West’s emphasis on economic conditionality and governance reform and China’s authoritarianism and mercantilist search for resources. Abe paid visits in January 2014 to Cote
d’Ivoire, Mozambique, and Ethiopia, the first to Africa by a Japanese prime minister since
2006 and thus to a select group of states on the African continent with potential energy resources and considerable political influence. In addition, since 2012 the JSDF has maintained a small peacekeeping operation (PKO) commitment in South Sudan, the size and
scope of which it may enlarge in view of the passage in 2015 of the new security legislation.
It is in part an attempt to establish a Japanese presence that matches China’s burgeoning
PKO role and which wields influence in this resource-rich new state.
Finally, Japan has sought to counter China’s rising influence across the East Asia region
through its support, largely in opposition to perceived favour of China’s regional
110 Abe, ‘Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond’.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 141
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
integration project—the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) which excludes the USA, for the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. Japanese leaders
envisage the benefits of the TPP as helping to create a US and Japanese-oriented set of economic rules that reinforce liberal values among regional participants. Abe remarked in regard to the TPP in his address to a joint meeting of the US Congress in April 2015 that,
‘Involving countries in the Asia-Pacific region whose backgrounds vary, the US and Japan
must take the lead. We must take the lead in building a market that is fair, dynamic, sustainable, and also free from the arbitrary intentions of any nation,’ thus referring to, without explicitly stating, the need to counter China via the TPP.111
Japan’s ‘soft-balancing’ of China—which the Japanese media have often dubbed an ‘encirclement’ or ‘siege’ strategy—has achieved certain benefits in impeding Chinese influence,
but the pay-offs have been limited.112 Japanese ‘values-oriented’ diplomacy has often failed
either to convince or gain much influence, given Japan’s own history of colonial expansion
and its past tendency to tolerate authoritarian regimes in the interests of economic development. Upon succeeding Abe, Prime Minister Fukuda quietly dropped the concept of the Arc
of Freedom and Prosperity, and the DPJ proved reluctant to give play to the concept of values-oriented diplomacy. The maritime ASEAN states are clearly receptive to Japanese engagement in the South China Sea, but remain wary of alienating China, and have no
intention of becoming pawns in a wider Japan–China power struggle in the region. For instance, it is notable that there was no explicit condemnation of China’s ADIZ in the Joint
Statement of the Japan–ASEAN Commemorative Summit; and that ASEAN representatives
at the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting in November 2015, faced with contending pressures from Japan and the USA on one side and China on the other, failed to raise any stressing concerns about China’s activities in the South China Sea.113
Japan’s Hard Military Balancing and a Sino–Japanese Arms Race?
Japan’s sense that its attempts at ‘soft containment’ have only limited traction as regards
slowing the rise of the Chinese juggernaut has thus obliged it to consider more robust ‘hard
balancing’ options, both internally and externally. Japanese Revisionists’ initiation of various processes to clear the decks domestically for the exercise of military power is one indication of a new potential for balancing behaviour.
Japan under Abe for the first time established in 2013 an NSS and National Security
Council to facilitate faster decision-making among key leaders and more effective military
crisis management. Abe’s government subsequently issued in July 2014 a Cabinet Decision
enabling Japan to breach its post-war ban on the exercise of ‘limited’ collective self-defence,
and thus to use armed force in the defence of another state, even when Japan itself is not
under direct attack. In September 2014, Abe’s government completed the passage through
111 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, ‘Address by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to a Joint
Meeting of the US Congress: “Toward an Alliance of Hope” ’, 29 April, 2015, http://www.
mofa.go.jp/na/na1/us/page4e_000241.html.
112 ‘Abe, Aso Ryoshi ‘Chugoku Hoiami’ Ninin Sankyaku Shuhen Gaikokyu’(Abe, Aso, Both
Depart on Foreign Trips in Three-Legged Race for ‘China’s Encirclement’) Asahi Shimbun, 3
May, 2013, http://digital.asahi.com/articles/TKY201305030003.html.
113 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, ‘Joint Statement of the ASEAN-Japan Commemorative
Summit: “Hand in Hand Facing Regional and Global Challenges” ’, 14 December, 2013,
http://www.mofa.go.jp/files/000022451.pdf.
142 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
the National Diet of a raft of security-related bills, the most prominent of which are: the
Law on Response to Contingencies, enabling Japan’s exercise of the right of collective selfdefence in scenarios where an attack on another state in a close relationship with Japan
poses a clear danger of overturning the Japanese people’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, where there is no other appropriate means to repel the attack, and where
the use of force is restricted to the minimum necessary to repel the attack; the Law to
Ensure Security in Contingencies Significantly Affecting Japan, replacing the 1999 Regional
Contingencies Law, and designed to bolster Japanese non-combat logistical support for the
USA, and also other states, regionally and globally; the International Peace Support Law,
which removes the need for Japan to enact separate laws for each JSDF dispatch providing
logistical support to multinational forces; and revisions to the International Peace
Cooperation Law, enabling the JSDF to use force during UN PKO in the pursuit of certain
duties rather than solely in the defence of JSDF personnel.
The move to exercise the right of collective self-defence signifies a major development in
Japan’s overturning of its post-war security course, and augmentation of its ability to respond militarily to the rise of China. The LDP and New Komeit  o presented a number of 
scenarios to justify the security legislation which were the subject of National Diet deliberations, and envisaged to enhance US–Japan cooperation and deterrence of North Korea
and China, including: the protection of US ships carrying Japanese nationals; defending US
warships under attack close to Japan; defending the US military against ballistic missile attacks; forceful interdiction of shipping; protecting critical sea lanes; and ‘grey zone’ contingencies around Japan’s far-flung islands.
In regard to military doctrines and capabilities, there has been a similar attempt, driven
by China’s rise, to upgrade Japan’s ability to implement an incipient balancing strategy.
Japan’s National Defence Program Guidelines (NDPG) set out the national doctrine, and
the military capabilities necessary for its achievement. The 1995 NDPG omitted any direct
reference to China, but the revised 2004 NDPG noted China’s modernization of its nuclear
and ballistic missile forces and increasing ambitions for out-of-area operations, and that
Japan should ‘remain attentive to its future actions’.114 The NDPG went on to state that
the JSDF would increasingly reorient its capabilities to respond to scenarios such as ballistic
missile attacks, invasion of Japan’s offshore islands, and violations of Japanese sea and air
space—all indirect references to China’s military activities. The 2010 NDPG stepped up the
rhetoric, emphasizing China’s rapid military modernization and development of power projection, stressing that all this constituted a ‘concern for the regional and global
community’—again Japanese oblique language signifying China’s growth as a significant
threat.115 The revisions of the NDPG in 2013 under Abe reemphasized that China’s
114 ‘Heisei 8 Nendo Iko ni Kakawaru Boei Keikaku no Taiko’ (‘National Defence Programme
Outline 1995 Fiscal Year’), Tokyo, 28 November, 1995, http://www.mod.go.jp/j/approach/
agenda/guideline/1996_taikou/dp96j.html; ‘Heisei 17 Nendo Iko ni Kakawaru Boei Keikaku
no Taiko ni Tsuite’, Tokyo (‘National Defence Programme Guidelines 2005 Fiscal Year’), 10
December, 2004, http://www.mod.go.jp/j/approach/agenda/guideline/2005/taikou.html.
115 ‘Heisei 23 nendo iko ni kakawaru Boei Keikaku no Taiko ni Tsuite’ (‘National Defence
Programme Guidelines 2011 Fiscal Year’), Tokyo, 17 December, 2011, http://www.mod.go.jp/
j/approach/agenda/guideline/2011/taikou.html.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 143
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
intensification of its air and maritime activities remained ‘concerns for regional and global
security’.116
The 2010 NDPG reacted to China’s rising threat by implying a step change in Japanese
defence doctrine through its adoption of the new concept of a Dynamic Defence Force
(DDF), characterized by lighter, more technologically advanced forces with power projection capabilities in regional contingencies for the defence of Japan’s periphery, rather than
just the static defence of Japan itself, and thus geared to respond to China’s security challenge. In addition, the 2010 NDPG continued the trend of Japan moving its key military
assets southwards for the defence of its islands against China’s growing maritime power,
including the doubling of F-15J squadrons at Naha in Okinawa. The 2013 revisions to the
NDPG modified the DDF to produce the concept of a Dynamic Joint Defense Force
(DJDF), this time emphasizing the need for improved joint GSDF, MSDF, and ASDF
operations.
In terms of the development of specific military capabilities, the 2010 and 2013
NDPGs and their accompanying Midterm Defence Program (MTDP) have largely sought
to counter China’s modernization through a symmetrical build-up of JSDF assets. The
2013 NDPG was particularly notable in designating that the GSDF would for the first
time acquire a full amphibious capability for the retaking of remote islands. The force
will comprise around 3000 personnel, equipped with 52 of the GSDF’s first amphibious
armed personnel carriers. Japan will further procure seventeen MV-22 Osprey transports
as used by the USMC.
The ASDF has sought to slow any adverse change in the balance of air defence power by
investing in fifth-generation fighters to trump China’s fourth-generation inventory. Japan
in December 2011 thus plumped for the procurement of 42 F-35As. Japan’s attachment of
importance to the stealth capabilities of the F-35A with its greater associated strengths as
an air defence penetration fighter rather than air superiority fighter, suggests a future interest in developing for the ASDF an offensive counter-air (OCA) doctrine. This type of
Japanese capability might be used in a contingency to strike against the Chinese mainland
and missile launch sites, and so mark a radical departure in Japan’s defence-oriented posture. The ASDF is furthermore now set on procuring Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles (UAV) to help patrol Japan’s air space, long coastline and distant islands.
Japan’s reaction to China’s missile forces has again been largely symmetric, evident in
attempts to neutralize these capabilities through the deployment of Ballistic Missile
Defence (BMD). The 2010 and 2013 NDPGs mandate the ASDF to maintain six anti-aircraft groups equipped with PAC-3 batteries, and the MSDF eight Aegis destroyers equipped
with BMD SM-3 interceptors. The JSDF now deploys, after the US, the most sophisticated
BMD capabilities in the Asia-Pacific. It is thus attempting deterrence through denial of
China’s ballistic missile threat, backed up by the F-15J and in future the F-35A, to counter
cruise missiles.117
The MSDF matches Japan’s recent primary maritime security concerns about China,
having embarked on the most significant build-up of capabilities under the 2010 and previous NDPGs, many of which are designed to negate both the PLAN’s access-denial and blue
116 ‘National Defence Program Guidelines for FY2014 and Beyond’, Tokyo, 17 December, 2014,
http://www.mod.go.jp/j/approach/agenda/guideline/2014/pdf/20131217_e.pdf, p. 2.
117 Boeisho Boeikenkyusho, Higashi Ajia Senryaku Gainen 2012 (East Asia Strategic Review
2012)(Tokyo: Zaimusho Insatsukyoku, 2012), p. 240.
144 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
water naval strategies. The MSDF was provided under the 2010 NDPG and MTDP with an
increase in its submarine fleet of more than one third, from 15 to 22 boats, including the
introduction of the Sory  u-class submarine platform that provides leading-edge technologies
in air-independent and fuel-cell propulsion and operation. The 2010 NDPG and MTDP
specified that the destroyer force be maintained at 48 ships, but the 2013 NDPG and
MTDP increased this number to 54. As part of this maritime build-up, Japan continues to
introduce Destroyer-Helicopter warships (DDH). The MSDF has taken delivery of two
7000 ton Hyuga  -class 16 DDHs, with a regular complement of four helicopters capable of
carrying up to 11. It has now procured a further two 19000-ton Izumo-class 22DDs,
launched in August 2013 and August 2015, capable of carrying up to 14 helicopters. The
MSDF DDHs are the largest vessels built for the service in the post-war period, and are in
all but name light helicopter carriers. The prime function of these assets is to provide
powerful anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability, clearly aimed against China’s accessdenial strategy. But Japan’s venturing back into carrier technology is resonate of a possible
Sino–Japanese carrier arms race, and the suspicion of analysts is that the MSDF might eventually attempt to operate fixed-wing aircraft from the DDH-22s such as the maritime variant of the F-35. Japan’s maritime air and ASW capability is to be further strengthened
through procurement of a replacement for its P-3Cs with the introduction of an indigenous
P-1 patrol surveillance aircraft with the ability to sweep over an 8000 kilometer range and
thus deep into the South China Sea.
Japan under Abe also appears resolved to allocate more funds to its build-up of national
military capabilities. Shortly after taking power, Abe initiated the first, albeit modest, rise
in Japanese defence spending in over a decade. The JMOD’s defence expenditure has
increased at rates of 1–2% over the last three years, and it has requested another 2.2% rise
for 2015–2016 which signifies the largest defence budget in the post-war period.118
Japanese policymakers have argued that these defence budget increases are still modest in
the context of its stagnating budgets for almost two decades and of the rapid rise in China’s
military expenditure. But Japan’s desire to raise defence spending is clearly driven by a
growing impulse to balance China militarily (Figure 3).
US–Japan Alliance and other Balancing Partners
Japan’s military modernization programme has undoubtedly enhanced its ability to internally balance China, but it has at the same time redoubled efforts to strengthen external balancing alongside the USA, and to obviate any risks of abandonment. Although US–Japan
alliance relations under the DPJ initially suffered tensions due to the Hatoyama administration’s decision to withdraw the MSDF from refueling operations to support the international coalition’s efforts in Afghanistan, and to its reconsideration of and subsequent
relenting on plans to relocate the USMC Futenma Air Station within Okinawa Prefecture,
the DPJ nonetheless continued to strengthen the long-term military foundations of the
alliance.
In regard to BMD, perhaps the most important long-term driver of US–Japan military
integration, cooperation under the DPJ has rolled forward. Japan and the USA continued
the joint development of the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor missile, and agreed in June 2011
118 Boeisho, ‘Waga Kuni no Boei to Yosan: Heisei 28nendo Gaisan Yokyu no Gaiyo’(National
Defence and Budget: Outline of Request for 2016), August 2015, http://www.mod.go.jp/j/
yosan/2016/gaisan.pdf.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 145
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
that Japan would make an exemption in the arms export ban to permit export of the missile
to third countries.119 In April 2012, Japan and the USA completed plans for collocation of
the ASDF Air Defence Command with that of the USAF at Yokota air base, near Tokyo,
thus to improve information-sharing in response to missile attacks.120
The 2010 NDPG was devised with close linkages to the USA’s own Quadrennial
Defence Review (QDR) that year, and coincided in general with the USA’s ‘rebalance’ towards the Asia-Pacific, announced in January 2011. The DPJ actually overtook previous
LDP administrations by updating in the 2011 Security Consultative Committee (the main
policy coordinating mechanism of the alliance) the 2005 and 2007 ‘Common Strategic
Objectives’ of the bilateral alliance to include functions such as enhanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), maritime security, and cyber security, so laying the
groundwork for the later revision in 2015 under the Abe administration of the US–Japan
Guidelines for Defence Cooperation.121 US–Japan alliance interoperability was then tested
and strengthened in the wake of the 3.11 disasters.122 The USA launched Operation
Tomodachi to support the JSDF’s own mobilization of 100000 troops for disaster relief by
44,500
45,000
45,500
46,000
46,500
47,000
47,500
48,000
48,500
49,000
49,500
50,000
¥100 millions
Fig. 3 Japan Defense Expenditure Trends 1997–2015 and Defense Budget Request for 2016.
Source: Ministry of Defence Japan
119 ‘Joint statement of the Security Consultative Committee: Toward a Deeper and Broader
Alliance Building on Fifty Years of Partnership’, 21 June, 2011, http://www.mofa.go.jp/re
gion/n-america/us/security/pdfs/joint1106_01.pdf, p. 9.
120 ‘ASDF Command Now at Yokota’, The Japan Times Online, 27 March, 2012, http://www.
japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120327a2.html.
121 Boei Kenkyusho, Higashi Ajia Senryaku Gaiyo 2012  , pp. 224-225; Department of Defence,
Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for the Twenty First Century, January 2012,
http://www.defense.gov/news/Defense_Strategic_Guidance.pdf, p. 2.
122 Richard J. Samuels, 3.11: Disaster and Change in Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2013).
146 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
utilizing the full panoply of its military assets in Japan itself and the Pacific, including 20
USN vessels, 140 aircraft, and 20 000 USMC personnel.
The return to power of the LDP in 2012 opened the way towards further initiatives to
strengthen the US–Japan alliance. The Abe administration’s revised 2013 NDPG was
clearly geared to strengthening security cooperation with the USA. The next stage in reinforcing the alliance was the April 2015 revision of the US–Japan Defence Guidelines, the
first since 1997. The 2015 Defence Guidelines revisions expand the range of Japanese support for the USA in contingencies to include: ISR; BMD; maritime security; asset protection;
joint use of facilities; PKO; humanitarian assistance and disaster relief; and defence activities in cyber space and outer space. The revised Guidelines stress the concept of ‘seamless
cooperation’ and a ‘whole-of-government approach’, so removing the previous rigid separation of bilateral cooperation into ‘peacetime’, ‘Japan’ and ‘regional’ contingencies. The intention is for military cooperation to operate more smoothly across all potential scenarios
and levels of conflict escalation.
Moreover, the revised Defence Guidelines emphasize that bilateral cooperation should
now be global, and not necessarily geographically restricted, as in past formulations, to
Japan itself or the surrounding region. Even more significantly, and designed to interlink
with Japan’s breach of the ban on the exercise of collective self-defence in July 2014, the
revised Defence Guidelines outline the areas wherein the JSDF can now exercise force to defend US forces, such as the protection of US shipping, interdiction of other shipping, BMD,
and providing logistical support during conflicts.123 The same year Japan followed up the
revised Defence Guidelines with its new security legislation to create the framework for the
exercise of collective self-defence, comprising the Law on Response to Contingencies, and
the Law to Ensure Security in Contingencies Significantly Affecting Japan, so replacing the
1999 Regional Contingencies Law.
In addition, Japan has expanded its scope of military cooperation, in conjunction with
US regional security strategy, and begun to incorporate a wider range of US allies and partners to support its incipient balancing strategy. Japan and Australia security ties have
advanced relatively steadily since the ‘Joint Declaration on Security’ in 2003, and the DPJ
administration concluded in 2010 an Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA)
with Australia on the sharing of military logistical support in peacetime and UN operations.
Modelled on Japan’s ACSA with the USA, signed in 1996 and revised in 1999, it clearly
provides a template compatible with the future possible trilateral logistical cooperation
among Japan, the USA, and Australia. Japan and Australia signed an Information Security
Agreement in May 2012, again modelled on that between Japan and the USA, thus serving
to further enhance the potential for trilateral cooperation; and in April 2014 both sides concluded a new EPA and pledged further cooperation on cyber-security and defence technology exchanges.124 The NSC, in line with the new Three Principles on the Transfer of
Defence Technology and Equipment, approved in April 2015 Japan’s participation in the
competitive tender to provide new submarines for Australia. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
and Kawasaki Shipbuilding Ltd. are moreover seeking to export technology from its Sory  u-
class attack submarines.
123 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, ‘The Guidelines for Japan-US Defence Cooperation’, 27
April, 2015, http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/files/000078188.pdf.
124 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, ‘Joint Press Release on Japan-Australia Summit
Meeting’, 7 April, 2014, http://www.mofa.go.jp/files/000034801.pdf.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 147
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
Japanese security ties with India, as compared with those with Australia, have proceeded more slowly since the initial ‘Joint Declaration on Security and Cooperation’ in
2008. The DPJ administration did, though, step up cooperation with this emerging US partner, having conducted in December 2011 the first-ever foreign ministry director-level security talks trilaterally with the USA and India, and reached agreement in 2012 to hold joint
naval maritime security exercises. Similarly, Japan and the DPJ government have been
more willing to explore meaningful ties with South Korea as another important US partner.
The MSDF officers first observed US–South Korea military exercises, as a demonstration of
trilateral unity in the wake of the Cheonan sinking incident, in July 2010. South Korean
navy officers first participated as observers in US–Japan large-scale military exercises in
December of that year, this time following North Korea’s bombardment of Yeonpyeong
Island. Japan and South Korea had been considering since early 2011, and in April 2012
were reportedly close to signing, an ACSA and General Security of Military Information
Agreement (GSOMIA) on the exchange of BMD early warning intelligence. The South
Korean government shied away from finally concluding the agreements in May 2012, due
to domestic political sensitivities over military cooperation with Japan, further compounded by Abe’s visit to Yasukuni in December 2013; but following North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests in February 2016, Japan and South Korea have resumed discussions
on implementing the agreement.125 Meanwhile, Japan has under the first and second Abe
administrations shown interest in establishing cooperation with NATO, and signed defence
cooperation memoranda with the UK and France in 2012 and 2013 as regards cooperation
on defence production and intelligence sharing.
Conclusion: Japan’s Own Uncertain Strategic Intentions and
“Resentful Realism”
Japan can now be observed to be shifting from its past hedging strategy vis-a-vis China towards a strategy of active soft and incipient hard balancing. The key conditions that in the
past ensured Japan could maintain a hedging strategy have deteriorated over the last decade, so initiating this shift. Japanese policymakers’ previous belief in their ability to read
China’s intentions as benign has waned, as has their confidence in the potential malleability
of Chinese intentions through political and economic engagement. Japan’s own domestic
regime change, characterized by the rise of Revisionism and discontent with the status quo,
has reinforced the impulse to avoid ‘underbalancing’. Indeed, the rising domestic consensus
in Japan is that China’s intentions, if readable at all, are now fundamentally malign towards Japan. Most strikingly, Japanese policymakers no longer trust that the balance of offence–defence capabilities is in their favour, either internally or externally. China’s military
modernization is perceived as set to overwhelm the JSDF’s defensive capabilities and as
weakening the USA’s ability to police the global commons and restrain China’s encroachment of core Japanese security interests.
125 ‘Nikkan Boei Kyoryoku, Sakiokuri: Kankokunai de Shinchoron’(‘Japan-Korea Defence
Cooperation Put Off: Caution Domestically’), Yomiuri Shimbun, 19 May, 2012, http://www.
yomiuri.co.jp/politics/news/20120518-OYT1T01137.htm; ‘Nikkan, Gunji Joho Kyoyu e Chosei:
GSOMIA Nihon, Konnenchu Mezasu’ (‘Japan-Korea, Adjusting for Miliary Information
Provision’), Asahi Shimbun, 2 September, 2016, p. 3.
148 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
The overall consequence has indeed been Japan’s shifting, if incrementally and certainly
not entirely relinquishing hedging, towards more incipient balancing behaviour. Much of
this balancing is ‘soft’ in orientation, apparent in efforts to check Chinese influence through
strengthening partnerships with other East Asian states on China’s periphery that are
equally concerned about the negative externalities of its rise. But another component of
seeking to balance China globally is apparent in vigorous diplomatic activity and resource
deals in Africa and the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Japan’s hard balancing has taken the form of an emerging emphasis primarily on building up JSDF defensive capabilities while also considering the selective procurement of power projection capabilities that could serve collective self-defence and even
offensive purposes. Japan has thus found itself competing in a quiet arms race with China
in East Asia evocative of ‘normal’ balancing behaviour on a par with that of other states
facing a similar external security environment. Alongside these internal efforts Japan has,
of course, redoubled its support for the US–Japan alliance to buttress the USA’s potential
for balancing against China.
Japan’s identification as an incipient balancer presents a range of important conclusions
in answer to the questions posed at the start of this article. First, the discussion in this article and recent evidence by virtue of Japan’s behaviour is cause for reexamination of the
quaint consensus among Neo-realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism on the immobility of
Japanese security policy. The very conditions contained in those perspectives, especially the
former two, regarding a state’s potential disposition towards hedging now demand serious
review in the case of Japan. This is not to say that these perspectives are fundamentally
flawed, but rather that the conclusions and orthodoxy they give rise to are outmoded because they take insufficient account of new evidence. If given due consideration, these perspectives may have ample ability to point to and explain Japan’s initiation of balancing
behaviour. These perspectives, therefore, need to abandon the comfort zone of their past
orthodoxy and review the dynamism of Japan’s security policy if they are to retain their full
explanatory utility with regard to Japan now and in the future. In particular, Neo-realism
can afford to be bolder in asserting its perspective on Japan’s remilitarization of security
policy, rather than readily ceding ground to the dominance of Constructivism and
Liberalism.
Secondly, and even more importantly, Japan’s inching towards active balancing of
China has significant implications for East Asian security, although given the nature of the
process of Japan’s shift they are not entirely clear. Japan’s move towards balancing is certainly not yet complete, irreversible, or fully revealed, and embedded in national grand
strategy. As outlined earlier, the Yoshida Doctrine has proved a highly resilient grand strategy in the post-war period, and will not be abandoned lightly. The result is that Japan is
demonstrating, and likely to continue to demonstrate, fluctuations between the Yoshida
Doctrine and more active balancing behaviour. These fluctuations will, in turn, be driven
by the development of the international and domestic determinants of Japan’s strategy as
already outlined, and which are themselves amid a process of volatile change. Japan will be
forced to react to variations in the benignity and malignity of China’s intentions and, just
as importantly, Japanese behaviour will be largely determined by the condition of the US–
Japan alliance and fears over entrapment and abandonment.
Japan’s sense of being caught between a rising China and a US ally on which it has been
so dependent, but with which its security interests do not always converge, will make for
hesitancy in its security stance. Japan’s impulse may be to react strongly at times to
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2 149
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article/9/2/109/1745011 by Ashikaga Univ. user on 18 July 2024
perceived Chinese security provocations, but it will lack the assurance of USA backing of
this behaviour. This will, on the whole, encourage Japan to act more autonomously when
necessary. Hence, not only China, but also the USA, may find Japan a difficult security
partner to deal with.
Japanese unpredictability is and will be enhanced by the continuing changes to its domestic regime. The unwinding of the post-war system is not complete, and the struggle between Pragmatists and Revisionists will continue, albeit with the latter likely to eventually
triumph. Japanese dalliance with Revisionism, and the feeling of ideological antagonism it
engenders towards China, and even the USA at times, amid the desire to cast off post-war
constraints and restore national standing, is conducive to a Japanese international strategy
that is capable of being highly confrontational.
If an uncertain international security environment is combined with domestic
Revisionism, then Japan can be seen as lacking confidence in the basic foundations of its security, and to be experiencing a certain sense of paranoia. The outcome is that the new
‘realism’ to which Japan is being pushed in its international strategy will not always be the
cautious ‘Reluctant Realism’ that seeks a comfortable alliance with the USA and which contributes, as US policymakers would hope, to a stable balance of power in the Asia-Pacific. It
may rather at times be a ‘Resentful Realism’, driven by fear of China, lack of trust in the
USA, and a desire to reassert national pride and autonomy, that could take root in Japan.
This ‘Resentful Realism’ may generate impulses towards more independent national military action by Japan, facilitated by new autonomous capabilities, and will clearly be a difficult quantity for the USA, let alone China, to handle. Under this scenario, Japan’s
experimentation with active balancing may not restore equilibrium and stability in the region to match China’s rise, but actually become a source of unpredictability and instability.
If this is thought to be a possible outcome of Japan’s shift from hedging to incipient balancing, a third conclusion then becomes apparent. Japan’s impact on regional stability can
be mitigated most obviously by China’s moderation of its security policy so as not to cross
the Japanese key red lines of territory and SLOC security. The USA needs to reassure Japan
that it will not be ‘passed over’ and its security interests overlooked in any possible strategic
accommodation with China. For Japan itself, the lesson is that, as it reconsiders the
Yoshida Doctrine and Revisionism takes hold, it must consider how this process of international strategic and domestic regime change has impact on the very same problem it has in
dealing with China—that of states’ surety in the reading of the international intentions of
others. Japan’s policymakers thus need to ensure they do not become trapped in the same
problem of being unable to signal their intentions and maintain the sense of benignity that
they accuse their Chinese counterparts of lacking. If they fail to do so, Japan will be labelled
a security risk on a par with China, the risk of a Sino–Japanese military clash may rise, and
the consequences for the regional security order will be disastrous.