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Paper short abstract:

Through interviews with MOFA diplomats, this paper aims to understand to what extent status plays a role in policymakers’ thoughts about Japanese security policy today, with their views of Abe’s tenure as a useful case due to his ambitions for Japan to be an international leader.

Paper long abstract:

In a Japan that for some time had been plagued by a revolving door in the prime minister’s office,

Abe Shinzo’s tenure displayed surprising stability. His almost eight consecutive years in office were

marked by two interrelated developments: a strong focus on strengthening Japan’s security posture

and international partnerships, and an emphasis on the need for Japan to take a leading role on the

international stage. While the motivation behind the former was no doubt informed by a rising,

increasingly belligerent China and an unstable North Korea, the strive for security policy change and

constitutional revision has existed in Japanese politics – and particularly within the Liberal

Democratic Party and Abe’s home faction, the Seiwaken – since the end of WWII. To what extent is

this general motivation to change Japan – irrespective of international threats – still present in how

policymakers think about security policy and Japan’s role in the world? Given Abe’s long tenure, and

his empirically observable will to have Japan be an international leader, his prime ministership is a

useful case to understand just how alive this sentiment is. In this paper, I base myself in previous

research on Japanese foreign policy that has found a connection between international status on the

one hand, and security policy change and constitutional revision on the other. During field work in

Japan in spring 2023, I will conduct interviews with MOFA diplomats, foreign policy experts, and,

hopefully, individuals who worked closely on policies like FOIP and Proactive Pacifism. The aim is to

understand what meanings they ascribe to Abe’s legacy generally; his foreign policy prioritizations;

and to how he represented Japan on the international stage. I hope to be able to show the extent to

which status considerations play a role in how diplomats and policymakers evaluate Abe’s legacy and

contribute to the wider literature on Japanese security policy change, and the different material and

ideational factors that inform it.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the status of Wakaizumi Kei, the international relations scholar who secretly negotiated the reversion of Okinawa from US administration in the late 1960s, in the Japanese ‘revisionist conservative’ imaginary, highlighting the impact of his legacy on the Abe administration.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last decade, Wakaizumi Kei – international relations scholar and secret envoy of Premier Satō in the Okinawa reversion negotiations – has emerged as a figure of semi-worship in some quarters of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), serving as a hero-like figure for those political forces, championed by late Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, that were long side-lined in postwar Japanese politics as ‘anti-mainstream’ conservatism. Wakaizumi’s legacy offers a particularly apt standpoint from which to survey the tensions of the Japanese political landscape in the 1960s and 1970s, just as his contemporary rediscovery sheds light onto the core issues that fuel revisionist conservatism in present-day Japan.

Drawing on Wakaizumi’s writings and private correspondence, as well as on diplomatic documents from the Okinawa Prefectural Archives, this paper adopts an intellectual and political history approach to contextualise special envoy Wakaizumi as the ‘prophet’ of revisionist conservatism, despite his controversial diplomatic role and relatively minor academic footprint. Highlighting Wakaizumi’s influence over a broad group of ‘disciples’ in key posts in government and diplomacy from the 1970s through the present day, I examine his vision for ‘what Japan should be’ (Nihon no arikata) – namely, a proud global power leading Asia with restraint and righteousness under the US nuclear umbrella – and its influence on the Abe administration’s foreign policy thinking. Tying into Wakaizumi’s historical role as a special envoy, I also argue that the reversion of Okinawa represents the first diplomatic victory of revisionist conservatism. Besides standing out as a successful case of prime ministerial initiative in foreign policy, it also compounded three crucial themes – strategic autonomy, territorial sovereignty, and dreams of national greatness – that are still at the forefront of the conservative agenda set by Abe.

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Paper short abstract:

The Japanese government's creation of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategic narrative and its export it to external players, such as the USA, exemplifies Japan's strategic communication prowess and is a vivid sign of the Abe administration's legacy in contemporary Japanese foreign policy.

Paper long abstract:

Abe Shinzō’s Japan has ventured forcefully in government-led strategic communications, defined as “the use of words, actions, images, or symbols to influence the attitudes and opinions of target audiences to shape their behavior in order to advance interests or policies, or to achieve objectives. For the military […] it includes creating conditions that define a desired end-state” (Farwell 2012: 12). Scholars have studied Japan’s recent engagement with public diplomacy, but mostly highlighted its weak spots, including its focus on business promotion, its lack of strategic depth, if not its strident ideological qualities; in short, the scholarly consensus suggests that Japan does not engaged in strategic communications.

This paper suggests that the Abe administration has made good use of its communications leverage, with international and domestic audiences in mind. The government’s budget for information activities more than tripled in 2015 and, far from wasting money away, it targeted institutions close to power, such as the 2019 endowment of a Japan Chair to Trump’s former National Security Advisor at the Hudson Institute, an institution which may also provide the next US Ambassador to Japan. Moreover, Japan’s communication and strategic engagement in the wider Indo-Pacific region have been accompanied by an uptick in diplomatic tours, speeches and economic initiatives: powerful rhetorical, material and symbolic demonstrations -- to target countries, strategic partners and Japanese citizens -- that China and the BRI were not the only games in town. The embedded strategic narratives suggest that Japan and likeminded states are a staying power in the so-called Indo-Pacific.

In fact, the Free and Open Indo-Pacific provides a tangible measure of Japan’s successes and the paper proves how FOIP’s embedded strategic narratives and geographic re-invention have gained currency among research specialists, journalists, and policymakers alike. More importantly, the paper details evidence of the US government’s embrace of the Japan-born concept, as evidenced by the rechristened Indo-Pacific Command and the National Security and Defense Strategies. Preliminary fieldwork in Washington DC ascribes the US embrace of FOIP to the Japanese government’s multipronged engagement with influential think tanks, academic institutions, and the global news media.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses Japan's security engagement in Africa. I argue that ‘proactive contribution to peace’ and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy are attempts to seek status and ontological security by ‘fitting in’ and shaping ‘like-minded’ understandings of regional and international security.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws from the status and ontological (in)security literature to discuss Japan’s renewed security engagement in the African continent through ‘proactive contribution to peace’ and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy (FOIP). While realist scholars argue that ‘proactive contribution to peace’ is merely a label used to pursue remilitarisation, and that FOIP only matters in geo-strategic terms, I contend that they represent attempts to seek status and ontological security by trying to ‘fit in’ and shape ‘like-minded’ understandings of regional and international security. I argue that ‘proactive contribution to peace’ represents a discursive (auto)biographical narrative that speaks to Japanese conservatives’ ontological security and sense of being in the international system. Abe’s first stint as Prime Minister (2006-2007) shows that an outright pursuit of a hawkish security policy can not only strain Japan’s relationship with the US but also endanger Japan’s status in the international system. While restoring the ‘greatness’ of Japan’s past remains at the core of the conservative quest for ontological security, status and acceptance in the international system also matter, as they can alleviate anxieties about belonging in the international system. Hence, I argue that ‘proactive contribution to peace’ serves a profoundly ontological role because it allows Japan to ‘fit in’ with ‘like-minded’ states while simultaneously promoting a future-oriented re-framing of Japan’s wartime past. It is not simply a policy choice, but rather a fundamental reframing of what it means to be Japan(ese) in international politics. Together with this, in the African continent, Japan attempts to reframe ‘like-minded’ understandings of regional and international security through initiatives like FOIP – first presented at TICAD VI in 2016 – which introduced the concept of ‘Indo-Pacific.’ FOIP is not only about Japan’s strategic interests but elucidates how Japan sells itself in a marketplace of ‘like-minded’ states while attempting to shape such a marketplace itself. Hence, I argue that Japan’s security presence in the African continent represents a crucial standpoint from which to observe the tension between Japan’s efforts at seeking status among ‘like-minded’ countries, while still trying to foster the exceptionality of Japan-ness.