Description

This interdisciplinary panel examines the resurgence of Cold War dynamics in East Asia through the complementary lenses of History, International Relations, and Art History. As tensions between the United States and China intensify, alongside territorial disputes, military build-ups, and competing regional alliances, scholars and practitioners increasingly invoke Cold War frameworks to understand contemporary East Asian geopolitics. Yet this "new Cold War" emerges within a fundamentally different historical context, shaped by economic interdependence, technological competition, and the legacies of unresolved conflicts from the original Cold War period.

The panel brings together three leading academics in their respective subfields whose research illuminates different dimensions of this geopolitical transformation. Sherzod Muminov’s historical contribution traces continuities and ruptures between Cold War-era divisions and contemporary alignments in East Asia, examining how historical memory of the 1945-1991 period shapes current diplomatic strategies and national narratives in Japan and its relations with surrounding states. Paul O’Shea’s discussion will interrogate how Japan’s quiet fear of being left alone with China shapes its alliance politics with the United States in the context of the so-called “new Cold War”, showing how this fear cannot be stated openly in official discourse yet drives reassurance behaviour and silence around the prospect of US retrenchment. In response to these, Eriko Tomizawa-Kay will explore how contemporary Japanese artists engage with Cold War aesthetics and anxieties in their work, examining public art that has responded to the militarization of Okinawa, fluctuating nuclear threats and issues, and historico-culturally entrenched territorial disputes. By analysing visual representations of division and confrontation, her insights reveal how cultural production both reflects and contests dominant geopolitical narratives.

Together, these contributions illuminate how understanding Japan’s role in the "new Cold War" requires moving beyond catch-all analyses to examine the specific mechanisms through which past conflicts and lingering fears inform present tensions, how contemporary power structures differ from their Cold War precedents, and how cultural actors imagine alternatives to binary geopolitical thinking. The panel thereby invites discussion about the utility and limitations of Cold War frameworks for comprehending twenty-first-century East Asian international relations and considers Japan's evolving position within these transforming regional dynamics.