If one thing has stood up in the course of Japan’s history, it has been its capacity to radically change its national project every time that circumstances require it.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, faced by a European penetration that threatened to alter the foundations of its society, the country decided to isolate itself from all outside influence. For around two hundred years, Japan opted for absolute autarchy (Sakoku) within the context of a stratified feudal structure. This period was known as the Tokugawa era.
By the second half of the nineteenth century, the pressure of change within its society had grown so powerful that the model began to crumble. The Tokugawa regime had left a small door open to the outside world: A restricted trade with Dutch merchants on Dejima island at Nagasaki. Through this crack Western ideas were leaked in, setting in motion a desire for change within the lower ranks of aristocracy, which was in charge of the administration of the State. This, together with the dissatisfaction of a merchant class whose political power was inversely proportional to its economic one, laid the foundation for a radical transformation. A transformation also induced by the example of what was happening in China, a society whose traditionalism has kept it in backwardness, making it an easy prey for Western colonial appetites.
Bureaucrats of the lesser aristocracy and merchants converged in the idea of modernizing the country. All that was missing was the igniting catalyst that could put in motion revolutionary change. This was provided by the 1858 arrival of a U.S. squadron led by Commodore Perry, demanding Japan to open its ports to trade with the West. Five years later the so-called Meiji era began.
During the latter, the country entered into the most rapid modernization process so far seen in history. The figure of the Emperor, who had merely been a symbolic one, rose to the center of the political stage. Under the slogan “Abandon Asia and Enter the West”, Japan set itself the task of building a vibrant economy out of nothing: Banks, shipyards, textile factories, steel mills, railways, telegraphs, and the like appeared out of the blue. The change also included building up a modern military. Institutions, on its part, adapted itself to the liberal ideas prevailing in the United States and Europe.
This obsession of progress, under Western parameters, translated itself into Japan’s entrance to the select club of major world powers by the beginning of the twentieth century. This would inevitably lead to a confrontation with the West for the control of East Asia’s spheres of influence. The Russian-Japanese war of 1904-1905, from which Japan emerged victorious, was the first step in that direction. The 1940 Japanese invasion of French Indochina opened a new period of war with the West, which utterly intensified after December 1941 with Japanese military actions in Pearl Harbor, The Philippines, Guam, the Dutch Empire and the British Empire.
After its traumatic defeat in 1945, Japan reformulated again its national project in a dramatic way. It emphasized a pro-Western orientation, accepting a subordinate role in relation to Washington. The country not only put in motion a pacifist foreign policy vocation, but submitted its defense to the guardianship of the United States. A civilian oriented economy, highly protective of employment and characterized by its consensual decision making, was also defined. Freed from the burden of significant military spending, Japan was able to accumulate important surpluses. After a few decades of impressive economic growth, facilitated by those surpluses, Japan was able to reenter the club of great powers. This time, though, dully restricted to the economic sphere.
At the beginning of the nineteen nineties, Japan seemed ready to enter yet again into one of those decisive stages of reformulation of its national project. The saying symbolizing the new orientation might have been “Abandon the West and Return to Asia”. Indeed, what has been envisaged was an abandonment of its subordination to the United States and of its role as an economic power with Western vocation. The emphasis on its Asian condition and the assumption of an economic hegemony over its region, sought to curb the penetration of the U.S. and Europe over the emerging markets of East Asia. The benefits that the land of the rising sun could obtain from the West, seemed to be overshadowed by the prospects of a long-term economic growth sustained by those emerging markets. The new gold mine seemed, indeed, to lie within the Asian economies.
The dramatic nosedive of Asian economies in 1997 and Japan’s inability to reverse its own economic deflation, aborted in an early phase the emergence of what could have been a new national project. In 1999, signs appeared of a fresh reformulation of the national project under completely different premises. Then Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi summoned, in March of that year, the country’s leading intellectuals, scholars and political leaders to take part in a national reflection about the goals for the new millennium. At the beginning of 2020, this group presented its recommendations. They included the abandonment of social conformity, of the subjection of the individual to collectivity, and of the system of decision-making by consensus. In their place, they proposed the promotion of an individualistic and questioning spirit and an open attitude towards diversity. In short, the absorption of the main traits of America’s mentality seemed to represent the way forward. Having aimed a few years earlier at regional economic hegemony and at implanting its own economic model as an alternative to U.S. capitalism, Japan’s elite was now proposing to bend itself to America’s idiosyncrasy.
Neither the former nor the latter ever materialized into a new national project. Which did so, though, were Prime Minister Shinto Abe’s premises of abandoning Japan’s pacifist foreign policy to confront China’s nationalistic designs. His aim to ensure that Japan’s security policy aligned with its national interest, fully permeated national consciousness. Faced with China’s regional military assertiveness and to North Korea’s nuclear missile testing, Abe defined a course of action characterized by increases in defense spending and upgraded defense policy. This effectively changed Japan’s post World War II historical foreign policy and maritime positioning. His “Japan is Back” orientation also translated into articulating a strategic partnership with Australia and India. Meanwhile, he sought that countries like Indonesia and Singapore could become key partners in ensuring regional peace and stability by providing an effective alternative to regional economic dependency on China.
A fresh national project, albeit a circumscribed one, emerged from Abe’s legacy in foreign and defense policies. Among its tangible results, the following are worth mentioning: The Quad; Japan’s doubling of its defense budget to 2 percent of its GDP; the creation of both a joint command of its forces with those of the United States and of a shared littoral force equipped with the most modern anti-ship missiles; Japan’s acquisition of state-of-the-art missiles; the overcoming of its mutual distrust with South Korea in order to give shape to a trilateral framework, together with the U.S., aimed at promoting a rules-based Indo-Pacific; a first-ever trilateral summit with the Philippines and the United States aimed at defense cooperation and economic partnership; and Japan’s participation in NATO’s last summit of heads of state and government.
Once again, Japan has put in motion a radical transformation of its national goals. Few countries, indeed, have shown such capacity for periodic reinvention, which is why no one should underestimate the ironclad consistency of purpose that comes with it.
Author: Alfredo Toro Hardy, PhD – Retired Venezuelan career diplomat, scholar and author. Former Ambassador to the U.S., U.K., Spain, Brazil, Ireland, Chile and Singapore. Author or co-author of thirty-six books on international affairs. Former Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Professor at Princeton and Brasilia universities. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations and a member of the Review Panel of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy or views of World Geostrategic Insights).
Image credit: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP