Abstract: Reflecting upon the desire to expand the jurisdiction in the sea, the UNCLOS introduced and established the exclusive economic zone, new continental shelf system, and archipelagic waters and agreed upon the width of the territorial sea. In addition, compulsory settlement of international maritime disputes has gone into effect. Northeast Asian states such as Korea, China, and Japan enacted domestic laws and ratified the Convention in 1996. They concluded fisheries agreements, establishing a tentative legal order on fishery. There remains the task of effecting delimitation at sea. The delimitation does not seem to be feasible over a short term, with such big hurdles as method of baseline and possession of island issue. Since in the Yellow Sea no delimitation is in effect yet, Chinese vessels’ overfishing poses problems to the Korean economic zone. In the East Sea, the Southern Continental Shelf Joint Development Agreement is scheduled to expire in 2028 unless extension is made. Possible conflict seems to be in the offing in East China Sea around the development of natural resources and it may flare up further if endowment of resources is apparent. While continuously ascertaining the position of other states through maritime negotiations and making adjustment to their positions to be consistent with the practice, jurisprudence and the provisions of the Convention, an agreement is necessary to be reached. On occasion, political breakthrough needs to be made through decisions made at the highest level.
Country or Region: Japan
Brown, James D.J
Abstract: Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s anticipated trip to St Petersburg and Moscow at the end of May 2018 represents the culmination of his “new approach” to Russia. Unveiled two years earlier, this policy seeks to achieve a breakthrough in the countries’ long-standing territorial dispute by reducing Japan’s initial demands and offering incentives in the form of enhanced political and economic engagement. Having stuck resolutely with this policy despite criticism from the West, Abe now needs it to deliver, not least to boost his flagging approval ratings. This article highlights exactly what the Japanese leader hopes to achieve and assesses his prospects of success. Particular emphasis is placed on the proposed joint economic activities on the disputed islands and the specific legal obstacles that need to be overcome.
Kobayashi, Tetsuro, and Azusa Katagiri
Abstract: This study examines the impact of China’s growing territorial ambitions on Japanese public opinion. By experimentally manipulating perceived territorial threats from China, we tested two potential mechanisms of increased support for a conservative incumbent leader in Japan. The first is the “rally ’round the flag” model, in which threats universally boost support for the leader through emotion. The second is the “reactive liberal” model, in which support from conservatives remains constant, but threatened liberals move toward supporting the conservative leader. Two survey experiments provided no support for the emotion-based “rally ’round the flag” model, but they lent support for the reactive liberal model in explaining the impact on Japanese public opinion. However, the second experiment indicated that priming with an image of the prime minister that highlights his role as the supreme commander of the national defense forces completely eliminated the gain in approval rates among liberals.
Trinidad, Dennis D
Abstract: This article examines the implications of Japan’s strategic partnerships with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member-countries on its foreign aid policy. Although there were previous attempts at aligning the broad goals of Japan’s aid policy with security and defence objectives, it argues that these partnerships have increasingly led to the emergence of a securitized aid. This is because strategic partnership, as a new form of security practice in the Asia-Pacific, extends the scope of Japan’s regional cooperation to the fields of defence and security. The overall extent of Japan’s aid securitization is still minimal but prominent in terms of the aid discourse, pattern of allotments or choice of recipients and institutional structures. Despite the adoption of new development cooperation charter in 2015, the use of Japan’s ODA is still confined to non-military use which limits Tokyo’s desire to deepen its security cooperation with ASEAN partner-countries.
Le, Tom
Abstract: The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) has not only changed how the USA engages in warfare but also how it maintains its military supremacy and how other nations budget and strategize. The very idea of the RMA has impacted how nations manage their technological advantages and raises the questions of can the RMA be monopolized and if not, which nations can adopt their own RMA? In September 2000, the Japan Defence Agency (now the Ministry of Defence [MOD]) produced a report titled ‘“Info-RMA”: Study on Info-RMA and the Future of the Self-Defence Forces’ to explore the prospects of implementing RMA principles in the Japan Self-Defence Forces. In this article, I explore to what extent can RMA principles be implemented in the Self-Defence Forces? I argue that although several significant changes have been implemented in technology, doctrine, operations and organization, various normative and technical constraints have directed the MOD to craft an RMA with Japanese characteristics, emphasizing defence and interconnectedness with the US armed forces. These findings suggest that current efforts to ‘normalize’ the Self-Defence Forces can succeed if crafted to appeal to the sensibilities of the Japanese public.
Kim, Jihyun
Abstract: The East Asian security order has been affected by the increasing rivalry between China and Japan in recent years against the backdrop of the evolving Sino-Japan balance of power and the renewed nationalism in both countries. These developments have emerged as powerful wild cards, reinforcing the security dilemma and undermining the prospect for building a lasting peace between these two major powers in the region. This research is designed to examine Sino-Japan relations as well as the overall security order in East Asia. In particular, it looks into how the politics of nationalism intertwined with the changing regional power dynamics could affect the East China Sea dispute by creating an environment more conducive to bilateral tensions rather than mutual trust and cooperation.
Schulze, Kai
Abstract: In recent years, Japan’s foreign policy elite has started to increasingly securitize China in their security discourse. The harsher tone from Tokyo is widely evaluated as a direct reaction to China’s own assertive behavior since 2009/2010. Yet, the change in the Japanese government’s rhetoric had started changing before 2010. In order to close this gap, the present article sheds light on an alternative causal variable that has been overlooked in the literature: a change in Japan’s security institutions, more specifically, the upgrade of the Defense Agency to the Ministry of Defense, in 2007. While utilizing discursive institutionalism and securitization-approaches, the present article demonstrates that a strong correlation indeed exists between the institutional shift and the change in Japan’s defense whitepapers in the 2007–10 period. It thus opens up a research avenue for the further scrutiny of the hitherto understudied but significant causal linkage in the study of contemporary Japanese security policy toward China.
Fraser, Timothy, and Daniel P. Aldrich
Preview: Despite short-term perturbations, however, nuclear power’s massive sunk-cost structure and embeddedness in national energy plans have made massive changes in the field unlikely in East Asian nations. Since the Fukushima disaster, civil society held large-scale protests, referenda, and petitions against nuclear power, but their results have been mixed. Contentious politics have successfully put new nuclear safety laws on the books in Japan, South Korea, and China, but have failed to overpower the nuclear lobby and shift the trajectory of nuclear power in their countries. Only Taiwan has managed to secure an exit from nuclear power. Civil society has helped push governments to change regulatory institutions, but civil society organizations have had limited impact on nuclear restart decisions. Below, we outline why we should not expect major change in East Asian nuclear policy to come from civil society, and we discuss alternative avenues for civil society to achieve lasting change in energy policy in East Asia.
Liu, Chien
Abstract: Since the 1980s, Japan’s war memory has strained its relations with South Korea and China, to a less degree, the USA. Two of the thorniest issues are the comfort women and the US atomic bombing of Japan. Before the Obama administration announced its policy pivot to Asia in 2011, both Japanese and American leaders were reluctant to make amends for the past acts of their countries. However, in 2015, the Japanese conservative Prime Minister Abe reached an agreement with South Korea that “finally and irreversibly” resolved the comfort women issue, thus achieving a historic reconciliation between the two countries. In 2016, then President Obama visited Hiroshima to commemorate the atomic bomb victims. Then, in December 2016, the comfort women issue resurfaced in Japan and South Korea relations, indicating a failure of the reconciliation. Why did the USA change its policy on historical issues involving Japan? Why did Abe and the South Korean President Park Geun-hye settle the comfort women issue? Why did Obama visit Hiroshima? Why did the reconciliation fail? In this article, I propose a rational choice theory to answer these questions. Applying the proposed theory and relying on available evidence, I argue that the settlement of the comfort women issue and Obama’s visit to Hiroshima are important components of Obama’s pivot to Asia to balance China’s rise. The reconciliation failed mainly because it did not resolve the historical justice issue promoted by the human rights norms. I discuss some implications for reconciliation in Northeast Asia.
Lee, Junghoon
Abstract: Multilateral approaches such as the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, the Four-Party and Six-Party Talks, and the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (established by the USA, Japan, and South Korea to solve North Korea’s issues and to build a peaceful regime on the Korean Peninsula) have achieved few accomplishments since the Cold War. Exceptions include the avoidance of deadly clashes during ongoing multilateral talks at the time of serious situations including the nuclear crisis in 1994 and the Bush administration’s attempt to strike on North Korea with nuclear weapons. The USA has hesitated to conduct kind military relationships with North Korea because they seem to strongly recognize the high risk associated with physical conflict. Additionally, the USA and its allies have experienced North Korea’s ability with nuclear weapons. Many which have attempted to target the USA during the later years of the Clinton and Bush administrations. Dealing with North Korea contributes to the knowledge of those involved in the Six-Party Talks regarding how to work with the USA and others. Are multilateral approaches still efficient under this situation? Even with a number of several types of proposals such as China’s recent dual-track approach or double suspension approach—also backed by Russia—there seems to be no certain attempt to collaborate on building a peaceful regime. This paper will examine why multilateral approaches to building a peaceful regime post Cold War on the Korean Peninsula have forwarded little to a contextual perspective of the changing regional circumstances.
Lee, Yaechan
Abstract: Liberalists have argued that increased economic interdependence will deter the likelihood of war as opportunity costs of a military conflict will not be fashionable for either side. Realists such as Waltz contended that while interdependence promotes peace to a certain extent, it also multiplies the occasions for conflicts. Dale Copeland drew perspectives from both sides to argue that interdependence may lead to peace depending on the expectations of the future trade environment. Now, with the United States’ (US) ongoing trade war with China and its legacy of trade conflicts with Japan in the 1990s, the question of whether economic interdependence brings peace deserves to be revisited. This article, through making a comparison between the cases of bilateral trade conflicts between the US and China and the US and Japan, contends that increased bilateral economic interdependence also increased the frequency of conflicts in the two respective cases. Moreover, it further argues that such increase in frequency was due to the US’s negative expectations on the future trade environment.
Beeson, Mark
Abstract: One of the key issues that will determine the success or otherwise of the putative ‘Indo-Pacific region’ is how or whether it is successfully institutionalized. This paper firstly provides an assessment of the Indo-Pacific’s prospects by drawing on some of the more influential strands of theoretical literature in this area and by considering the specific historical experience of its institutional precursors in the more expansively conceived Asia-Pacific region. Although I am skeptical about the Indo-Pacific’s prospects, the following discussion provides a general framework for assessing institutional efficacy. The second objective of this essay is to introduce the other papers in this collection. Significantly, some of the other contributors are more optimistic about the Indo-Pacific. Together, these papers highlight the sometimes competing and contradictory forces of what could still be a very significant initiative in a region in which effective institutions are arguably in short supply.
Murashkin, Nikolay
Abstract: Scholarly narratives concerning China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) tend to contextualise this project within China’s rivalry with the United States and Japan. Such interpretations often reduce and misconstrue Japan’s initiatives in Asian infrastructure finance as mere reactivity to China’s advances. This paper will showcase Japan’s own foreign and financial policies regarding infrastructure in Asia and the New Silk Road regions since the end of the Cold War. I argue that Japan’s presence in that field is underappreciated and under-researched, as Japan’s infrastructural footprint in the New Silk Road significantly pre-dates the BRI. Furthermore, I stress the fact that Japan’s foreign policy in Asian infrastructure finance featured important cooperative postures toward China, especially within multilateral development banks. The paper makes a contribution to emerging scholarship on the BRI—often reliant on strategic communications and projections—by highlighting Japan’s role in regional infrastructure to show how our understanding of international relations and international political economy in Asia can be better informed by economic history and area studies.
Yoshimatsu, Hidetaka
Abstract: This article examines Japan’s role conception in its multilateral commitments to the Asia-Pacific after the global financial crisis in 2008. The Hatoyama government launched an East Asian Community initiative, which aimed to assume a kingmaker role in creating a new order in East Asia. However, the East Asian Community initiative did not develop due to stress on self-reliance and distance from partnership with the USA. The Abe government sought to play a dual role in its major multilateral commitments. On the one hand, the government sought to play a follower role in enhancing the position of the East Asia Summit with an eye to consolidating the US-based institutional framework. On the other, Abe’s new multilateral initiative of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific represented Japan’s kingmaker role in maintaining a free and open maritime regime, and to keep a liberal and open economic regime under the emergence of the Trump administration.
Koga, Kei
Abstract: Japan has a national interest in the South China Sea issue. Although its direct commitment is ultimately limited in a material sense due to a lack of military capabilities, as well as political and constitutional constraints on the Self-Defense Force, Japan has maintained its firm stance to uphold international maritime rules and norms, and nurtured strong diplomatic relations and conducted maritime capacity-building programs with the South-East Asian states, as well as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. These actions contribute to consolidating the rule of law at sea and provide those claimant states an opportunity to withstand pressures from China. Given the Trump administration’s unclear South China Sea policy and South-East Asia’s strategic uncertainty, Japan is becoming a key player in maintaining regional maritime stability in East Asia through diplomacy.
