BOOK
REVIEW The adaptive power
Japan Rising by
Kenneth Pyle
Reviewed by Sreeram
Chaulia
Since the mid-19th century, Japan
has witnessed dramatic pendulum-like swings in
national policy - from isolation to eager
borrowing from other cultures, from emperor
worship to democracy, and from militarism to
pacifism. Its latest swivel is from passivity and
indecision in foreign policy to activism in
strategic struggles. The
shifts have tended to be abrupt and fast rather
than cumulative and evolutionary.
An
explanation of Japan's puzzling patterns of
behavior is highly relevant today when there is
uncertainty in Asian and world politics. American
historian Kenneth Pyle sets out to offer one in
Japan Rising. His central thesis is that
Japan is a deft adapter to changes in the
international system and that its institutions and
policies adjust to the tides of the external
environment. It is unusually sensitive and
responsive to new configurations of international
order because of feudal-era traditions of
opportunism and the prioritization of challenges
from outside by its conservative elites.
The first unified Japanese
state of the 7th century was spurred by the rise
of an expansive China and a hostile Korea. The
modern Meiji state also originated as an answer to
external threats. It was
based on rapid
assimilation of the institutions of the Western
imperial powers. Pyle remarks that "the Japanese
alone among Asian peoples accommodated quickly to
the norms, principles and mores of the imperialist
system" (p 75).
At the risk of forfeiting
its cultural identity, Meiji Japan wanted to
"escape from Asia" and be seen as wholly different
from the "bad company" of other countries of its
region. Japanese imperialism in the Meiji era was
prompted by competitive dynamics of the
international system and imitation of Western
gunboat culture.
The post-World War I
Washington Treaty System created a new regional
order, wherein Japan grudgingly chose to
accommodate the principles of democracy and
abstain from aggression in China. With its innate
realist conception of international politics,
Japan struggled to follow the liberal Wilsonian
world after 1918. As fascism appeared to represent
the wave of the future in the 1930s, it reworked
its domestic institutions along the German model
and embarked on brutal continental expansion.
From 1945 to 1988, Japan formulated a
unique response to the Cold War system known as
the Yoshida Doctrine. It was a strategy of
depending on US security guarantees and
concentrating exclusively on rapid economic
growth. Its proponents sensed that disputes
between the United States and the Soviet Union
over the postwar settlement might be used to
Japan's advantage and kept defense expenditures at
less than 1% of gross national product. The
conservative elites' pacifism was cynical and
pragmatic, since they cooperated with the US
military and extracted maximum benefit out of it.
Aspirations of Asian dominance did not
disappear during the Yoshida Doctrine's economic
heyday. In the words of one leading planner,
"Scientific technology and fighting spirit under a
business suit will be our underground army" (p
233). Government economists boasted of waging a
"second 'total war' called high economic growth"
(p 247).
Through economic realism, Japan
sought to re-create under its leadership the Asian
bloc, which had previously been attempted by
military force. Toward this end, it exploited the
liberal free-trade regime of the post-World War II
era with illiberal neo-mercantilist tactics. A
highly successful export-growth policy co-existed
with elaborate protection for domestic industries
from imports.
Having lacked a large
industrial economy in the pre-World War II period,
Japan's spectacular economic leap from the
mid-1950s was a feat of national motivation and
determination. Meiji-era replacement of hereditary
social hierarchy with a merit-based competitive
ethic, nationalism centered on the institution of
the emperor, and state-engineered "thought
guidance" of the population ensured that
"everything was subordinated to national
greatness" (p 123).
After the Cold War
order, the collapse of the predictable bipolar
international system paralyzed Japanese
policymaking and ushered in economic stagnation.
Pyle reiterates, "It was not coincidental that
Japan suffered from drift and immobility when the
tectonic plates of the international system were
shifting" (p 284).
US dissatisfaction and
threats from North Korea drove Japan of the 1990s
to approve new security measures that portend
military activism. Novel interest in
precision-guided munitions, missile-defense
systems and long-range air transport is evidence
of "an impending end to long-standing limits on
military power" (p 367).
For 150 years,
Japan was accustomed to a weak and passive Asia
that it could comfortably dominate. However, it is
now obvious that the regional order has vastly
changed. Pyle observes, "Psychologically, Japan
was wholly unprepared to deal with the dynamic,
new, competitive Asia" (p 300). The booming
arrival of China is especially worrisome for
Japanese strategists.
Mounting popular
antagonism to Chinese actions and the advent of
the younger Heisei generation of politicians are
driving Japan away from constant deference to
Chinese demands. After decades of buckling under
Chinese preferences, "Japan is ready to confront
pressure on many issues" (p 373).
Territorial disputes, competition for
energy, Chinese resistance to Japan's permanent
entry to the United Nations Security Council, and
demands for apologies cloud bilateral ties.
China's growing military might is now officially a
"source of concern" for Japan, and the massive
decades-long Japanese economic aid to China is
being unceremoniously wound down. Pyle observes
that the new Japan will not be deterred by Chinese
objections from revising the pacifist portions of
its constitution.
Coping with China's
emergence is going to test the effectiveness of
the US-Japan alliance. Japanese wariness over
Sino-US bonhomie is a significant element of the
complex triangular relationship. China often uses
the history of the Pacific War to put the Japanese
on the defensive. A reunified Korea that tilts
toward China or even stands equidistant between
Beijing and Tokyo would complicate Japan's future
strategic position. Japan's ideal scenario is of
"a united Korea that is friendly to Tokyo and
Washington" (p 342).
Pyle deduces six
persistent traits of Japan's national style from
its history. First is its attentiveness to
maximizing power as a condition of survival in the
world. Japan always allies itself with the
dominant ascendant power, be it Britain, Germany
or the US. Second, Japan is a pragmatic state with
no great universal ideals or utopian visions. The
conservative upper crust of Japanese leaders
invariably rejects doctrinal approaches. Third,
and most important, is Japan's propensity to adapt
to international conditions to offset its
vulnerability. Its rulers always read the global
"trend of the times" (jisei), not to change
it but to move alongside it to their own national
advantage.
Fourth, modern Japan always
pursues regional autonomy or hegemony through
differing means. Policies such as diversifying
energy suppliers and limiting foreign direct
investment are designed to shield the economy from
foreign dependence. Fifth, Japan best exemplifies
the logic of swiftly copying the successful
practices of the great powers such as China in
pre-modern times and the West thereafter.
The Japanese lack "barriers of cultural
and religious self-absorption that impede learning
from other civilizations" (p 59). The final
recurrent characteristic is Japan's obsession with
status and prestige in the international system.
This derives from the deep suffusion of honorific
samurai culture fused with nationalism. Rank and
standing in the world are essential to Japanese
identity and purpose.
Although some
Japanese elites issue calls for a new
self-generated strategic vision, Pyle suggests
that the country is "more likely to take cues from
the unfolding international system" (p 353). For
all the restlessness and rebelliousness of the
Heisei generation, Japan's national purpose is
still being defined as a reflex reaction to the
international environment rather than as an
innovative home-bred will that can mold the world
order.
What this implies is that Japan can
never be a true hegemon that can spread its values
and institutions to other states or multilateral
organizations. It looks destined to remain a
cautious adaptive power that receives more from
the international system but gives less.
Japan Rising: The Resurgence of
Japanese Power and Purpose by Kenneth Pyle.
Public Affairs Books, New York, March 2007. ISBN:
978-1-58648-417-0. Price: US$29.95, 448 pages.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
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based on rapid
assimilation of the institutions of the Western
imperial powers. Pyle remarks that "the Japanese
alone among Asian peoples accommodated quickly to
the norms, principles and mores of the imperialist
system" (p 75). 
