Table Of ContentImages, Decisions
and Consequences
in Japan’s Foreign Policy
Kazuki Iwanaga
Lund
University
Press
Lund University Press
Box 141
S-221 00 Lund
Sweden
© 1993 Kazuki Iwanaga
Art nr 20300
ISBN 91-7966-249-8 Lund University Press
ISBN 0-86238-344-7 Chartwell-Bratt Ltd
Printed in Sweden
Studentlitteratur
Lund 1993
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements........................................................................... i
0. Introduction.....................................................................................................1
0.1 Purpose............................................................................................................1
0. 2 Outline......................................................................................................4
Part I: Theoretical Background...................................................................7
The Interplay between External and Internal Determinants........................7
1. The State of the Art — Review and Critique..................................................9
1.1 External determinants: The dominance of the realist “paradigm”........9
1.2 The Neglect of Regional subsystems.....................................................14
1.3 Internal Determinants: The National Level of Analysis.......................17
1.3.1 The bureaucratic politics model...............................................18
1.3.2 Foreign policy decision-making...............................................23
1.3.3 Comparative foreign policy................................................-.....27
1.4 Individual level of analysis....................................................................34
1.4.1 Cognitive approach......................................................................34
1.4.2 Linkage between beliefs and foreign policy behavior................47
2. The Framework for Analysis......................................................................49
2.1 The need for multilevel explanations....................................................49
2.2 Research design.............................................r......................................50
2.3 Foreign Policy Restructuring................................................................60
3. Methodological Considerations......................................................................63
3.1 Data problems.........................................................................................63
3.2 Inference problems................................................................................64
3.3 Case studies: a research strategy............................................................68
Part II. Empirical Analysis.........................................................................74
4. Mutual Security Assistance (MSA) Aid........................................................74
4.1 Operational Environment......................................................................74
4.2 Decision Makers and Their Images.......................................................80
4.3 The Decision Process.............................................................................96
4.4 Implementation.....................................................................................108
4.5 Feedback...............................................................................................124
5. The Soviet Union..........................................................................................132
5.1 Operational Environment...................................................................132
5.2 Decision-Makers and Their Images...................................................139
5.3 The Decision Process and Implementation...........................................151
5.4 Feedback................................................................................................176
5.5 Foreign Policy Restructuring................................................................180
6. The U.S.-Japan Security Treaty....................................................................183
6.1 Operational Environment......................................................................184
Tactical Decision 1 and Strategic Decision..........................................184
Tactical Decision 2................................................................................190
6.2 Decision-Makers and Their Images..................................................192
Tactical Decision 1 and Strategic Decision..........................................192
Tactical Decision 2................................................................................202
6.3 Decision Process and Implementation..................................................207
Tactical Decision 1 and Strategic Decision.........................................207
Tactical Decision 2................................................................................234
6.4 Feedback................................................................................................241
7. China...............................................................................................................252
7.1 Operational Environment.....................................................................252
Tactical Decision................................................................................252
Strategic Decision.................................................................................255
7.2 Decision-Makers and Their Images..................................................258
Tactical Decision................................................................................258
Strategic Decision.................................................................................263
7.3 Decision Process and Implementation..................................................275
Tactical Decision................................................................................277
Strategic Decision.................................................................................287
7.4. Feedback...............................................................................................306
8. Hypothesis Testing and Generation of New Hypotheses...........................315
8.1 Japan’s Foreign Policy Behavior..........................................................315
8.2 General Foreign Policy Behavior........................................................316
8.2.1 Flexibility and Intensity of Images.............................................316
8.2.2 Information and Images...........................................................320
8.2.3 Images and Behavior Patterns.................. 322
9. Concluding Remarks...................................................................................337
Appendix.............................................................................................................341
Bibliography...................................... 342
Index....................................................................................................................367
Acknowledgements
Although responsibility for this study’s ultimate accuracy rests completely
with the author, it could not have been written without the interest and the
helpful and critical suggestions of many people. First of all I should like to
thank Professor Christer Jonsson for his guidance, suggestions for
improvement and encouragement. His supreme, expert knowledge of
international relations and methodology has been a source of invaluable
advice. Words alone cannot express my deep gratitude to him.
I should also like to thank Associate Professor Anders Sannerstedt and Mr.
Jakob Gustafsson at the Department of Political Science, Lund University, for
reading my manuscripts thoroughly and making many useful suggestions. I
have greatly benefitted from stimulating discussions with them. Mr."Dennis
Westlind also at the Department of Political Science, Lund University, not
only checked my English with great sensitivity but he also helped me with the
formatting of the final manuscript.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor lino Yasushi of Keio
University, a friend of long standing, for countless hours of discussion and for
his encouragement. He has been invaluable to me for drawing my attention to
relevant Japanese materials. Special thanks also go to Professor Bjorn
Thalberg who read the initial draft of the chapters on theoretical backgrounds.
He has also encouraged my work in various ways. Dr. Bertil Lundahl has
deeply inspired me in the course of writing this study. He has also helped me
with practical matters regarding formatting. My heartfelt thanks go to him.
Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my wife,
Birgitta Ekholm, for her patience, assistance and encouragement without
which I could not have completed the study. She had to live with it during the
many arduous years of work on this project. By critically reading drafts of the
dissertation at several critical periods, she also brought to the manuscript her
clarity of perspective. This work is specially dedicated to her.
The readers should note that in citing Japanese names, I have used Japanese
style throughout, that is, the family name followed by the given name.
r
0. Introduction
0.1 Purpose
The present study has two main objectives. The first is to provide an adequate
systematic explanation of Japan’s foreign policy behavior in the post-World
War II era by analyzing specific foreign policy decision clusters. Besides the
empirical rationale for this work there is also a theoretical motive. The
ambition is to test and generate hypotheses and thereby contribute to theory
development. The study combines the assets of theory orientation and
empirical inquiry.1
The existing literature reveals that many studies of foreign policy have been
concerned with surveying the bilateral or multilateral relations of the United
States or the Soviet Union with other states as well as superpower relations.
Such a decidedly superpower focus is not surprising, considering the
importance of these two countries on the world scene.
As Japan’s role in the world has expanded as a result of its economic
power, its foreign policy has received increased scholarly attention. Japanese
foreign policy is, however, typically studied in terms of idiosyncratic factors.
It is often treated as something extraordinary with emphasis on unique cultural
and historical circumstances. Unique as Japan may be, its foreign policy can
only be compared to others within the conceptual categories of some
theoretical framework.
The emphasis in many studies of Japan’s foreign policy by Japanese scholars
has traditionally been on descriptive detail, perhaps reflecting the strong
Staatslehre tradition in the study of international relations in Japan. As
Inoguchi writes, "In this tradition, top priority is given to supplying rich
historical-institutional backgrounds and describing events and their
1 Brecher calls this synthesis structured empiricism. "It denotes the amassing of empirical data
on a foreign policy issue and their integration into a structured analytic framework." Brecher,
1974a, p. 4.
2 Introduction
consequences in detail."2 Only occasionally are these studies linked in some,
way to social scientific models or theories. The emphasis on descriptive detail
and the neglect of theories is due also in part to the historicist tradition in
Japan which "renders the bulk of scholarship in International Relations akin to
historical studies rather than that of social science."3
However, during the 1970s and 1980s, the “scientific” development of
foreign policy analysis in the United States was to some extent mirrored in
Japan. Scholarly endeavor in this field is still very much characterized as being
essentially descriptive, narrative, and noncumulative in a theoretical sense.4 In
any case, the objectives have not commonly been the testing and generation of
hypotheses or the effort to develop a cumulative body of generalizations about
state behavior. Without an explicit conceptual framework identifying concepts
and the relationships of these concepts to the observed world, an empirical
analysis, however insightful, can be little more than an unsystematic mass of
insights and facts.
To achieve the objectives of the present work, it is necessary to utilize an
explanatory framework for analyzing foreign policy in both its theoretical
content and its operational aspects. An explicit attempt will, therefore, be
made to use a research design developed by Michael Brecher and his
colleagues to shed light upon the clusters of important non-crisis foreign
policy decisions in the postwar period and to test its utility in the Japanese
context. The choice of this model is motivated by my conviction that it can add
significantly to an understanding of Japan’s foreign policy behavior and by a
desire to test hypotheses. The basic premise of this work is that a full
understanding of foreign policy phenomena requires a multilevel approach
linking within one framework different levels of analysis. Brecher’s systems
framework uses variables on the level of the global system, the regional
system level, the dyadic relationship with other nations, domestic politics, and
individual decision-makers’ cognitive processes. It is, in my view, the only
comprehensive approach that explicitly uses variables and categories from all
these levels, with a capacity to ascertain the dynamic dimension of foreign
policy decision-making applicable to both crisis and non-crisis decisions.
2 Inoguchi, 1989, pp. 252-253.
3 Ibid., p. 253.
4 For an excellent overview of the study of international relations in Japan, see Nihon kokusai
seiji gakkai(ed.), "Sengo Nihon no kokusai seijigaku," Kokusai Seiji (International
Relations), Nos. 1-2, 1979. See also Inoguchi, 1989.
-
Introduction 3
The four cases I have selected span a twenty-year period and offer
significant indicators of Japan’s foreign policy behavior. In each case, as my
study demonstrates, political leaders (prime and foreign ministers) rather than
bureaucrats played dominant roles in the processes of making decisions. Ever
since Japan regained her independence in 1952, Japanese foreign policy has
been oriented toward an alliance with the United States. The backbone of this
alliance has been the U.S.-Japanese security treaty. Two cases focus
particularly on this military alliance relationship and two cases deal with
Japan’s relations with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.
The country’s relations with the two powerful neighbors have often been seen
in Japan as involving the question of “independence” or alignment with the
United States.
The empirical cases to be studied are all, to use Fukui’s term, “critical”
ones. They were all “perceived to be watersheds in the foreign policy of
postwar Japan involving ‘critical’ decisions.”5 According to Fukui, apart from
a “crisis” situation, there are two types of decision-making situations: “critical”
I and “routine”. Critical cases share, more or less, two of three criteria of a
foreign policy crisis as defined by Charles F. Hermann - restricted decision
time and a perceived threat to important values, but not surprise.
Only one case, Japan’s Soviet decisions, represents an instance of “foreign
policy restructuring,” a particular type of foreign policy behavior where
authoritative policy makers seek to change the total patterns of their country’s
external relations.6 Thus the study is also concerned with understanding this
neglected, although interesting, foreign policy phenomenon in the Japanese
context.
Studies have been done on various aspects of the empirical cases in question,
but no empirical research has appeared in print that analyzes them in terms of
a comprehensive framework combining variables at different levels of analysis
with a view to test and generate hypotheses. This work represents a first effort
at applying Brecher’s systems framework to the analysis of Japan’s foreign
policy behavior.
The present study has been undertaken with dual audiences in mind. This
work’s main audience is fellow political scientists in general and students of
foreign policy in particular. But the work is also intended for area specialists
5 Fukui, 1977, p. 61. For the detailed description of Fukui’s "critical case" decision making
model, see Fukui, 1975, pp. 97-127.
6 Holsti (K. J.), 1982.
