Tom Phuong Le
Aug 18, 2021Japan's Aging Peace
Pacifism and Militarism in the Twenty-First Century
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 2021
일본의 고령화 평화: 21세기 평화주의와 군국주의
by 톰 푸엉 르
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출판사 책소개
[제2차 세계대전 이후 일본은 재군비화를 추구하지 않았으며, 전후 헌법은 침략 전쟁을 포기하기로 약속하고 있습니다. 그러나 국내외의 많은 사람들은 점점 더 도전적인 지역 및 세계적 맥락 속에서 그리고 국내 정치가 국력 시위에 유리하게 변하면서, 한국이 군 지휘부로 복귀해야 하는지 아니면 복귀할 것인지에 대해 물었다.
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'톰 푸엉 리'는 일본이 인구 통계와 안보 사이의 관계를 예견하는 군비 재배치를 꺼리는 것에 대한 참신한 설명을 제공한다. 일본의 고령화 평화는 세대에 걸쳐 안보에 대한 인식이 어떻게 변화해 왔는지를 보여주며, 정부의 보다 군사적 외교 정책을 추진하려는 노력을 제약하는 반군사주의 문화로 귀결되었는지를 보여준다.
리 부총리는 일본 안보 담론은 평화유지 작전에 자위대 동원, 인도적 구호 임무 등 정당한 선택을 할 수 있는 '다수 군국주의' 차원에서 이해돼야 한다고 주장하며 군국주의와 평화주의의 단순한 반대에 도전한다.
그는 고령화와 인구 감소, 성 불평등 등 안보정책과 전형적으로 연관되지 않은 요소들이 어떻게 중요한 역할을 해왔는지 강조한다. 그는 일본의 사례가 국가가 무력 사용을 추구하거나 처벌을 받아야 한다는 국제 관계 장학금 추정에 이의를 제기하는 것으로, 광범위한 규범적 신념이 얼마나 일본 정책 입안자들을 구속해왔는지를 보여준다고 주장한다.
일본의 '고령화 평화'는 정책 입안자, 군인, 원자폭탄 생존자, 박물관 코디네이터, 풀뿌리 활동가 및 기타 이해관계자와의 인터뷰와 평화박물관 및 사회운동 분석을 통해 아시아 정치, 국제관계, 일본 외교정책 학자들에게 새로운 통찰력을 제공한다.
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Since the end of World War II, Japan has not sought to remilitarize, and its postwar constitution commits to renouncing aggressive warfare. Yet many inside and outside Japan have asked whether the country should or will return to commanding armed forces amid an increasingly challenging regional and global context and as domestic politics have shifted in favor of demonstrations of national strength.
Tom Phuong Le offers a novel explanation of Japan’s reluctance to remilitarize that foregrounds the relationship between demographics and security. Japan's Aging Peace: Pacifism and Militarism in the Twenty-First Century (Columbia UP, 2021) demonstrates how changing perceptions of security across generations have culminated in a culture of antimilitarism that constrains the government’s efforts to pursue a more martial foreign policy.
Le challenges a simple opposition between militarism and pacifism, arguing that Japanese security discourse should be understood in terms of “multiple militarisms,” which can legitimate choices such as
the mobilization of the Japan Self-Defense Forces for peacekeeping operations and humanitarian relief missions.
Le highlights how factors that are not typically linked to security policy, such as aging and declining populations and gender inequality, have played crucial roles.
He contends that the case of Japan challenges the presumption in international relations scholarship that states must pursue the use of force or be punished, showing how widespread normative beliefs have restrained Japanese policy makers. Drawing on interviews with policy makers, military personnel, atomic bomb survivors, museum coordinators, grassroots activists, and other stakeholders, as well as analysis of peace museums and social movements, Japan’s Aging Peace provides new insights for scholars of Asian politics, international relations, and Japanese foreign policy.
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As China’s power and ambitions grow, how will its neighbors respond? Japan’s Aging Peace addresses the future of Japanese national security policy, providing an important update to a longstanding debate. Arguing that a country’s security policy is supported by an ‘ecosystem’ of diverse social attributes—such as demographics, religion, and gender inequality—Le enriches debates about Japan’s, and East Asia’s, future.
Jennifer Lind, author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics
Tom Phuong Le has written a landmark study challenging widespread claims that Japan is “normalizing” and “remilitarizing.” Developing a useful taxonomy of militarism, antimilitarism, and pacifism, Le demonstrates the continued salience of normative constraints on deploying Japan’s military and offers an original argument about how Japan’s aging and declining population also limits the country’s supposed remilitarization. Japan’s Aging Peace deserves to be read by anyone interested in Japan, international politics in East Asia, U.S. policy in this region, or militarism and pacifism more generally.
Paul Midford, author of Overcoming Isolationism: Japan’s Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism
Japan’s Aging Peace innovatively explores the connection between Japan’s rapidly aging and shrinking population and the direction of its national security policy. Le marshals a wide range of evidence to support the view that Japan’s distinctive antimilitarist culture will continue to constrain nationalist impulses for years to come.
Andrew Oros, author of Japan’s Security Renaissance: New Policies and Politics for the Twenty-First Century
How is Japan not a “normal” country in security policy and why? No one but Tom Phuong Le has ever brought to bear anywhere near this volume or variety of evidence, nor this variety of conceptual lenses, to answering this question. Japan’s Aging Peace is a masterwork in providing a subtle, sophisticated, and penetrating understanding of Japanese antimilitarism.
David Welch, author of Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Phuong Le is assistant professor of politics at Pomona College.
List of Tables and Figures
Preface
Note on Names and Currency
1. Japan’s Aging Peace
2. Multiple Militarisms
3. Who Will Fight? The JSDF’s Demographic Crises
4. Technical-Infrastructural Constraints and the Capacity Crises
5. Antimilitarism and the Politics of Restraint
6. Peace Culture and Normative Restraints
7. Crafting Peace Among Militarisms
8. Aging Gracefully
Appendix A: Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation (Abridged)
Appendix B: Peace and War Museums in Japan
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Phuong Le is assistant professor of politics at Pomona College.
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Japan's Aging Peace
Japan's Aging Peace: Pacifism and Militarism in the Twenty-First Century
TOM PHUONG LE
Series: Contemporary Asia in the World
Copyright Date: 2021
Published by: Columbia University Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/le--19978
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Front Matter
Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
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List of Figures and Tables
List of Figures and Tables (pp. ix-x)
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Preface
Preface (pp. xi-xvi)
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Note on Names and Currency
Note on Names and Currency (pp. xvii-xx)
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CHAPTER ONE Japan’s Aging Peace
CHAPTER ONE Japan’s Aging Peace (pp. 1-33)
International and domestic conditions may force Japan to finally abandon over seventy-five years of restrained security policy. Policymakers are increasingly concerned with terrorism, cyberattacks, piracy, unpredictable alliances, and Japan’s irrelevance in international affairs. In East Asia, a rising China, nuclear North Korea, and assertive Russia are potential threats to Japan’s security in the near future. Domestically, conservatives led by long-serving Prime Minister Abe Shinzo have capitalized on feelings of insecurity caused by three decades of economic stagnation and fierce competition from Japan’s neighbors to push a more ambitious security agenda. If Japan were ever to remilitarize, now seems more likely...
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CHAPTER TWO Multiple Militarisms
CHAPTER TWO Multiple Militarisms (pp. 34-63)
Scholars and policymakers have long predicted Japan’s eventual return to normal security behavior, mainly differing over whether international threats or domestic forces would undo Japanese pacifistic attitudes and institutions. Embedded in these predictions is the belief that normal states are militaristic. This chapter unpacks some of the underlying assumptions within the study of international relations theory that inform such thinking and, in doing so, establishes a more comprehensive understanding of how the use of force is legitimized.
The current militarism analytical framework is inadequate for understanding Japanese security policy because it oversimplifies complicated—and seemingly contradictory—security practices, which leads...
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CHAPTER THREE Who Will Fight? The JSDF’s Demographic Crises
CHAPTER THREE Who Will Fight? The JSDF’s Demographic Crises (pp. 64-105)
Conventional wisdom would have one believe that the United States should have won the Vietnam War. The United States possessed superior firepower, technology, air and naval capabilities, economic resources, and latent power compared to the Viet Cong and North Vietnam. The United States did not restrain its overwhelming might; during the war, over seven million tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—more than twice the amount dropped on Europe and Asia in World War II.¹ To this day, leftover ordnance maims and kills hundreds of Southeast Asians every year. Although they lacked symmetrical military capabilities, the...
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CHAPTER FOUR Technical-Infrastructural Constraints and the Capacity Crises
CHAPTER FOUR Technical-Infrastructural Constraints and the Capacity Crises (pp. 106-138)
The JSDF is no military pygmy. World-class fighters, cutting-edge submarines, and the eighth-largest defense budget in the world support the highly trained JSDF personnel. Furthermore, the GOJ has loosened the self-imposed ban on arms exports that hindered growth in the domestic defense industry. They did this with the hopes of mitigating the JSDF’s demographic and technological weaknesses and augmenting its strengths to tackle the diverse challenges of the twenty-first century. Improved surveillance capabilities, acquisition of new defense technologies, increased combined exercises with the United States and like-minded states, and concerted effort to create a more seamless and logical defense force...
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CHAPTER FIVE Antimilitarism and the Politics of Restraint
CHAPTER FIVE Antimilitarism and the Politics of Restraint (pp. 139-163)
The previous two chapters investigated the material constraints on the content and direction of Japanese security policy. In both body and machine, the JSDF is limited in power projection and growth potential. Material constraints, however, take on their character and are reinforced by ideational restraints, namely antimilitarism rules. Whereas material factors operate as constraints because government policies cannot change how biology and physics shape force size and defense technology, ideational factors operate as restraints because they constitute self-regulating behavior among policymakers and the general public. This chapter introduces Japanese antimilitarism and explains how it shapes the politics that restrain the...
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CHAPTER SIX Peace Culture and Normative Restraints
CHAPTER SIX Peace Culture and Normative Restraints (pp. 164-217)
The antimilitarism ecosystem provides rules that govern how the GOJ and the Japanese public perceive security and how it should be pursued. Material constraints, such as demographics, create policy objectives for the government, while ideational restraints determine the character and limits of remilitarization policies. For the Japanese public, the aging and declining population and antimilitarism norms provide few reasons to support the militarization of the state.
This chapter provides further insight on antimilitarism by examining Japanese peace culture and how activists and peace discourses imbue normativity into security policy debates. Antimilitarism—expressed by activists and as education in its many...
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CHAPTER SEVEN Crafting Peace Among Militarisms
CHAPTER SEVEN Crafting Peace Among Militarisms (pp. 218-252)
Since the end of the isolationist policies of the Tokugawa period, Japan has sought its rightful place within the international hierarchy. Japan adopted a “rich army, strong country” doctrine in the following Meiji period, during which it utilized military power to secure its sovereignty and extend its power across East Asia. Militant nationalism and the failure to be treated as an equal power by the West led Japan on a destructive mission to place itself on top of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Following its total defeat in World War II, Japan was rebuilt as a full-fledged democracy and...
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CHAPTER EIGHT Aging Gracefully
CHAPTER EIGHT Aging Gracefully (pp. 253-274)
Having served longer than any Japanese prime minister in the post-World War II era, Abe Shinzo was one to take stock of the past when formulating a vision of Japan’s future. Abe’s security policies were grounded in Japan’s colonial history, antimilitarism, and material resources as much as they were by external threats. Introduced in Japan’s first national security strategy in 2013, Abe’s Proactive Contribution to Peace doctrine is the latest iteration of the nation’s century-long search for security, wealth, and standing.¹ Aging provides the experience necessary to successfully pursue such ambitious goals.
Longevity is an anomaly in Japanese politics. Abe...
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APPENDIX A: Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation (Abridged)
APPENDIX A: Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation (Abridged) (pp. 275-280)
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APPENDIX B: Peace Museums and War History Museums in Japan
APPENDIX B: Peace Museums and War History Museums in Japan (pp. 281-284)
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Notes
Notes (pp. 285-324)
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