Japan and Global Society. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. x, 182 pp. US$50.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-4426-3034-5.
On September 9, the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea carried out its largest nuclear test to date. This marks the second test this year, and the fifth in total since the first detonation ten years ago. The test indicates the country is steadily moving toward building a functional warhead, while its neighbours and the United States are left unable to find any viable measures to stop it. Seung Hyok Lee’s Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat sheds light on the unique role this extremely secluded and increasingly troublesome country has played in Japanese domestic politics since the late 1990s.
The book diligently chronicles a series of events that took place between the two countries, starting from North Korea’s first ballistic missile test in 1998 to Japan’s eventual decision to impose, unilaterally, major economic sanctions against Pyongyang in 2006. Through its fluid narrative, readers will learn some interesting episodes little known outside Japan, including the 2001 arrest (and immediate deportation) by Japanese authorities of Kim Jong Nam, the eldest son of the then North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who entered Japan with a forged Dominican Republic passport, to presumably visit Tokyo Disneyland. And more significantly, the book provides us with valuable details about decision-making processes, especially interactions between various political actors and the growing significance of public opinion in these processes, through which Japan’s new approaches and accompanied policy actions vis-à-vis North Korea were determined.
The book’s central focus is Tokyo’s decision in 2006 to impose the first-ever unilateral economic sanctions against North Korea, which is characterized in the book as a dramatic shift from its previously constrained attitude. It argues that this policy shift was “a direct consequence of a deeper shift in societal discourse in Japan” about its relations with North Korea; it was, therefore, not a strategic response (widely suggested by observers and commentators) to North Korea’s missile launch and nuclear tests that took place before Tokyo’s sanctions. The deeper shift in the security discourse was brought about primarily by the shocking revelation, in 2002, of North Korea’s past abductions of Japanese citizens, which led the Japanese public to consciously recognize the security vulnerability of their country and to reevaluate its historical relations with North Korea. It was, therefore, the increasingly hardened public opinion against North Korea, for which Japanese mass media, as well as some politicians and activists, functioned as a megaphone and echo chamber, that crucially shaped Japanese policy makers’ preference for unilateral economic sanctions in considering their policy options toward North Korea.
The above argument is, overall, well articulated and presented in a careful manner. The introductory discussion provides a useful definition of key concepts, such as public opinion and societal discourse, and specifies the study’s methodological approach to identify and observe these abstract, and often fuzzy, concepts in actual analysis. The detailed narrative on Japan-North Korea relations and Japanese domestic politics, between 1998 and 2006, which spreads over four chapters, consciously delineates the evolution of Japanese public opinion—and larger societal discourse—toward North Korea, as well as the factors behind that evolution. Although the theoretical discussion in support of its argument is rather limited (for those in the field of international relations, and its subfield of foreign policy analysis), the book nonetheless presents an original perspective about how, and under what conditions, public opinion and discourse shape a state foreign policy, which could be developed further in a full-fledged hypothesis and be tested comparatively by multiple cases.
To be sure, the book is by no means free from some common challenges associated with this type of interpretative historical analysis. When empirically discussing the presumed impact of public opinion on the thinking of a policy maker, for instance, the author’s interpretative inference often comes into play. This is especially the case with former Prime Minister Koizumi: Given that Koizumi is featured in the book as most consequential in terms of making the final call in the selected cases on decision making, the use of actual comments by Koizumi in interviews or his writings, which would have demonstrated the impact of public opinion on his decision making, would have crucially strengthened the book’s argument. Furthermore, the recent revelations by Tōru Hasuike, a brother of one of the former abductees, on the Japanese government’s surprise decision to refuse to repatriate the five abductees temporarily visiting Japan in the fall of 2002, is not consulted in the analysis. The publication timing of Hasuike’s book—December 2015—makes this omission inevitable, but this suggests that, with further new information likely becoming available in the future, the book’s argument and analysis are, by no means, conclusive.
This book is the first major study published in English that exclusively focuses on Japan’s foreign policy formulation toward North Korea between 1998 and 2006—the book’s important contribution to the field of Japanese studies. The author attributes the absence of prior works of this kind to a common tendency among Japan specialists to treat the issue of North Korea as “one” case among multiple cases to build a larger argument about an overall trend in post-Cold War Japan’s security or foreign policy. A little paradoxically, however, this book provides a set of valuable empirical data, on which those specialists can, indeed, build another larger argument on Japan’s political trend.
For instance, the author details early examples of the rightward, historical-revisionist trend in public discourse, which is worryingly visible in today’s Japanese society. It also delineates the first instance of Prime Minister Abe’s skillful use of public-inciting foreign policy issues for advancing his own political position, a novel (in the history of Japanese politics) tactic Abe has executed so successfully, to this day, that it may become standard practice for his successors. This may be seen as another important contribution that the author makes to the field of Japanese studies.
Kuniko Ashizawa
American University, Washington, DC, USA
pp. 370-372