Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series. London; New York: Routledge, 2015. xvii, 216 pp. (Figures, tables.) US$145.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-13-877523-7.
It is clear from policies on rice imports and subsidies for farmers that the Japanese government takes the issue of food security very seriously, and is not content to rely only on international trade to meet its food needs. This book explains why, and how concerns about dependence on imports of strategic raw materials have played out in foreign policy, especially since World War II.
Detailed historical research puts into perspective the escalation in territorial conflicts with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over the Senkaku (Daoyutai) Islands lying between Okinawa and Taiwan. Chinese historians such as Jane Lovell and Yangwen Zheng have explained how the “century of humiliation” following the Opium Wars inflicted by Japan and Western powers on China is one of the factors fuelling contemporary Chinese belligerence over maritime borders. This book then posits historical background for the Japanese side. Smith shows how access to fisheries resources outside Japan’s territorial waters has been a key strategy for food security since the colonial era through the occupation period, when Japan needed to replace the food production that had come from its empire, and which was then whittled away through the implementation of the United Nations Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) enclosing large areas of what had been international waters as national exclusive economic zones in the 1970s and 1980s. Officials have long referred to Japan as a “sea people” or “maritime nation” and been passionate in defense of maritime access and aghast when restrictions have been imposed. These historical factors, combined with the potential energy resources of the area, and the domestic political capital to be gained by both sides in fanning conflict between them, help explain the lengths to which Japan has gone in asserting ownership of these uninhabited rocky outcrops in the sea.
Smith categorizes ocean governance as being made up of: 1) the international legal and political framework for access to maritime areas; 2) national politics and states pushing their own interests; and 3) international diplomacy and conflict over maritime territory under the aegis of international law. The book focuses on Japanese diplomacy relating to codification of international law pertaining to the oceans, and the interplay of foreign policy and domestic politics in shaping Japan’s involvement in various conflicts over a 60-year period from World War II to the present. Some of the important events in addition to the implementation of the UNCLOS covered include the discovery of new petroleum sources and the development of domestic environmental laws.
The main theoretical contribution of the book is on the nature of Japanese foreign policy. Smith weighs into the debate about what kind of foreign policy Japan has, given its postwar lack of international political influence commensurate with its economic power. “Comprehensive security” is the framework used to explain Japanese international fisheries policy, diplomacy, and conflicts arising when the actions of other countries threaten Japan’s access to marine resources. Comprehensive security is described as a unique Japanese defense strategy, involving non-military factors in strategic calculations.
Rather than siding with political commentators who find, along the lines of Karel van Wolferen’s argument, that Japan has no coherent foreign policy direction beyond following the US and making platitudes about peace and prosperity, Smith finds that Japan has had a discernible international oceans policy that it has pursued in an incremental and subtle manner. Although Japan has not taken an overt leadership role for the most part, it has influenced the international system governing marine resources and achieved important goals. A related finding is that policy agendas have been set by self-driven sectoral groupings, in this case the fishing industry in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF). In this sense the book complements the scholarship of Aurelia George Mulgan on the role of the MAFF in Japanese politics, with Mulgan’s work focusing on agriculture and Smith’s work on fisheries.
Smith argues that Japan’s policy to secure its food supply has involved both autarky and promoting the international trade in food. Japanese demand for seafood exceeds the productive capacity of its national waters. In the immediate postwar years more fish was a basic need, as the country faced famine. Additional sources of animal protein were sought through the occupying forces, allowing Japanese fishing fleets to once more move out from Japanese waters. This was the era of industrial whaling for national nutritional needs. By the 1970s, seafood consumption had gone beyond filling a basic nutritional need as the population became wealthy, and food culture preferences meant the demand for seafood escalated, and diversified into luxury foods such as sashimi, supplied by Japanese fishing vessels operating around the world. At the same time, however, the progress of the UNCLOS meant the Japanese fleet was no longer to freely access many international fishing grounds. As a response, Japanese international fisheries policy was to secure access through creating joint ventures in coastal states, and to espouse food security as a keystone of its multilateral diplomacy through United Nations agencies.
Japan’s International Fisheries Policy is a useful book for scholars and students of Japan’s foreign policy, as well as of its domestic politics relating to food and other marine resources over the decades since World War II. It is also a good reference work for people interested in international ocean governance, where Japan is a key player, as a fishing state, as a major supporter of multilateral measures to promote food security through fisheries, and as a big bilateral aid donor for fisheries in developing countries.
Kate Barclay
University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
pp. 656-658