Critical Studies of the Asia Pacific Series. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. xi, 227 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$100.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-137-41455-7.
While Japan has often displayed a defensive stance on free trade, it has also been a major player in the postwar global economy. In late 2015, the Japanese government announced its intention to partake in the negotiations for the comprehensive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). A protracted, polarized public debate preceded this decision, and the debate is likely to remain heated for years to come. Aurelia George Mulgan and Masayoshi Honma have edited a volume that allows the reader to understand Japan’s participation in the TPP in the context of the country’s postwar trade policy.
In the introductory chapter, George Mulgan lays out a simple analytical framework for the political economy of postwar Japanese trade policy, which is followed by a series of contributions that pick up certain aspects in greater detail. George Mulgan argues that Japan’s postwar trade policy has been fundamentally shaped by the clash of interests between export-oriented industries and the internationally uncompetitive and highly defensive agricultural sector. This conflict is reflected in the nature, the scope, and not least the partners of Japan’s trade agreements, which have been “tailor-made for business” (10), but (mostly) excluding agriculture. “Sectoral interests” further interact with domestic and external “state interests” in George Mulgan’s framework, including economic development in general, resource security, or maintaining the crucial relations with the US. Recently, a more active stance toward trade agreements has emerged as a political tool for Japan to counterbalance the regional competitor China. In chapter 2, Urata provides a more detailed analysis of the historical arch of Japan’s postwar trade policy, from initial protectionism via bilateral economic partnerships excluding agriculture (for example, Japan’s first FTA with Singapore) to larger regional agreements.
Both initial chapters raise the question of how to explain the peculiar influence of agricultural interests on trade policy, which is tackled extensively in two consecutive (and to a certain extent overlapping) chapters. Yamashita (chapter 3) argues that a web of vested interests in a small-scale, subsidy-dependent production structure dominated by part-time rice farming has long prevented political commitment to free trade, even though more comprehensive trade liberalization would arguably have benefitted not only the Japanese economy as a whole, but also the crisis-ridden agricultural sector itself. For Yamashita and, to a slightly lesser degree, Honma (chapter 4), the spider in this web of vested interests is the organization of agricultural cooperatives (Japan Agriculture, JA). Once founded to help overcome postwar starvation, the cooperative organization has deployed its vast membership base of small-scale (rice) farm households to grow into a major economic player, and to build the political clout to defend support and protection measures for inefficient part-timers. Especially the longstanding party in power—the LDP—has been known to rely on rural votes organized by the cooperative organization, eventually preventing the transition to internationally competitive forms of agricultural production. Both authors share a surprisingly positive outlook for Japanese agriculture, a “sector with potential and flexibility” (119). For them, certain structural reforms—such as removing the policy measures for an artificially high rice price—could foster the development of an internationally competitive, export-oriented farm sector, and the TPP might serve as the catalyst for such reforms. Yet, this would constitute nothing less than an existential threat for JA. Thus, for Yamashita the “heart of the problem is not the TPP versus Japanese agriculture—it is the TPP versus JA” (89).
As George Mulgan shows in her detailed analysis of the interest group activities (chapter 5), the cooperative organization indeed spearheads the opposition against the TPP. More interestingly, however, the chapter also points to the character of the TPP as a “new generation” international agreement that goes far beyond trade issues and thus also transcends the traditional “farming versus business” cleavage in Japan. Instead, the TPP has generated “unprecedented levels of national consultation and discourse” (123), in which civil rights organizations and consumer groups find themselves—if somewhat involuntarily—side by side with conservative agricultural interests. The comprehensive nature of the TPP also corresponds with its role amidst a changing regional power constellation. As Kimura argues in chapter 7, the TPP marks the end of a phase during which the economic integration between Japan and the rest of Asia had grown regardless of political and ideological differences. Around 2010, rising tensions with China led Japanese manufacturers to lose confidence in what Kimura calls the “happy separation of politics and economics” (176), while the US displayed a renewed interest in the East Asian region, for which he sees the TPP as a major indicator. Japan’s decision to join the agreement thus reflects its commitment to a “new type” of economic integration, which not least aims at defining domestic political standards. For Yoshimatsu (chapter 8), Japan’s trade policy is both an independent and a dependent variable for regional integration. He argues that the current Abe administration’s proactive stance on the TPP has already shown “significant influence on South Korean and Chinese economic diplomacy” (214), eventually paving the way for a comprehensive Asian-Pacific free trade area.
Overall, the most valuable contribution of this edited volume is to demonstrate how Japan’s TPP participation is embedded in the country’s postwar pattern of trade policy, while at the same time pointing out how the agreement may well represent a turning point for Japan and the Asia Pacific as a whole. The collection of articles—albeit at times repetitive—feeds into this broader narrative nicely. Yet, although the TPP is identified as an issue that “politicized and polarized” the Japanese public (123), the contributions in the volume rarely reflect this contestation, which is probably most obvious in the depiction of the TPP (and free trade in general) as the panacea for Japan’s crisis-ridden farm sector.
Hanno Jentzsch
German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo, Japan
pp. 352-354