Internationalization and Asianism in the late Meiji

Early Meiji borrowing for modernization rightfully draws incredulous praise as a model of internationalization for modern nation-building and economic development. Yet, as seen at the turn of the century, its legacy was incomplete. The central government had risen quickly as a powerful force for international competition, but that was accompanied by feudal traditions insistent on unconditional loyalty as well as military separation from civilian rule that grew stronger with victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1994–95 and again a decade later with an even more exultant triumph. An obsession with catching up and overcoming the humiliation of being treated as a second-tier state metamorphosed into resentment at being denied the respect and fruits of war that its victories supposedly warranted.Footnote ² In the race between emerging global and national identity, Meiji leaders were successful in constructing the national essence (kokutai) with such comprehensiveness – drawing on Shintoism, Confucianism, and Bushido and combining loyalty, filial piety, and patriotism – that nationalism of a xenophobic sort gained an edge.Footnote ³ The legacy of Meiji conservatism was not only authoritarian stability for economic development and integration into the world economy,Footnote ⁴ but also narrow-minded arrogance toward Asia as backward and something from which Japan had to escape (datsu-a).

Changing Japanese reasoning about Korea in the first decade of the twentieth century reveals a transition in worldview. Welcomed as modernizers by many Koreans, the Japanese abused this trust. They treated Korea as merely an object in some sort of global power competition, colonizing it and eventually seeking to obliterate its culture in favor of assimilation. They came to interpret a civilized country as one that colonized other states, equating internationalism with saving countries incapable of managing on their own.Footnote ⁵ Inability to adopt international standards for appreciating the feelings of the Koreans not only ushered in four decades of colonialist mentality from 1905, but remains, even a century later, an obstacle to mutual understanding with the Korean people.

The aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War embodies the spirit that, after decades of intense reform and a catch-up mentality, took root inside Japan. It consisted of a claim to exclusive control of vast areas of Asia, ridding them of the Western powers and of Russia. Removing Russia's presence had become the focus not only of freeing Asia from those perceived as outsiders, but also for Japan's growing claims to be the arbiter and engine for the region's modernity. Such civilizing ambitions, already pronounced in the Sino-Japanese War,Footnote ⁶ justified colonialism by Japan and prioritized a worldview centered on crass imperialist competition for territory rather than the alternative worldview of international integration based on equality of states. When the Portsmouth Treaty revived resentment of the Triple Intervention that Japan had been deprived of the fruits of its hard-earned victory, the lesson learned was that it could not trust the Western powers to treat it fairly and had to regard the international order as immoral.Footnote ⁷ Empowered by these excessive expectations, Japan in 1910 annexed Korea, in 1915 presented the Twenty-One Demands to China,Footnote ⁸ in 1920 extended its intervention in the Russian Far East with ambitions to remain, and in 1931 occupied Northeast China under the name Manchukuo. If these moves are all considered as part of a sequence, then we should focus on the impact of the Russo-Japanese War as the force that embraced a worldview without respect for the emerging norms of international behavior that could have restrained Japan.

After their war, Japan and Russia quickly reached an accommodation respectful of each other's expansionism at China's expense, even agreeing to an alliance in 1916. As partners in dividing up Northeast Asia, they opposed US efforts to stop colonialism in the region.Footnote ⁹ A quarter of a century later, when Japan allied with Nazi Germany, obsession with expansionism overshadowed any other outlook on the international system. When the Soviet Union strongly reasserted Russian imperialist ambitions after the Bolshevik Revolution, two states that had briefly joined in a common cause became arch enemies.

With the Portsmouth Treaty, historical discourse in Northeast Asia changed. Japan saw the war as a great success and still sees it as such today, confirming the country's arrival as a modernized, civilized great power. Yet, as Togo Kazuhiko has written in a study of the impact of the Russo-Japanese War a century later, the flexible and realistic demands of earlier Meiji leaders yielded to a pursuit of ‘autarkic imperial expansion’, as Japan lost the goodwill of its neighbors and became caught in a spiral of ambitions with expansionist Russia as if that defined the international system.Footnote ¹⁰ Apart from the decade of 1907–17, when they connived together to share the spoils of imperialism, they aroused each other's distrust. Somehow, in these circumstances of rivalry for regional domination, Japan lost perspective on the idealistic side of the global order, while exaggerating images of itself as a victim, whether of peace treaties that denied it all of the spoils to which it felt it was entitled and that were more protective of China than Japan had in mind, or of racism, however deserving its condemnation. The reaction to Portsmouth led toward annexation of Korea five years later and the Twenty-One Demands on China a decade later.

Should Japan have desired a different regional order, there were good prospects. The United States was focused on respect for China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Given its reluctance to get involved and priority on trade, a compromise approach would have been within reach. In the late Taisho, Japan at times appeared ready for a different kind of internationalism, respecting Chinese nationalist aspirations that were heightened with the 1919 May Fourth Movement. A political system that empowered radical forces and an emerging national identity that bifurcated Asia and the world system and became messianic on Japan's role in Asia, while misjudging global trends, led many astray.

Did the hypocrisy of the US and Great Britain about their colonial role in Asia help to lead Japan astray? Yes, it did. Were many in Japan sincere about liberating the colonies of Asia? Yes, they were. Yet, with Koreans soon pining for independence, rising nationalism in China sending a clear signal that all colonialism would be resisted, and Wilsonian idealism setting an example, Japan failed to define Asianism in accord with the times. From 1905, it chose the path of a parallel imperialist power, even if at times in the Taisho era there were mixed signals.Footnote ¹¹ A spurt in self-confidence from 1905 redirected what were already seeds of pan-Asianism with an idealist streak in favor of solidarity with oppressed peoples toward a more realist approach centered on asserting Japan's strength by forcing the West to depart from the region. This ideology came to assert an Asian identity with which Japan was associated but not fully included, since it had its own distinct national identity and claims to success for entering the ranks of the first-order great powers. Countering what was perceived as Western racism against the so-called ‘yellow peril’, it produced its own racism, claiming that Asians belonged to the same race, but again maintaining enough Japanese separatism to leave unclear whether this homogeneous population might be a distinct race within a race. Also incorporated into this outlook was the notion that Japan had its own distinct path to modernization that could provide a model for Asian neighbors that would fend off Westernization in cultural terms.Footnote ¹² In all dimensions Japan's growing claims to be Asia's teacher, leader, and eventually colonial power reflected a rejection of the West, not just for its imperialism but even for its political, economic, and cultural claims to be an international model.

Japan became obsessed with the identity of a great power, justifying domestic calls for unity that bore the seeds of authoritarianism and policies abroad that distorted the international environment, as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were also to do. Thinking advanced from preserving national sovereignty to ensuring territorial security, with the groundswell in confidence mixed with resentment after the Russo-Japanese War, to becoming obsessed with economic security in order to be able to resist pressure from states that opposed Japan's march to conquest across East Asia.Footnote ¹³ After rejecting the values of political and cultural liberalization, influential political thinkers increasingly focused on how to separate their country from economic interdependence as well. This autarky represented the complete antithesis of internationalization and was followed by claims to social particularism in which family and community eclipsed individual rights. Japan's logic of Asianism vs. internationalism derived from its lens on the great powers.

A critical linkage between Asianism and internationalization occurred when Japan exaggerated the possibility of trouble in the First World War and Paris Peace Conference. Despite the fact that the United States and China were neutral during the war (until the late US entry) and approached the end idealistically without any intention of gaining an edge over other countries, Japan blamed both as the causes of a supposed crisis in its own foreign policy.Footnote ¹⁴ This perverse reasoning linked to new assertiveness about Japan's right to control Asia may not have operated continuously during the 1920s, but it became the foundation for the successive targeting of China and the United States that followed.

Some may suggest that internationalization in the early twentieth century was not well defined. Teddy Roosevelt's colonialism differed from Woodrow Wilson's liberal idealism. Vladimir Lenin's anti-imperialism was an opposition slogan that did not outlive Josef Stalin's perversion of communist internationalism into an imperialist movement. Yet, Japanese debates recognized the diversity of models available, and the choices made revealed the rise of forces in the Japanese leadership hostile to international ideals. With the slogan of Asianism mesmerizing many as an alternative suggesting vertical economic integration, political domination, and a kind of cultural distinctiveness free of Western values, the Japanese lost sight of the merits of international integration on a basis of equality.

Internationalization and Asianism in the Nakasone–Takeshita era

The mid-1980s represents the culmination of the cold war model of development that brought stunning recovery but still left a sense of dissatisfaction with what remained to be accomplished. After the confusion of the occupation period, Japanese conservative leaders expressed whole-hearted support for the main tenets of internationalization: world economic integration on the basis of free market principles; rallying the free world led by democracies and supportive of human rights against the communist bloc; and approval of the cultural principles advocated by the United States in favor of heterogeneous voices on the world stage and against nationalist claims to superiority based on ascriptive criteria. In spite of this conservative consensus that gradually overcame an alternative progressive worldview, conservatives and many on the progressive side too had not resolved some questions that cast a shadow on the degree to which they really were internationalized.

One troublesome issue was the lack of normalization with Japan's main neighbors. There was little recognition given to their sufferings under Japanese rule and to what may be required to regain their trust. When normalization talks succeeded with South Korea in 1965 and with the People's Republic of China in 1972, they came in the wake of US pressure or precedents that could not be ignored and through Japanese economic prowess that overshadowed apologies over history. Modernized, democratized Japan could leave the past aside while approaching Asia anew as a junior partner of the United States, but without having to accept the burdens or values driving US policy. It could disassociate itself from modernization theory, expecting that the Japanese model was distinct and could lead Asian development, and from an assertive, values-oriented foreign policy, claiming that the Japanese could work better with non-democratic Asian states and adhere to their Peace Constitution. In this context, the Japanese were again becoming confident of their superiority to Westerners, both in how they organized themselves at home and how they interacted with Asians.Footnote ¹⁵ This image of Asia attracted a wide following on the left and also drew great sympathy on the right; it served as a counterpoint to internationalization.

The ‘Nixon shock’ of Sino-American rapprochement produced alarm beyond what might have been expected. Many attribute this to fear of abandonment,Footnote ¹⁶ but another interpretation is that for a time Japan's leaders were afraid that they would lose leverage that gave them freedom to interpret internationalism narrowly and pursue Asianism as a maritime strategy with relatively few constraints. Although there was reason to celebrate this turning point in the cold war with a new opportunity for Japan to normalize relations with China, the alarm suggested twisted thinking related to an unstated agenda of riding on open-ended US backing to leadership in a divided Asia without need to apologize over historical transgressions. It was not long, however, before Japan's leaders calculated that they could overcome the history issue with China too and still pursue leadership aims.

Competing national identities in the 1950s yielded to a catch-up identity centered on economics first and setting political nationalism aside.Footnote ¹⁷ Yet, if the latter was not a focus, it still operated as a brake, for instance in normalization with Asian neighbors. In the 1980s, many considered the time ripe for revisiting the issue of Japan's political and historic identity, not in the simplified language of a democratic state belonging to the ‘free world’, but as a growing force in internationalization and in Asian politics, with the capacity to regain control over the meaning of its own twentieth-century history. Given the four forces seen by many as constraining Japan, any new strategy would have to be wide-ranging: (1) insisting on more equality with the US instead of gaiatsu, where it would apply pressure and expect to get its way; (2) resolving injustices or historically unsettled issues with the Soviet Union and North Korea, ending threats and proving the value of Japan's economic power; (3) carrying normalization with South Korea and China to the next level, in which they could not gain an advantage by playing the ‘history card;’ and (4) forging a proud national identity, overcoming the leftist preference for pacifism and self-criticism on historical and nationalist matters. Under Prime Minister Nakasone, these nascent tendencies gathered steam and became associated with two ill-defined concepts: internationalization and reentry into Asia. Both called for a more activist state, steering relations with the great powers and the Korean peninsula in new directions. As signs of the end of the cold war appeared, expectations intensified that the foreign policy agenda to achieve these changes was within reach; yet strategic thinking would be needed to overcome habits of the postwar era that left Japan too reactive and sensitive to others. Lacking a domestic consensus and mired in bureaucratic inertia,Footnote ¹⁸ Japan responded first with small steps and mostly indirect debates on the key concepts and choices ahead.

In the 1980s, criticism of Western notions of modernity and modernization again rose to the fore, as in the decades to 1945. Already in the 1960s rejection of modernization theory occurred not only because of lingering acceptance of Marxist theory, seen as its antithesis, but as part of a positive reassessment of aspects of Japan's political and social traditions, such as reliance on the state, stress on group solidarity, and resistance to some themes of individualism. Clearly buoyed by their own ‘economic miracle’, the Japanese were looking to become a force in Asia with a different model than that championed by the United States. After all, both Kishi Nobosuke, who had been Tojo Hideki's closest deputy both in plotting the war and in developing a state-centered economy,Footnote ¹⁹ and Sato Eisaku, his younger brother who had the longest postwar tenure, were prime ministers resistant to US models even as they embraced the alliance. Unable to overturn the much-derided system put in place by Yoshida Shigeru that left nationalism in limbo, they paved the way for the rise of Nakasone, who had joined in opposing Yoshida's weakness, and eventually Kishi's grandson, Abe Shinzo, as leaders of Japan who would give priority to completing their mission. Anti-communism symbolized Kishi and Sato's internationalism when ‘it was Kishi who welcomed organized crime and the nationalist right-wing into the LDP mainstream’, as Richard Samuels argues.Footnote ²⁰ If Nakasone changed with time into a pragmatic advocate of better relations with the US, China, South Korea, and Russia, then Takeshita, who lacked similar international experience, may have brought back the nexus of protected interests and narrow nationalism that stood in the way of foresight. Control over a political machine greased with illicit payoffs centered for more than a decade on Tanaka Kakuei, whose role may have ended in the mid-1980s even as his legacy culminated in the dominance in 1987–1992 of Takeshita Noboru and the power broker Kanemaru Shin, who did not become prime minister.Footnote ²¹ Although nationalism was secondary to corruption in this period, the nexus between the two endured, especially in keeping at bay international forces that could undermine vested interests.

Confidence at home and a beckoning environment abroad created space for some politicians such as Ishihara Shintaro to focus on standing up to the US and surpassing it.Footnote ²² Others introduced the vague goal of creating a ‘normal’ state, with a seemingly internationalizing agenda, even if their barely concealed hidden agenda was to realize long-held goals of diminishing preoccupation with economic development and turning the people's attention to projection of political power on the basis of an unresolved revisionist agenda more than a realist one.Footnote ²³ This required some means to reduce reliance on US power, whether through a breakthrough in ties to Moscow or Pyongyang, a new bridge role with China, or even the appearance of more support for the United Nations. John Dower argues that internationalization ‘was, perhaps, the most overworked catchword of the 1980s’, even as ‘nationalist fixations’ grew stronger – defensiveness toward criticism bordering on siege mentality and narcissistic preoccupation with being Japanese, as seen in ‘nihonjinron’ traditional values that countered the supposedly corrupting influences of that very same internationalization.Footnote ²⁴

Emotions in the second half of the 1980s were mixed. Self-confidence had grown from the long-term growth that continued as the bubble economy, the remarkable social stability that contrasted with much publicized pathologies in the United States, and the foreign policy successes that led some to expect virtual equality with the United States or even that Japan would be the big winner in the cold war. Yet, feelings of victimization were becoming more pronounced, for instance in the campaign to showcase the loss of four islands, the ‘Northern Territories’ syndrome, and were accompanied by rising expectations for a final accounting that could even close the door on the war era.Footnote ²⁵

As in 1955–65 when normalization with South Korea was delayed despite US encouragement and then in 1971–72 when Sino-US rapprochement produced a shock, the Soviet–US rapprochement of 1986–91 aroused an inordinate amount of anxiety in Japan. Many interpreted this as the birth pangs of ‘realism’ after four decades of irresponsible thinking that since Japan was not really in charge of its own security it should focus elsewhere, including pacifist pronouncements by the left and a narrow economic lens by many on the right. Sympathetic observers assumed that after a transition the result would be a healthy mix of realism and nationalism in defining Japan's emerging international role. The realists would forthrightly place Japan in the US camp, responding first to the Soviet threat and then to the uncertainties of the end of the cold war, rejecting Japanese exceptionalism. Those placing emphasis on national identity might not be so compliant but they would stress Japan's role as a leader in dealing with the problems of an information society rather than turn back to the past.Footnote ²⁶

The popular notion of internationalization by the late 1980s carried the meanings: to overcome narrow national interests by behaving more responsibly in matters of global security and international trade; to show leadership in global challenges such as foreign development assistance and environmental protection; and to take the initiative in such settings as the United Nations and the G-7 summits on behalf of moral causes. With some sincerity, Japanese leaders clothed their nation in the mantle of a new champion of these causes of internationalization that would not pale in comparison to the United States. To a degree, it would stake out its out terrain, by not only boosting its standing as a member of the West (as it had recognized for decades) but also carving out new internationalizing roles as a leader of the East and as the champion of a new global order.Footnote ²⁷ Yet, emphasis on fulfilling Japan's international duty as a major power and on broadening the scope of Japanese culture – two measures of a sense of responsibility and openness – were slipping in support by 1994 (the former from 48.2% in 1991 to 41.6 and the latter from 21.3% in 1991 to 18.2) and failing to register levels of acceptance indicative of readiness for a global leadership role, even in this relatively idealist early postwar era.Footnote ²⁸

On various tests, Japan did not seem to meet the standards of internationalization. In June 1989, it imposed sanctions on China for the massacre at Tiananmen, but its lack of priority for human rights soon became evident in efforts to seize the advantage by serving as a bridge between the United States and China. Despite some humanitarian assistance to the Soviet Union in its troubled final years, Japan at critical times broke with the US, Germany, and others in resisting joint programs on the grounds that its nationalist demands for territory had not been satisfied. Some also considered the 1990 initiative of Kanemaru Shin's delegation to Pyongyang, disregarding both South Korean and US concerns, a sign of defiance toward international standards in search of a nationalist payoff. Yet, on each of these issues, internationalization and a desire for Asianism based on trust played some positive role. Japan was not guided by self-righteousness. It had strategic objectives that could serve the interests of both the global and regional community. With sincere efforts to address the comfort women issue and find one more way to apology, Japan in 1992–95 could have won more understanding if leaders in the region had not refocused on patriotic causes in their own countries. The fault in letting an opportunity pass was shared with all states in the region; yet, Japan's responsibility requires emphasis.

The waning moments of the cold war met with the same sort of warnings that spread in the aftermath of the Portsmouth Treaty. The United States was unreliable in managing this transition, susceptible to Russian trickery such as Gorbachev's ‘smile diplomacy’. If Japan had been encouraged to oppose Russian expansion (the Anglo-Japanese alliance in 1902 as well as Ronald Reagan's ‘evil empire’ worldview that drew Nakasone closer in 1983), the message was changing abruptly for reasons that suggest distrust of Japan was on a par with that of Russia. The Japanese have a right to be offended by other US treatment of them: earlier racism as seen in immigration policies and later Japan-bashing as seen in trade policies. Moreover, US plans for Asia are inherently unequal, denying Japan its opportunity to assume leadership, for which it is more sensitive to regional thinking and better equipped. Rather than taking satisfaction with the extraordinary success already realized (in each era over Japan's main nemesis Russia), the Japanese grew more insecure and newly attentive to their country's supposed vulnerability and unequal treatment. This meant that they were little prepared for more idealistic thinking about new prospects for cooperation. If some observers reasoned that at little cost Japan had won the cold war, the perverse logic spreading in Japanese political circles around 1990, as earlier, was that it had yet to receive the fruits of victory – the return of four islands immortalized as the ‘Northern Territories’ became the symbol of this.Footnote ²⁹

To explain the distorted reaction to the end of the cold war, beginning with the delayed debate about the seriousness of Gorbachev's policy changes, we need to focus on Japanese politics and the media. As the political left and the media of the left lost their way in dealing with socialism and threats to security, becoming marginalized in their coverage of the Gorbachev era, the far right with only weak resistance from the right-of-center set the terms of debate. Already in the first half of the 1980s they had exaggerated the Soviet threat and held aloft the symbol of the ‘Northern Territories’ as if it took precedence over strategic calculations. They had found common cause with the neo-conservatives in Ronald Reagan's administration, who lost influence in handling the Soviet Union in his second term. Given almost unbounded support for its aspirations to become a political and military great power, with no concern about the implications of its revisionist goals for Asian foreign policy, Japan raised its expectations unduly that it could capitalize on a polarized environment.Footnote ³⁰ Neither politicians nor the media did much to prepare the public for the sudden end of the cold war and realistic options for a new strategy. The right-of-center let the far right drive the agenda, treating the Soviet Union as a one-dimensional country. Critics of state policy were vilified in the media as traitors. Costly delays in negotiations with Moscow led to missed opportunities that were hidden from the public.Footnote ³¹

Cultural comparisons may operate in the background in views of internationalism. In the late 1980s, nihonjinron was at its peak, making exuberant claims for a distinctive and superior Japanese culture that undercut awareness of commonalities and universal values operating in most of Japan's partners, including the United States. Education that did not stress deductive reasoning on the basis of principles or comparative analysis of societies left a vacuum, as factual overload crowded out the analytical training conducive to international openness. Without a genuine democratic transition in which the political opposition took power and offered a contrasting worldview, the Japanese were not used to serious political debate. In these circumstances, the meaning of internationalization was narrowed, while national pride acquired exaggerated significance. It became important to stress how distinctive Japan's culture was.Footnote ³² Restoring national dignity continued to loom as a malleable goal easy to twist around symbols of victimization.

Foreign policy choices made at the end of the cold war failed to satisfy Japanese ambitions. The ‘entry approach’ to Moscow, the Kanemaru mission to Pyongyang, the response to Tiananmen of becoming a bridge between Beijing and Washington, and the various strategies to make Tokyo the leader in Asian regionalism while drawing Seoul closer all failed to realize the much-desired breakthrough. Reassessing these strategies, Japanese opinion leaders from the late 1990s jumped from overoptimism to exaggerated threats. Lost was coordination in search of joint compromises. When Nakasone showed pragmatism toward Gorbachev after he left office, he was criticized. When Hashimoto, Obuchi, and Mori, each in his own way, looked for ways to improve ties with neighbors, their policies were denounced. As the only non-LDP prime minister and the one most conciliatory on the history issue, Murayama became the easiest target. The agenda of the right did not leave room for the loss of national resolve, public cohesion, and momentum toward a mix of realism and revisionism that could follow.

Internationalization and Asianism in the Koizumi–Abe era

In the postwar era the term Asianism fell into disuse in response to its troubled image as a rationalization, and in the 1990s the term internationalism became much less common in light of a new post-cold war agenda. In the first case, Japan was starting anew, learning from the West in isolation from Asia; while it began the 1990s confident that it had caught up with the West without need for a new wave of borrowing. Since in the 1980s internationalism was focused on learning English better and opening up the domestic market more fully, new resistance to US pressure seen as ‘Japan bashing’ reduced interest in this. Instead, interest in Asia intensified again, building on the Fukuda Doctrine centered on Southeast Asia in the late 1970s, although with hesitation about whether the old term of ‘Asianism’ applied. With the Koizumi period, Asia's priority slipped again and the United States became the focus, but with ambivalence over what this means for ‘globalization’, as the concept of ‘international society’ often became equated with US leadership of like-minded states. Varying in the way they used the terms ‘Asianism’ and ‘internationalism’ or substituted alternatives for these concepts, the Japanese sometimes saw them as two alternatives and at other times treated them as largely complementary.

In 2001, the ideals for the international community were aggressively redefined by the Bush–Cheney agenda and for the regional community were crystallized for the first time by the South Korean-led East Asian Vision Group of ASEAN +3 and, subsequently, by China's enthusiastic embrace of regionalism. Instead of driving transformation in East Asia as it had after 1905 and as it expected to do in the late 1980s, Japan found itself torn between two conflicting agendas. Many issues were caught in this spotlight: the struggle between the United States and China over Taiwan; the tradeoff between strengthening the alliance with the US and focusing on a multilateral regional security framework; the response to South Korea's tug-of-war between maritime and continental appeals; and the question of Russia's growing ties with China and whether they might be limited by new Japanese moves on energy pipelines or security to draw Russia closer. Yet, no issue had greater urgency than the threat of North Korean nuclear weapons and missile programs more likely to be targeted at Japan than at any other country. Having its alliance with the US tested in 1993–94 by plans for a preemptive attack on the North's nuclear reactor, then being stuck with a large bill for the Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO) as part of the Agreed Framework, and then nervously watching Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine Policy as the Clinton administration offered its support, Japan was alert to the significance of North Korea as a testing ground in the battle between international and regional concepts of cooperation.

In the fall of 2002, the second nuclear crisis brought to the forefront clashing notions of security in Northeast Asia. Claiming to be defending the global community against not only the war against terrorism but also the development and spread of nuclear weapons by states prone to sponsor terrorism, the United States took an uncompromising stance and called on Japan to join it. In contrast, when China agreed to try to bring North Korea to the negotiating table with the US, it stressed the importance of incentives to resolve the crisis, and South Korea as well as Russia generally agreed with this position. With Koizumi visiting Pyongyang in September 2002 on the eve of the crisis, and keeping some balance in 2003 and the first half of 2004 between the Abe Shinzo-led sanctions camp, which wanted to throw its weight behind the US neoconservatives, and the Tanaka Hitoshi-led group centered in the Foreign Ministry, which sought to keep open the door for bilateral talks and to place Japan between the US and the others as a bridge in the talks. Japan faced a crossroads amidst contending views of internationalism and Asianism.

Simultaneously, Japan joined other states at ASEAN +3 in agreeing to establish from December 2005 the East Asian Summit, where the subject of forming an East Asian Community would be addressed. Having championed the formation of ASEAN +3 and the regularization of +3 as an entity of its own in 1997–99 and even under Koizumi in 2001–04, taking care to keep pace with China as a supporter of regionalism, Japan became nervous about China taking the lead and using regionalism to establish its hegemony. By the first half of 2005, encouraged by US warnings against exclusive regionalism, reports from Tokyo were stressing the need to broaden the membership at the East Asian Summit to include India, Australia, and New Zealand, which was approved that summer, and also to limit the functions of the new organization. As opposed to China's priority for ASEAN +3 and wide-ranging regionalism, Japan preferred a broader, more circumscribed group. A compromise resulted in the expansion desired by Japan, but community-building centered in ASEAN +3, as desired by China. While the ASEAN states managed to navigate through this dispute, they were left with two larger organizations in uneasy balance and little hope that they, divided among themselves and lacking a cohesive association, could steer the great powers of Northeast Asia forward toward genuine regionalism.

From the fall of 2004 to the fall of 2006, Koizumi led Japan toward Bush's notion of internationalism and away from Asian regionalism. Bush's reelection led the Japanese to expect that the US would remain steadfast behind this strategic outlook. North Korea's declaration that it was a nuclear state in February 2005, Roh's outbursts against Japan in March 2005, and Chinese street demonstrations targeting Japan in April 2005 all served to confirm the wisdom of sticking to the one true ally in difficult times. As Bush gave more play to the human rights abuses of the tyrant Kim Jong-il and his evil regime, Japan's leaders won support at home by making the abductions issue the central theme in dealing with North Korea and the Six-Party Talks. They too were playing the human rights card to the dismay of South Korea as well as China who were seeking common ground for crisis resolution. Aso Taro made his signature issue as foreign minister the creation of an ‘arc of freedom and prosperity’ in Asia, offering a new vision of regionalism centering on universal values and on pressurizing China as a non-democratic state. In 2005, responses to the new crossroads clearly indicated a move away from Asianism toward internationalism.

Koizumi's clear choice in 2005 and the choice on which his successor Abe built his case proved problematic for several reasons. First, what Bush and Cheney defined as internationalist was hotly disputed even in the United States, whose rejection of symbols of the international community and unilateral moves antagonized even the most traditional supporters of internationalism. Second, US policy choices were proving unsustainable, notably in the war in Iraq and in the Six-Party Talks, where the dead-end consequences led to serious explorations of a change in course. The fourth round of the Six-Party Talks produced the Joint Statement on 19 September 2005 that signaled such a change before the US imposed financial sanctions on a bank in Macao handling North Korean funds and brought the talks to a standstill. Third, the US elections of 2004 did not bolster Bush for long, as his popularity kept falling and the Congressional elections of 2006 resulted in Democratic Party control with different priorities for foreign policy. Finally, the Bush administration was leaning increasingly towards China to assist in resolving the North Korean crisis. In the fall of 2006, instead of responding to the North's nuclear test with more steadfast cooperation with Japan's sanctions plans, it soon shelved the UN Security Council resolution punishing the North in favor of direct bilateral talks and intensified reliance on China in support of a compromise along lines long favored by all of the other countries apart from Japan. Having been lured out on a limb by the US, Japan found itself alone.

Recent writings on Asianism veer between the two themes of community in the context of the East Asian Summit, and multilateralism in regard to the Six-Party Talks. The first theme rose to the forefront in the second half of 2005 with preparations for the first summit, and the second reached unprecedented intensity in the first half of 2007 in response to the Joint Agreement. Both themes reveal the constraints on strategic thinking to advance regionalism synchronized with internationalism.

The notion of community had appeared earlier in idealistic tracts on what was within reach should Japan adopt a forward-looking strategy in Asia. It gained credibility in the East Asian Vision Group and East Asian Study Group reports to ASEAN +3 as a goal to which these countries aspired. In the wake of these reports and early efforts by Koizumi to compete with China in demonstrating that Japan was eager for regionalism with ASEAN, including FTAs and pursuit of community-building goals, a spate of books appeared that took the concept seriously. Some sustained the idealistic mood that the target was in sight if Japan made the right overtures, further institutionalizing rapidly expanding economic integration in the region, while also taking steps toward political and security communities. This meant regularizing summits, sticking to the constitutional limits that reassured Japan's neighbors, preparing to gradually remove US troops, and reaching beyond bilateral ties to regional ones.Footnote ³³ Yet, by 2003, idealism of this sort was being overtaken by cautious optimism that raised doubts that China's strategic thinking was conducive to forging a community, while trusting that Japan had the right mix for showing ASEAN the way forward. It was still taken for granted that Japanese diplomacy was aimed at regionalism and that Japan could do more to show its leadership qualities. After all, the small states of ASEAN had memories of paying tribute to China, or they had accepted values from the West; therefore, China could not expect to become their leader. In turn, compared to China or the United States, Japan gave greater priority to this region, and, with the US as an ally, offered the security environment and espoused the values to win its confidence.Footnote ³⁴ The atmosphere would be competitive with China, but Japan could take the initiative while expecting that China would become part of the community too. Neither approach paid adequate attention to the real problems in the path of regionalism.

In 2005, the issue of the East Asian Community became more immediate, as doubts about its prospects and even its advisability were widely reported. With Japan officially behind the East Asian Summit, qualified support prevailed even if it assumed a more defensive tone. Diplomat Kohara Masahiro explained that discussion of the East Asian Community had just begun and now needed to be accelerated. It would be useful for promoting further regional dynamism and would serve the interests of Japanese businesses. Kohara stressed Japan's long interest, dating from Prime Minister Ohira in 1980, and its promising capabilities through world-class companies and exchanges. Moreover, he noted how the countries of the region are thrown together in facing problems such as environmental pollution. Yet, Kohara took care to warn that the challenges for Japan's ‘third opening’ to the world would be great, requiring a strategy to deal with multiple actors, and that it would be difficult to define what is meant by community in a diverse region where assumptions about state sovereignty impose serious limits. The academic experts networking with others in East Asia also grappled to explain, against growing reservations, why Japan should proceed with community-building. Events in the first months of 2005 divided their ranks, leading to new conditions being placed on going forward. A book edited by Ito Kenichi and Tanaka Akihiko outlined the road that had to be traversed with three caveats: (1) economics alone would not suffice, as limits existed without political and security cooperation; (2) Japan's strategy was to support concrete, functional regionalism, while assessing relations with the United States and China to see how this triangle was affected; and (3) the concept of ‘community’ itself would only be realistic if it were based on similar values – including liberalism and democracy – that were taking root in similar urban lifestyles across the region, and the diffusion of popular cultures that could give rise to a common consciousness as citizens and as Asians.Footnote ³⁵ While this rightly highlights the importance of internationalism, it ignores regional confidence building.

Increasingly, a struggle ensued by those who warned that regionalism was a trap favorable only to China and others who saw it as a means to maintain Japan's influence in East Asia as well as the values it had earlier advocated consistent with internationalism centered on the United Nations and ODA. The proponents stressed continuity with the 1990s and argued that China's position should not be distorted into some kind of anti-American and anti-Japanese crusade. They warned against relying exclusively on the US.

In their view, an East Asian Community is on the way. Japan can work with other states as equals, and cooperating together for the future is the way to overcome history's legacy, even if difficult regional problems remain to be resolved.Footnote ³⁶ Opponents, however, fixated on China and the United States. The former had grown increasingly enthusiastic, while the latter had turned negative. Interpreting China's true motives as undermining US hegemony and gaining the decisive power while paying lip service to ASEAN's leading role, their suspicions pointed to a zero-sum game of China's gain being Japan's loss.Footnote ³⁷ In some critiques, the concept of ‘community’ was treated as a dangerous plot linked to anti-Japanese and anti-American strategies and to the goal of isolating Taiwan, which would be excluded. With South Korea also driven by anti-Japanese sentiments, Japan must be alert to the threat inherent in regionalism, argue many on the far right.Footnote ³⁸ When Foreign Minister Aso Taro advocated in 2006–07 the alternative of an ‘arc of freedom and prosperity’, this catered to those who had abandoned hope in regionalism.

Confusion over internationalism is understandable after years of contradictory messages from the United States. George W. Bush repudiated Clinton's worldview, and after the attack on the US of 11 September 2001 intensified his appeals to Japan to join in pursuing a new approach. The regional manifestation of this approach had three main components: (1) forging a kind of NATO of the East with Japan the first ally of the US, politically, militarily, and ideologically in promoting universal values; (2) restricting the rise of China as a strategic competitor and proponent of clashing values; and (3) making North Korea the principal test case, in which a firm response would prove the will of the international community in confronting an evil regime with destructive intentions. Yet, Japan received mixed messages. Neoconservatives such as Dick Cheney and John Bolton contradicted more pragmatic officials, and in 2005–06 Condoleezza Rice and Chris Hill, working increasingly with China more than Japan, led the response to North Korea.

Having from 2003 to 2006 thrown in their lot with the neoconservatives, Japan's leaders acted as if they were shocked by the US switch in February 2007. Much of the media focused on why the US had lost its will, inviting a repeat of the failure in the first nuclear agreement of 1994 and opening a gap with Japan's approach that was not to be blamed on Japan.Footnote ³⁹ While former US officials explained that the abductions issue lacks strategic significance and Japan should not interpret this shift as tolerance for the North's nuclear weapons,Footnote ⁴⁰ responses on Japan's far right were alarmist and on the right of center were also critical without showing much understanding for the internationalist logic presented by experts across most of the world. Keeping their focus on the abductions issue and paying little heed to the regional security context as well as to the broad international context, critics of the United States emphasized four themes: (1) expedience replacing principle; (2) incompetence; (3) different national interests; and (4) unreliability as an ally.

In the first half of 2007, the Japanese debate on the Six-Party Talks centered on the United States. It was less about Asianism, despite the importance of the February Joint Agreement as a turning point for multilateralism, than about internationalism. In many explanations, the principal problem was that Bush had responded to a deteriorating war in Iraq and defeat for the Republicans in the November 2006 polls with a decision to make concessions to North Korea and defer the crisis without actually doing something constructive to resolve it.Footnote ⁴¹ Instead of analyzing how different notions of internationalism lead to different approaches to a potential danger, staunch critics portrayed Japan as the true defender of a principled stance in which abductions, an evil regime, and military threat all confirm a simplistic approach of relying on pressure rather than dialogue. North Korea would win, the United States would lose, and the US–Japanese alliance had been damaged by this US retreat that allowed the North to divide the two allies.Footnote ⁴²

As the process of transferring the roughly $25 million of frozen North Korean funds in a Macao bank dragged on for about half a year, some in Japan impugned the competence of the United States and especially Chris Hill. Having set aside pressure, the US was left vulnerable to an insincere North Korea that would be little inclined to forsake its nuclear programs.Footnote ⁴³ Not only were Chris Hill's repeated assurances that the bank transfer would soon be settled belittled, but one source, which charged that the Joint Agreement was not a significant advance and came when North Korea had been isolated, went so far as to accuse him in the past of not hiding his negative outlook on Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and also on how Japan was dealing with the Six-Party Talks. Moreover, he approached the talks with a narrow diplomatic focus of working out a deal, ignoring the power that drives foreign policy decisions. With Bush supposedly giving priority to the Middle East because of oil and Israel, Hill got his way, abandoning Japan on the front lines of the struggle.Footnote ⁴⁴ Along with expedience and incompetence, an image forms of an ally, when pressed to choose, that does not take Japan's interests seriously.

In discussing national interests and strategic calculations, Japanese sources often skewed the analysis. After a decade of bashing the Foreign Ministry for weakness – the Russia school, the China school, the North Korea initiative in 2002, etc. – the political right had become accustomed to putting protection of sovereignty and territorial claims on a pedestal that was untouchable. The abduction theme transformed the North Korean issue into a defense of Japan's sovereignty, a precondition for reaching any deal. This overshadowed questions of what might be possible or what might serve coalition building and especially relations with South Korea. It followed that Japan must stand firm, even if it is isolated. After all, as in earlier important postwar negotiations, it has the economic wherewithal to insist on its way; North Korea will not easily find economic assistance without Japan.Footnote ⁴⁵ Some who saw Japan as the big loser in the Joint Agreement went further to argue that it is dangerous to rely on the US, which does not feel endangered; i.e. Japan must now act independently on behalf of its own national interests.Footnote ⁴⁶

Some suggested that Abe wanted a veto over US normalization with the North, beginning with the decision to remove it from the list of terror-sponsoring states. After all, if the abduction issue were not settled, it would still be mired in its terrorist past. When Dick Cheney visited in late February and described the abductees as a joint problem of the two nations after Bush had told Abe by phone that he fully shared Japan's concern, Japanese sources recognized that the two sides were searching for common ground.Footnote ⁴⁷ Yet, only when the Japan–North Korea Hanoi meeting of the five working group start-ups had a troubled outcome and as it became clearer that Phase 1 would conclude successfully, as it finally did in July, did the media point to pressure on Japan to fall in line. Sino-US ties were advancing on the basis of a consensus on how to proceed, while Japan's isolation in the Six-Party Talks was symptomatic of a different outlook on the Korean peninsula, China, a multilateral security framework in the region, and even on US reliability as an ally.

In the uncertain mood of 2007, some Japanese voices took a more upbeat stance. On 3 May, Asahi shimbun presented a new strategy for Japan's foreign policy, founded on preservation of Article 9 of the Constitution. Interpreting internationalism in terms of global interdependence, and regionalism in terms of building trust, this approach took the Joint Agreement as a positive development.Footnote ⁴⁸ Tanaka Hitoshi, the former director-general of the Asia-Pacific department who had pressed for talks with North Korea and become an advocate for the East Asian Community, refocused discussion of internationalism on a global community with common objectives approving of the US as a strong model for democracy but not as a country that uses military force to impose it. While accepting Abe's concept of a ‘beautiful Japan’ and his call for an end to the postwar system, he appealed for accountability and the need to make changes in line with new international relations.Footnote ⁴⁹ Funabashi Yoichi, Asahi shimbun political observer and author of the most important book on the nuclear crisis, redirected attention to challenges that lie ahead in Phase 2 of the Joint Agreement and require building mutual trust between the United States and North Korea. Footnote ⁵⁰