Despite the bitter, sterile, and increasingly irrelevant struggle of the past decade between “revisionists” and their detractors, there are remarkably few well-researched and theoretically coherent works on the domestic political origins of Japanese foreign policy. There are virtually none in English on the Japanese worldview. This solidly researched and theoretically conscious work, which employs the clear and original concept of sakoku to explain Japan's international behavior in a wide range of policy spheres, helps fill an important void.

By sakoku (literally: “secluded nation”) mentality, Itoh means the parochial worldview with which both the Japanese public and, to a substantial degree Japan's political leadership, approach international affairs. This mindset, she argues, “is not only ubiquitous in the business sector, but is also prevalent in Japan's cultural, educational, and societal systems” (p. 13). “It constitutes the core of Japanese foreign policy decision-makers' attitudinal prism” (p. 14).

The first third of Globalization of Japan is a concrete explication of how sakoku mentality originated and how it is expressed consistently in Japanese perceptions of the United States and Asia as well as in Japanese prescriptions for economic diplomacy. The other two-thirds of the volume present five richly detailed empirical studies of how sakoku is expressed in concrete policy terms, followed by a conclusion that assesses prospects for Japan's internationalization in the face of such parochial tendencies. The cases cover immigration, Okinawa policy, rice liberalization, collective security, and UN peacekeeping. The conclusion includes suggestions on how foreign nations should deal with Japan, given its deeply rooted but not incorrigible parochial tendencies.

Itoh's provocative overall argument involves a number of contentions. (1) The internationalization of the Japanese mind has not occurred. (2) Cultural barriers are among the foremost barriers to internationalization. (3) Other Asian nations, such as Korea and Taiwan, are responding more actively and sensitively to globalization than is Japan. (4) Japan has a long way to go, but (5) significant future movement toward true internationalization is not impossible. To encourage internationalist tendencies, Itoh argues that the United States, in particular, should continue to pressure Japan to liberalize but should tailor its appeals more sensitively to exploit potential for collaboration with allies inside Japan (pp. 183–5).

The strength of the book is its combination of a clear original analytic concept (sakoku mentality) with meticulous application in a series of admirably well-researched cases. Itoh makes no pretensions to grand theory, but she draws effectively on Robert Jervis, Jack Snyder, Harold and Margaret Sprout, and other international relations theorists to situate her argument. The sakoku concept seems to have explanatory value across a remarkably broad range of cases, including some, such as the textbook controversy with Japan's Asian neighbors, that have intensified since the book was written.

This creative and carefully researched volume does, to be sure, raise some important yet unanswered questions. Most important, Itoh does not clearly come to terms with arguments that blame institutions, rather than parochial mentality, for Japan's disappointing lack of prointernationalist behavior. She does observe, intriguingly, that on immigration issues the Japanese government has often been more rigid than the general populace (pp. 109–18). Itoh does not pursue the possibility of institutionalist alternatives to her worldview-based explanation very thoroughly.

Itoh is stronger in her description of current Japanese realities than in her policy prescriptions. Few, for example, would quarrel with her sensitive and original observations that Okinawans have suffered as a result of mainland sakoku mentality. Whether it follows that making Okinawa (or any individual region) self-supporting should be a national policy priority is not so clear.

Overall, this is one of the four or five most creative and solidly researched studies on the politics of Japanese foreign policy to appear in the past decade. It deserves wide readership among students not only of Japanese politics and policymaking but also of international relations more generally. Written from the unique standpoint of an expatriate Japanese scholar, it casts critical yet sensitive light on problems of growing importance to our increasingly integrated world.