The “international minimum” refers to the minimal level of international engagement needed for a nation to take root and become part of contemporary global norms. Diehard internationalists, dedicating themselves to achieving whatever the mutable term “internationalism” means to them, are outside the purview of this well-crafted book. Jessamyn Abel illuminates how Japanese foreign policy specialists, politicians, intellectuals, and journalists searched relentlessly for such a “minimal” bond between the 1930s and the 1960s. Following Akira Iriye, Thomas Burkman, Frederick Dickinson, and a growing school of scholars in Japan, she makes an important contribution to the scholarship that explores the continuity of Japan's globalism. But this is a contribution with a twist. Instead of portraying interwar internationalism as a glimmer of hope, she tells a cautionary tale of how the noble doctrines of mutual benefit were used and abused for the purposes of imperial aggression, selfish economic gain, and self-aggrandizement (pp. 8, 260). Japan's willingness for “cooperation” for peace and prosperity, even in the postwar period, was not all about being a selfless advocate of cooperation for the well-being of all the peoples in the world.
Abel compares the rhetoric of Japan's internationalist minimum through parallel prewar and postwar events: in international diplomacy, Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933 and its acquisition of UN membership in 1956; in regional diplomacy, Japan's leadership at the Greater East Asia Conference of 1943 and postwar Japan's low-key “return to Asia” at the Bandung Conference of 1955; in sports, preparations to host the Tokyo Olympics in 1940 (canceled) and Asia's first Olympics in Tokyo in 1964; and finally Japan's prewar and postwar cultural exchange programs, such as the Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai (KBS, or Society for International Cultural Relations). In all these cases, Abel finds disconcerting patterns. One is “the persistent concern about views of Japan and its rank among the world powers.” In good and bad times, such anxiety always propelled Japanese people's support for engaging with the world in multiple forms, be it in public diplomacy, people's diplomacy, sports diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, or economic cooperation and regional coprosperity (pp. 18–19). Another pattern is the selective shift of the conceptual scope of the world from Eurocentric Wilsonian internationalism to Japan-centered pan-Asianism, and then to the US-centered capitalist world. With such a protean view of the world, the policymakers successfully secured the people's endorsement for their contemporary “international minimum” (pp. 17–19).
Akira Iriye pointed out in his classic Power and Culture that throughout the Pacific War, many Japanese leaders and politicians adhered to a Wilsonian vision of international cooperation, and that their continued belief in this enabled them to contribute to the restoration of peaceful order after the war.Footnote 1 Abel views their rhetoric of “international cooperation” with skepticism. The KBS engaged in international cultural exchange with the West and even with China to gain their understanding of Japan's policy (aggression) in China (pp. 95–99). Beneath the nationalistic effort to bring the 1940 Olympic Games to Tokyo, made at the grassroots level as well as in diplomacy, was the hope of promoting a clean, masculine image of Japan to justify itself as the natural leader of Asia (chapter 4). After defeat in World War II, Japan's “international minimum” continued to tread on this treacherous path. Postwar Japan's cultural exchange activities and the definition of its place in Asia had diplomatic and political motives, in the same way as during the war (p. 245). At the 1955 Bandung Conference dedicated to anti-colonialism and postcolonial development, the Japanese government excused its awkward presence by declaring that Japan would promote (anti-communist) cooperation among the Asian and African countries in the economic, social, and cultural fields so as to achieve the “co-prosperity of all,” evoking the rhetoric of the Greater East Asia Conference in 1943 (p. 233). Leftists in Japan regretted that Japan missed an opportunity to show its anti-imperialist solidarity in Asia and Africa and feared that Japan would become the “orphan of Asia as a Euro-American agent” (p. 231). A year later, in 1956, when postwar Japan finally obtained UN membership, communist leader Nosaka Sanzō suspected that the conservative Liberal Democratic Party would use the new status to justify remilitarization (p. 76). The 1964 Tokyo Olympics served as a diplomatic showcase of the new Japan—a friendly, beautiful, and burgeoning industrial powerhouse—to promote its standing in the world. After seeing how the Tokyo Olympics rekindled the fervent spirit of nationalism, Japan's political activists feared the government would use the Olympics to promote remilitarization (chapter 5).
In conclusion, Abel argues that the world could learn from these Japanese cases how “the international minimum” could easily beguile the people with its noble rhetoric in the age of globalism (p. 260). After all, European imperialism developed because the Europeans believed they intended to bring commerce, civilization, and Christianity to the rest of the world. All the nations that have hosted the modern Olympics cannot escape from the same guilt as the Japanese for politicizing sports on the international stage. Today, if one were to cast a wider net, those who support China's “One Belt One Road” policy and even South Korea's selling of K-pop on a global scale may not be able to escape scrutiny. Abel's concern over today's Japan seems to center on its inclination to “contribute military forces to international missions” (p. 251). As Abel tacitly indicates, postwar leftist pundits in Japan always worried about a resurgence of militarism in the guise of cosmopolitanism and internationalism. Today, with the soft power of “Cool Japan” and presumed nationalism surrounding the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, Japan may begin flexing its military muscles against neighboring countries over territorial disputes and views of wartime history. Domestically, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are unpopular, and the younger generation looks far beyond the stale cultural visions promoted by the government. With the ever-growing, multilayered global infrastructure and inescapable obligations enveloping all nations and peoples, Japan in the twenty-first century is a different nation, where the twentieth-century type of “international minimum” is apparently obsolete. Abel certainly compels us to hope so in The International Minimum.
