Japan in Asia: A Hard Case for Soft Power by Thomas U. Berger
Thomas Berger is an associate professor of International Relations at Boston University.

he concept of ‘‘soft power’’—defined by Joe Nye as ‘‘the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than through coercion’’1— has proven a seductive one for Japan. Since the concept was popularized in the 1990s, Japanese scholars and policymakers have enthusiastically taken it up, eagerly exploring how Japan’s soft power resources could be exploited to burnish Japan’s image in the world and help reshape its environment in subtle but important ways. Some—perhaps encouraged by the new attention given to the popularity of Japanese anime and manga, and by the general buzz about ‘‘Cool Japan’’—have even described Japan as a ‘‘Soft Power Superpower.’’2 It sometimes seemed, in more overheated moments, that Pokemon and Sailor Moon would conquer the world, succeeding where the Imperial Army and Navy had failed.3 That soft power would prove attractive is unsurprising. Although Japan has considerable hard power resources, it has shown great reluctance to actually use them in the way that students of international relations would

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1 The idea was originally advanced by in Joseph Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990). He has since expanded on the concept in Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). 2 See the very useful volume by Watanabe Yasushi and David L. McConnell, editors, Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2008). 3 Former Prime Minister Aso Taro (2008–2009) is said by Japanese diplomats and reporters to have been particularly enamored with the possibility that soft power could be used to leverage Japanese diplomatic influence. The idea that it could be helpful, however, goes back much earlier. See Saya Shiraishi, ‘‘Japan’s Softpower: Doraemon goes overseas,’’ in Peter J. Katzenstein and Takasi Shiraishi, eds., Network Power: Japan and Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).

# 2010 Published by Elsevier Limited on behalf of Foreign Policy Research Institute.

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BERGER expect a great power to.4 To explain this apparent paradox, there has emerged a now-distinguished traditional line of argument by commentators and analysts— both foreign and Japanese— that Japan is a different kind of foreign policy actor, one that has achieved a great deal of success by pursuing its goals in ways that are not easily captured through standard measures of power. In the early 1980s, Japan was described as a nation that had learned to maximize its security not just in purely military terms, but also in terms of economic, food and energy resources (‘‘comprehensive security’’ or sogoanzenhosho in Japanese).5 In the late 1980s, Richard Rosecrance described Japan as a ‘‘trading state,’’ one that was uniquely suited to pursuing its interests in a world increasingly characterized by increased complex interdependence.6 In the 1990s, Richard Samuels and Eric Heginbotham described Japan as a ‘‘mercantile Realist,’’ a country that sought to mobilize its potential power while carefully hedging against possible threats.7 Yet, others pointed to Japanese leadership style as being one that eschewed direct confrontations. This model argued that Japan preferred a consensus building, behind-the-scenes approach that Alan Rix called ‘‘leading from behind.’’8 Unfortunately for Japan, there is no reason to believe that cultivating soft power—any more than maximizing ‘‘comprehensive security,’’ practicing ‘‘mercantile realism’’ or acting as a ‘‘trading state’’—will make it more successful in international politics. This is not to say that there is no such thing as soft power, nor to deny that Japan possesses considerable soft power resources. In certain respects, Japanese soft power resources may even be growing, especially in terms of the overall improvement of its image in the
Over the past decade many knowledgeable experts have been predicting that Japanese behavior is about to change on this score. See Michael J. Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism: Foreign Policy Challenges in an Era of Uncertain Power (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Remilitarization (London; Routledge, 2009); Richard J. Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), Kenneth Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: Public Affairs, 2007). However, to date these predictions remain at best half fulfilled, and there has been increased doubt that they will ever be fully realized, given the current imbroglio over Futenma base relocation and general Japanese preoccupation with its internal political turmoil. 5 John.W.M. Chapman, Reinhard Drifte and Ian Gow, Japan’s Quest for Comprehensive Security: Defense-Diplomacy-Dependence (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), Eto Shinkichi and Yamamoto Yoshinonobu Sogoanzenhosho to Mirai no Sentaku (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1992). 6 Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Book, 1986). 7 Eric Heginbotham and Richard J. Samuels, ‘‘Mercantile Realism and Japan’s Foreign Policy,’’ International Security. Spring 1998, pp. 171–203. Similar ideas are in Richard Samuels’ magisterial work on the Japanese Defense industry, Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). 8 Alan Rix, ‘‘Japan and the Region: Leading from Behind,’’ in Richard Higgot, John Leaver and John Ravenhill, eds., Pacific Economic Relations in the 1990s: Cooperation or Conflict? (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1993).
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Japan in Asia United States and other advanced industrial democracies. The problem is that, overall, the sources of Japanese soft power are declining. Moreover, Asia remains a region where soft power is difficult to deploy effectively, particularly for Japan. To put it simply, East Asia represents a hard case for Japanese soft power. Thus, there is good reason for Japanese policymakers to try to promote ‘‘soft power,’’ but it is important that they, and Japan’s partners beginning with the United States, appreciate the limits of what can be accomplished by doing so. This essay will briefly discuss the issue of how to measure a country’s soft power resources before analyzing three key dimensions of soft power and how they apply to Japan in Asia: Japan’s economic soft power, the situational soft power it enjoys through belonging to regional institutions, and the overall attraction that Japan exercises as a society and as a nation in the Asian region. Following this will be closing thoughts about the practical implications of this analysis. How to Measure Soft Power Soft power is one of those concepts that, like culture or national identity, are notoriously difficult to define and even harder to measure. Joseph Nye defines soft power as being essentially ‘‘the ability to attract,’’9 but also as the ability to convince others that they share goals and interests similar to one’s own. Soft power is best understood in contradistinction with ‘‘hard power,’’ which is the power to coerce, to force others to act as desired. Military power is, thus, usually viewed as a form of hard power, whereas public diplomacy or academic exchanges are seen as being soft in character. Like other forms of power, it is difficult to gauge how much soft power a country has because power is an essentially relational concept. That is to say, it has to be understood in relationship to the particular outcome that a country is seeking to achieve. A battalion of marines may be very useful in trying to seize control of a piece of territory, but not if the other side has a division to defend that territory, or if there is no means of transporting the marines to their objective and supplying them once they reach it. The marines may be of no use at all if the objective is to increase the sales of auto parts or to improve America’s image among the local population. Beyond this common methodological problem, there are at least two major additional problems that those who wish to apply the concept of soft power face. First, the sources of soft power include various forms of power that are usually classified as being ‘‘hard’’ power. So, for instance, a strong military can win international admiration and inspire emulators and promote cooperation with the possessor of the military power even where there is little
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BERGER possibility that that military capacity could be used in a coercive manner. Before World War II, for example, Nazi Germany’s evident military power influenced many governments and political leaders in regions far removed from where Germany’s military power was even remotely likely to be felt. For instance, in Asia, both the Japanese militarists and the Chinese nationalists felt a strong sense of affinity with the German military model. Conversely, what counts as soft power often is key to the use of hard power. Unless there is public support for the use of force, even the strongest military power will find it difficult to sustain operations over time—as the United States learned, to its regret, first in Vietnam, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Second and even more seriously, soft power depends on its impact on attitudes, and attitudes are extremely difficult to gauge. Most empirical investigations of soft power rely heavily on public opinion surveys. Survey instruments, however, suffer from numerous well known deficiencies, including their extreme sensitivity to the wording of the question, the order of the questions within the survey, the time when the survey was taken, and so forth.10 There is, therefore, a great deal of uncertainty about the extent to which expressed opinions reflect the underlying attitudinal dispositions of those surveyed. To what extent such attitudes translate into behavior is even more unclear, even on the level of the individual, not to mention on the governmental level. Trying to trace the relationship between the sources of soft power and its impact on the actual behavior of states is thus a perilous enterprise. The distinguished social scientist Max Kaase once said that measuring culture was like trying to ‘‘nail pudding to the wall.’’11 Measuring soft power, in this sense, is akin to trying to nail pudding to a bowel of Jell-O.12 A thorough investigation of Japan’s soft power in Asia would require looking at a broad range of assets—military, economic, cultural, ideological, etc.—and determining how those assets influence attitudes in neighboring countries. To date, no such analysis has been undertaken for any nation’s soft power. The following analysis is thus only a highly cursory glance at the general levels of Japan’s soft power. The objective is to simply look at three sets of assets that are usually pointed to as important sources of soft power— economic influence, membership in international regional institutions, and Japan’s overall image among neighboring countries—in order to assess how
See Robert M. Groves, et. al., Survey Methodology (Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley, 2004). ˝ Max Kaase, ‘‘Sinn oder Unsinn des Konzepts ‘‘Politische Kultur’’ fur die vergleichende Politikforschung: Oder, Der Versuch, einen Pudding an die Wand zu nageln,’’ in Kaase and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, eds., Wahlen und politisches System (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1983). 12 The same, incidentally, is true of any attempt to link ideational variables – such as political culture or national identity – to foreign policy outcomes. As a result, most empirical investigations have per force relied on essentially interpretative methodologies coupled with a sprinkling of public survey data.
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Japan in Asia
Table 1. Gross National Income (GNI) in East Asia, Current US (PPP) 1980-2008 (billions US dollars). 1980 China Japan Republic of Korea 183 (245) 1042 (1041) 59 (99) 1990 350 (904) 3126 (2332) 243 (351) 2000 1169 (2940) 4392 (3288) 801 (801) 2005 2273 (5340) 4976 (3964) 814 (1096) 2008 3899 (7984) 4879 (4498) 1046 (1367)

Source: World Bank World Development Indicators, accessed at World Bank site

Japanese soft power may be changing. While the results of this investigation can thus only be viewed as suggestive, it is hoped that, nonetheless, it can serve as a useful first cut on this complex, yet important topic. Japan’s Economic Soft Power Economic power is one of the most basic and important sources of soft power. It is important to realize, however, that economic power is not simply a form of soft power. Economic power, to the extent that it supports military power (ie, acts as the ‘‘sinews of war’’), is very much a form of hard power. Likewise, the imposition of trade sanctions or economic embargoes by one nation on another tends towards the hard end of the spectrum. Economic resources translate into soft power at least three ways. First, economic power can influence other countries’ desire to cooperate and work with that country for the sake of increasing their own material prosperity. Second, a nation’s economic success may influence the extent to which other countries look to it as a model and seek to emulate it.13 Third, economic resources may enable a country to undertake other types of soft power activities, such as foreign. Let us look at each of these three ‘‘soft aspects’’ of Japanese economic power as they apply to East Asia. In modern times, Japanese economic power was one of the key sources of its influence in the Asian region. As the first Asian state successfully to industrialize and modernize, it developed an enormous head start over the rest of Asia, which only began to narrow the gap in the 1980s. Until recently, Japan was the largest regional economy in nominal GDP terms, though it had already been far outstripped by China in terms of GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity. (See Table 1).14 Moreover, Japan’s economy has been stagnant
13 Note that emulation does not necessarily lead to cooperation or to outcomes that are desirable from the point of view of the country that is being emulated. If a country that is an aggressive, power hungry predator (either in a military or a commercial sense) spawns a host of emulators who compete with it, it may find itself in an increasingly hostile international environment. 14 Full web address: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTATISTICS/0,, contentMDK:20399244menuPK:1504474pagePK:64133150piPK:64133175theSitePK: 239419,00.html. Accessed January 23, 2010.

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Table 2. Economic Growth Rates in East Asia, 1985-2005. 1980-1989 China (PRC) Hong Kong Republic of Korea Japan Singapore 9.8% 7.3% 7.7% 3.7% 7.5% 1990-1999 10.0% 3.8% 6.3% 1.5% 7.5% 2000-2005 9.4% 5.3% 5.2% 1.7% 5.0%

Source: Calculated from data in World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2007

Table 3. Share of intraregional ASEAN plus 3 (APT) Trade, 1990-2006, $billion and share. 1990 Total intra-APT trade China Japan Republic of Korea 312 25 (8%) 110 (35%) 41 (13%) 1995 746 95 (13%) 233 (31%) 94 (13%) 2000 920 157 (17%) 265 (28%) 122 (13%) 2006 1932 503 (26%) 446 (23%) 258 (13%)

Source: Asian Development Bank, Integration Indicators Database

for close to two decades, growing at a far lower rate than that of its competitors. (Table 2) While Japan remains an economic giant with tremendous financial and, to a greater extent, technological resources (Japan regularly ranks among the top five countries in the world in the number of patents issued), its lead is clearly shrinking and, within a very short period of time, it will be eclipsed by the PRC. In terms of trade, China has already outstripped Japan on a number of fronts. In 2003, ASEAN countries exported more to China than they did to Japan, and in 2005 China overtook Japan in terms of its exports to ASEAN.15 A similar picture can be observed with respect to South Korea.16 At the same time, Asia has become increasingly important to the Japanese economy. In the mid-1980s, only 27 percent of Japanese imports came from the Asian region and a similar proportion of its exports were directed to other Asian countries. By 2005, its import dependence had increased to 45 percent and its export dependence approached 50 percent. The lion’s share of this increase is due to trade with a single country, the PRC.17 (Table 3)18
Edward Lincoln, ‘‘The Asian Regional Economy,’’ in David Shambaugh and Michael Yahuda, eds., International Relations of Asia (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), pp.285-286. 16 And even more so with respect to North Korea, with which Japan has cut virtually all of its economic relations since the intensification of the second Korean nuclear crisis in 2002. 17 Lincoln, ‘‘The Asian Regional Economy,’’ p. 282. 18 Accessed at http://aric.adb.org/indicator.php, January 23, 2010.
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Japan in Asia
Table 4. Japanese FDI in East Asia, 1990-2005 – in million US$ and as percentage of total FDI from around the world. 1990 ASEAN China Republic of Korea 1,668 (40%) 503 (14%) 357 (47%) 1995 3,139 (22%) 3,108 (8%) 294 (23%) 2000 2,497 (12.3%) 2,916 (7%) 997 (115) 2005 3,670 (12.7%) 6,530 (9%) 1,450 (20%)

Source: ADB, Integration Indicators using data from the UNCTAD FDI database

To be sure, these figures mask some important trends. Many of Japan’s exports to China are capital goods, which are then used to make products that are shipped to the United States and other third country markets. In many cases, these capital goods are going to Japanese firms that have built production and supply chains in China and elsewhere in the region. Thus, it seems likely that, while the economic importance to Asia of Japan as a nation has decreased in relative terms, the importance of Japanese firms has not, at least to an equal degree.19 Nonetheless, Japan’s role as an investor in the Asian region has declined in relative terms—especially since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998—while the role of other countries has increased.20 (Table 4).21 The implications for Japanese soft power in Asia are obvious. Surveys of Asian elites indicate that there is an overall positive evaluation of Japan’s economic role in the region, and there remains considerable interest in Japan as a market and as a place to invest.22 Likewise, Asian consumers show a high appreciation for the quality of Japanese goods, especially technologically sophisticated ones, and there is a growing demand for Japanese cultural products.23 At the same time, China is quickly catching up with Japan, in the eyes of other Asian countries, as a potential market and source of investment. China’s attractiveness as a market is enhanced by the greater political flexibility that it enjoys in opening its markets to foreign competitors. This is most immediately obvious with respect to the numerous bilateral and minilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that China has signed in recent years, most importantly with the countries of South East Asia. Japan, as well, has sought to negotiate similar agreements, but it has been hampered by powerful domestic lobbies that have made successfully concluding such agreements a
Lincoln, ‘‘The Asian Regional Economy,’’ p. 288. Ibid. pp. 290-291. 21 Accessed at http://aric.adb.org/indicator.php, January 23, 2010. 22 On Japan as a place to invest, see JETRO, Japan Attractiveness Survey, 2008, p. 4. 23 Christopher B. Whitney and David Shambaugh, Soft Power in Asia: results of a 2008 Multinational Survey of Public Opinion, Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 2009, pp. 18-19.
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BERGER torturous process. These lobbies include not only the agricultural lobby, but also such groups as the Japanese Nursing Association, which has bitterly opposed allowing foreign care givers to enter the country. The net result of these developments is that Japan is having less and less success in reshaping the region with its economic soft power. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Japan appeared to be the driving force reshaping the Asian region’s economic architecture, leading some analysts to talk of Asia as being in ‘‘Japan’s embrace.’’24 Today, Japan increasingly finds that it has to share that role with other countries, especially China.25 On a more subtle level, Japan’s appeal as an economic model that others might seek to emulate has declined as well. In the 1980s, there was near universal admiration of the Japanese economic and social model, and many countries attempted to emulate its success. South Korea, in particular, tried to closely copy the Japanese model of state-led industrialization, as did Indonesia and Malaysia. However, Japan’s economic model was also the target of much criticism, particularly in the United States, where it was characterized as a predatory form of capitalism that threatened to wreck the international economic order.26 Nonetheless, emulating Japan seemed to offer a rapid path to economic modernity with minimal social and political costs. Even within the World Bank, there was a debate—partly resulting from Japanese diplomatic pressure within the institution, but made possible by Japan’s evident economic success—that the Japanese experience with development might offer useful lessons for other industrializing nations. 27 By the late 1990s, however, almost all talk of Japan as a model for other countries disappeared. This was the result of Japan’s prolonged economic stagnation after the bubble economy burst in 1991, and by the spectacular failure of many of the high growth Asian economies during the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997-1998 that had been following in Japan’s footsteps. By the start of the twenty-first century, Japan had become a model not for emulation, but for what to avoid in managing the economy.

Walter Hatch and Kozo Yamamura, Asia in Japan’s Embrace: Building a Regional Production Alliance (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 25 For further analysis, see Andrew Macintyre and Barry Naughton, ‘‘The decline of the Japan-led model of the East Asian Economy,’’ in T.J. Pempel, ed., Remapping East Asia (Cornell, 2005). 26 Edward J. Lincoln, Japan’s Unequal Trade (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1990) and Clyde V. Prestowitz, Trading Places: How we allowed Japan to the take the lead (New York: Basic Books, 1988). See also, James Fallows, More Like Us: Making America Great again (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989) for an argument that Japan’s economic model posed a threat to fundamental American values beyond the purely economic. 27 Robert Wade, ‘‘Japan, the World Bank, and the Art of Paradigm Maintenance: The East Asian Miracle in Political Perspective,’’ New Left Review I/217 (May–June, 1996), pp.3–36; and Jose Edgardo Campos, The Key to the East Asian Miracle: making shared growth credible (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1996).

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Japan in Asia Finally, Japan’s economic power has allowed it to engage in other activities that have been used to boost its soft power. Perhaps the most important of these is Japan’s Overseas Development Aid (ODA) program.28 During the 1980s and 1990s, Japan emerged as one of the world’s leading providers of foreign aid, and, for a relatively brief period, it provided more bilateral aid, in absolute terms,29 than any other country—close to 9 billion a year. While originally closely linked with Japanese commercial and bureaucratic interests,30 since 1994 and the promulgation of an ‘‘ODA Charter,’’ Japanese foreign aid has been used to promote a number of broader, ideological goals, including protecting the environment, disarmament, and the spread of democratic values.31 In addition, on a more indirect level, Japanese foreign aid has been used to improve diplomatic relations with key Asian countries—especially South Korea and the PRC, which received substantial sums of foreign aid in lieu of reparations for the damages inflicted by Japan during World War II and the colonial period. Japanese aid was critical in smoothing the way for the signing of the 1965 Normalization Treaty with Seoul and the 1972 Treaty with China.32 The large sums of money provided by Japan in the 1970s and 1980s may have helped encourage these governments to dampen domestic anti-Japanese sentiment.33
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A good case could be made that cultural and academic exchanges are at least as important. In this context, it is worth noting the rapid increase in the number of foreign students studying in Japan, especially in China. Whereas in the 1980s there were well under 20,000 such students, today the number exceeds 100,000. Many of these are in fact de facto unskilled laborers disguised as students, but many more are legitimate students. The JET program bringing young foreigners to Japan to teach English has also been viewed as a great success. A full analysis of this dimension of Japanese soft power, however, goes beyond the scope of this article. 29 As a percentage of GDP, however, Japan tended to give less than most OECD countries, around .38% of GDP, ahead of the United States, but well behind most Northern European nations. 30 David Arase, Buying Power: The Political Economy of Japan’s Foreign Aid (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995). 31 See Dennis D. Trinidad, ‘‘Japan’s ODA at the Crossroads: Disbursement Patterns of Japan’s Development Assistance to Southeast Asia, ‘‘Asian Perspective 31:2 (2007), pp.95–125. 32 On the role of the history issue in Japanese aid giving, see Yoshibumi Wakamiya, The Postwar Conservative View of Asia (Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation, 1999). Yinan He, The Search for Reconciliation: Sino-Japanese and German-Polish Relations since World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), especially chapter 4, and Caroline Rose, Sino-Japanese Relations: Facing the Past, Looking to the Future (London: Routledge, 2005), pp.41–50. 33 In 1984, for instance, Prime Minister Nakasone helped stabilize Korean-Japanese relations after a fierce dispute over historical issues by providing $4 billion in aid. And in 1998, a very successful summit between Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo and President Kim Dae Jung was made possible in part by Japanese assistance in overcoming the effects of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

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BERGER Beginning in the late 1990s, however, increasing financial problems forced Japan to reduce its ODA budget. At the same time, the rapid growth of the other Asian economies made Japanese foreign aid less important in relative terms. In the 1980s, the approximately two billion dollars a year provided by Japan to the PRC represented a significant sum, one that helped enable the Chinese government to build up the infrastructure that it needed for rapid economic development. By the twenty-first century, however, that same money represented a relatively insignificant sum in an economy that had grown to over two trillion dollars. At the same time, the flaring up of the history issue in Asia in the 1990s made Japanese foreign aid a liability, insofar as it had discouraged Japan from amends for its actions during World War II. In sum, Japanese economic strength remains considerable, and the soft power that it derives from that strength should not be underestimated. But as Japan’s economic strength wanes, especially relative to the rest of the Asian region, its soft power does as well. Regional Institutions and Japanese Soft Power Another important source of soft power is participation in international institutions, which provide a vital forum in which countries can discuss and propagate their values. The very fact that countries choose to work together within institutional frameworks can be seen as a reflection of soft power. To the extent that institutions can cause member countries to reconsider their beliefs and values, international institutions can play a critical role in enhancing other sources of soft power (economic, and cultural). The European Union may be regarded as an extreme example of institutional soft power, as it has used the attractions of membership to reshape the institutional structures of its members and to use the promise of possible future membership to alter the behavior of countries all around its periphery.34 Japan has long sought to promote the development of institutions in the Asian region, beginning in the 1960s when it proposed the creation of a Pacific Asian Free Trade Area and took the lead in the establishment of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).35 Japanese efforts in this regard were stymied, however, by lingering Asian suspicions of Japan, based on its pre-1945 efforts to dominate the region both militarily and economically (i.e. the ‘‘East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere’’) reinforced by the very real danger that Japan would be able to dominate any regional institutional arrangement to
For a discussion, see Jan Zielonka, Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), chapter 2. 35 Dennis Yasutomo, Japan and the Asian Development Bank (New York: Praeger, 1983). On regional fears that Japan might use regional institutions to achieve dominance, see Sung-joo Han, ‘‘The Politics of Pacific Cooperation,’’ Asian Survey 23: 12 (1983), especially p. 1287.
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Japan in Asia which it was a party. Even as trade and investment between Japan and the rest of Asia began to grow rapidly in the 1970s and 80s, the development of regional institutions lagged far behind—an extreme case of what has been called ‘‘regionalization without regionalism.’’ After the Cold War, however, this picture began to change. In relatively short order, a broad array of regional institutions began to spring up, beginning with the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 1989 and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1994. Institutional development in the region received a further boost after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998, encouraging the nations in the region to overcome their traditional suspicions36 regarding Japan and enter into an institutional framework—ASEAN plus Three (APT)—in which they could coordinate their monetary policies and work together to prevent a reoccurrence of such a disaster.37 More recently, there has been considerable discussion of the creation of an ‘‘East Asian Community’’ loosely modeled on the European Economic Community that paved the way for the development of today’s European Union. Elite opinion surveys show considerable support for such a project. According to a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) study, 81 percent of elites in Asia support such an initiative.38 The newly elected Democratic Party of Japan has been particularly enthusiastic. Thus, it might appear that the East Asian regional environment may be evolving in a way that might enhance Japan’s soft power resources and enable it to reshape its milieu, perhaps in ways comparable to how the Federal Republic of Germany was able to refashion the West European strategic environment in ways that helped promote the diffusion of German goals and values.39 Unfortunately for Japan, there are a number of significant obstacles to the realization of such a scenario. Three in particular are worth singling out. First, integration in the European context was predicated on the willingness of European countries to surrender elements of their sovereignty—beginning with aspects of their control over economic policy, and then spreading to a wide range of other domains. Behind this willingness was a widespread European disillusionment with the sovereign state system and the ideological system of nationalism that had come to animate that system. After the immense destruction inflicted by World War I, World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust, much of the European educated elite had little confidence in the
During the Asian financial crisis, China in particular had played a critical role in shooting down a Japanese proposition for the creation of an Asian Monetary Fund that would have relied primarily on Japanese funds to help bail out the floundering economies of Asian countries that had been hard hit by the crisis. 37 Richard Stubbs, ‘‘ASEAN plus Three: Emerging East Asian Regionalism?’’ Asian Survey 42:3 (2003), pp.440–455. 38 Bates Gill, et.al., Strategic Views on Asian Regionalism: Survey results and Analysis CSIS, February 2009, p.19. 39 There is a substantive literature on the EU and the diffusion of German values.
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BERGER ability of the state to manage their affairs wisely. In contrast, most Asian countries after 1945 were emerging from decades of colonial domination. As a result, there was a swell in national pride throughout much of Asia (with the exception of Japan) and post-colonial elites were determined to jealously guard their hard-won sovereign rights.40 The most developed institution in the Asian region is ASEAN, founded on the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries—which, likewise, is enshrined in the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) to which Korea, Japan and China have acceded. While the norm of sovereignty is arguably a ‘‘slender reed’’ instead of an iron rule,41 this Asian attachment to sovereignty nonetheless sets certain parameters within which regional institutions are likely to develop. Second, the Asian region is characterized by extreme diversity with regard to levels of economic development, regime type and cultural norms and values. While such disparities can be overcome, they create significant clashes of interest concerning a host of important issues, e.g. willingness to open agricultural markets or agree on minimal human rights standards.42 The sharp limitations imposed by Japan—which fears that it will be stuck with the bill for any future regional monetary crisis—on the APT is an excellent example of how these differences translate into weaker institutional arrangements.43 Finally, East Asian regionalism has been defined by what Donald Crone calls its its ‘‘multicephalism,’’ or many headedness.44 From the beginning, Asian countries have tended to view institutions as a way of entangling other countries thereby limiting their scope of action. This was true of ASEAN, which was originally designed to constrain Indonesia,45 and it is true of the other major regional institutions today. There is a strong tendency to ensure a balance of political influence inside of institutions, so that no one player—be it Indonesia, China or Japan—can dominate. The resulting policymaking process is based on the ‘‘ASEAN way’’—constant negotiation and slow, steady consensus building—that results in often ambiguous and undefined decisions. While some observers argue that this form of decision making is both effective and well suited to the Asian cultural style of decision making,46 it also creates
See Chung-In Moon and Chaesun Song, ‘‘Sovereignty: Dominance of the Westphalian and Implications for Regional Security,’’in Muthaiah Alagappa, ed., Asian Security Order (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). 41 See Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University press, 1999). 42 Edward J. Lincoln, East Asian Economic Regionalism (Washington DC: Brookings, 2004). 43 William W. Grimes, Currency and Contest in East Asia: The Great Power Politics of Financial Regionalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008). 44 Donald Crone, ‘‘Does Hegemony Matter? The Reorganization of the Pacific Political Economy,’’ World Politics, vol. 45 (1993), pp. 501–525. 45 Michael Leifer, ASEAN and the Security of Southeast Asia (London: Routledge, 1989). 46 Katzenstein and Shiraishi, Network Power, op.cit., Peter J. Katzenstein, et.al., Asian Regionalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).
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Japan in Asia an environment in which Japan is likely to find it difficult to propagate its preferred values. To sum up, the trend towards regional institution building in Asia is an encouraging development for Japan, and provides it with new avenues in which it can try to exercise its soft power. However, the types of international institutional arrangements that are emerging in the Asian region are likely to remain relatively weak and underdeveloped—especially compared with the institutions of the EU which many in the region, including Japan, hope they will emulate—and they will enhance Japanese soft power only to a rather limited extent. These problems are further exacerbated by another dimension of Japanese soft power: the image of Japan in the Asian region. Asian Perceptions of Japan One of the broadest and most frequently studied dimensions of national soft power is a country’s overall image. The degree to which a country is seen as being a positive force in international relations and the extent to which its culture and society are admired by others are crucial elements that influence its ability to get others to cooperate. The sharp deterioration of the United States’ international image during the Bush years has been a major factor in enhancing interest in soft power by scholars and foreign policy practitioners.47 Japan has a long tradition of trying to exercise this type of soft power in East Asia. As a result of its rapid modernization in the late nineteenth century and its success in meeting the challenges posed by Western power and culture, Japan gained considerable prestige throughout much of Asia and beyond. Reformers throughout the region, particularly in China but also in Korea, began to avidly study Japan in hopes of emulating its success. In Korea, Kim Okgyun, with Japanese encouragement, sought to stage a Meiji Restoration style coup.48 In late-Qing China, Japanese political novels were avidly read, in translation, by Chinese reform-minded officials, who then offered proposals based on Japanese ideas.49 Socially and culturally, Japan’s impact on pre-war
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For a scholarly take on the problem of American image, see Robert O. Keohane and Peter J. Katzenstein,eds., Anti-Americanism in World Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007). 48 Harold F. Cook, Korea’s 1884 Incident: Its Background and Kim Ok-Kyun’s Elusive Dream (Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, 1972). 49 The author is indebted to his colleague, Catherine Yeh, of Boston University as well, for sharing some of her groundbreaking research on this issue. Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: the Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1859–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Mark R. Peattie. Ishiwara Kanji and Japan’s Confrontation with the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).

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BERGER Asia was immense, as millions of Chinese and Koreans found in Japan an Asian version of modernity that, in many respects, was more appealing to them than that of the West. Japan sought to appeal to these sentiments by forging a Pan-Asian ideology that would legitimate Imperial expansion both domestically and abroad. The Japanese Empire was justified in part in conventional national security terms, as a way of building a buffer around Japan to assure access to the strategic raw materials and markets Japan needed to survive. The Empire was also justified as a vehicle by which all of Asia would be modernized and could unite to meet the challenge of a rapacious, racist West.50 Japan had more success in this endeavor than many Asians today would like to admit. Not only were many progressive Japanese, who were highly critical of the authoritarian character of the Japanese state, brought around to the Imperial cause,51 but so were millions of Koreans and Chinese, despite the frequently brutal character of Japanese rule and the pervasive discrimination that they encountered. It is worth recalling that well over 200,000 Koreans served in the Imperial Army, as did over 60,000 Taiwanese. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Indians, Indonesians and others served in the various auxiliary forces created by the Japanese. In addition, many thousands of Koreans and Chinese were assimilated into Japanese society, some becoming generals, judges and senior officials. While Japan is frequently seen today as a xenophobic nation, during the Imperial period it propagated the ideology of musubi (tieing together) and actively sought to assimilate its colonial people into the Empire.52 Despite its successes, Japan’s efforts to unite Asia through hard and soft power provoked a backlash. Not surprisingly, millions of Chinese and Koreans actively resisted Japanese rule by asserting their own identity. The March 1st movement in Korea and the May 4th movement in China, both reactions to the Paris Peace conference and Woodrow Wilson’s doctrine of the ‘‘self determination of peoples,’’ were the first stirrings of Korean and Chinese nationalisms on a mass level. The national identities of modern Korea and China were founded, in part, on anti-Japanese sentiments, sentiments which were only reinforced by the huge suffering that was inflicted on those countries during the period between 1937 and 1945. After its defeat in 1945, Japan turned away from Asia and rejected both the Empire and its legacy. Japan sought to redefine its national identity as a Western oriented ‘‘peace nation’’ (Heiwa Kokka)—a nation that had experienced the ultimate horrors of modern warfare, the atomic bombing of its cities,
On the Japanese mission civilisatrice in Korea, see Peter Duus, The Sword and the Abacus. On the connection of this ideology to Japanese militarist thinking, see Mark Peatie, Ishiwara Kanji. 51 Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 52 For a fascinating analysis, see Eji Oguma, A Geneaology of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images (Melbourne and Portland: Trans Pacific Press, 2002).
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Japan in Asia and which now sought to serve as an example to the world by its principled renunciation of war and the use of force. The political embodiment of this new identity was Article 9 of the new constitution (never mind the fact that it had been written by the Americans). The physical monument that commemorated this transformation was the memorial erected at Hiroshima. Japan was a new nation. This narrative served a number of useful purposes. It helped reorient national policy towards the task of reconstruction and economic development. It helped contain those inside Japan who might have liked to restore the old status of leader in military power in Asia (and incidentally revive some aspects of the Imperial system, such as dedication to the Emperor and fierce anti-communism). Also, it helped Japan side step facing the legal and moral responsibility that many outsiders wished to impose on it. Post-war Japan wished to focus on its status as a heroic victim, and not deal with the implications of its being seen as a perpetrator.53 While this new identity was very useful—and quite successful—on a domestic political level, Japan’s effort to propagate this image beyond its shores met with only limited success. Time and again, during the 1950s and 1960s, Japanese leaders were surprised by their lack of success in convincing other Asian nations that Japan was suited to play a special role in mediating between Asia and the West.54 Historical issues were particularly nettlesome in the context of JapaneseKorean relations. Diplomatic negotiations were suspended for extensive periods of time in the 1950s because of remarks by senior Japanese diplomats that seemed to suggest a complete lack of contrition regarding Japan’s history of colonization and oppression on the Korean peninsula. Full diplomatic relations were only finally restored in 1965 after South Korean President Park Chung Hee (a former military officer in the Japanese Imperial Army) forced the Normalization Treaty through a reluctant Korean National Assembly. Thereafter, interests of state—and in particular Korea’s need for Japanese capital and technology to aid in its economic development—encouraged successive Korean governments to contain anti-Japanese sentiment. It was no easy task. Japanese ties with China went more smoothly, in large measure because of a strategic calculation on the part of the PRC’s leaders that they could better influence Japan by forgoing the issue. As a result, China was willing to forgo the issue of pursuing compensation when the two countries normalized diplomatic relations and was willing to accept fairly vague and ambiguous expressions of regret by Japan’s senior leaders in lieu of a full
James J. Orr, The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001). 54 For instance, in the late 1950s, Prime Minister Kishi Nobosuke toured Southeast Asia in hope of rallying Asian support for increased regional cooperation. Time and again, he was surprised by the resistance or lack of entrance that his entreaties encountered.
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BERGER apology. Similar considerations prompted the Nationalist leadership in Taibei to pursue, somewhat reluctantly, a similarly indulgent policy of ‘‘repaying vice with virtue.’’55 Beneath the surface, however, strong anti-Japanese sentiments continued to simmer. Beginning in the 1980s, changes in the domestic politics of Korea and China, as well as in the broader international environment, reduced the ability of elites in those countries to contain anti-Japanese sentiments and complicated efforts by Japan to project a more positive image in the region. In Korea, democratization allowed civil society groups to raise historical issues in a way that had been impossible during the authoritarian period. The colonial roots of much of the Korean business and political elites became a hot button issue in Korea after the 1990s, and the willingness of successive Korean governments to ignore the history issue was interpreted by many on the left as the continued pernicious influence of the colonial period after 1945. The plight of the surviving Korean Comfort women became an important symbol of authoritarian callousness. In the PRC, the increased openness of post-Mao China to public debate on a variety of issues allowed civil society groups to raise the history issue, often as a way of criticizing their own government. These trends were reinforced as the Communist regime increasingly turned to nationalism as a way of compensating for the decline of Socialist ideology, a trend that only became more pronounced after the legitimacy of the regime was shaken by the events of 1989. Domestic pressures from below combined with the incentive to glorify the nation from above, made history an explosive issue in China in the 1990s and early twenty-first century. Internationally, the growth of the international human rights regime, together with increased economic and political interdependence, made history a sensitive subject around the world. Pursing historical justice for past events became an important way of supporting human rights in the present, legitimating various groups that sought recognition and recompense for their suffering. Increased interdependence gave those groups unprecedented leverage. The cause of victims groups, such as the Comfort women, won the support of vast international networks and organizations dedicated to promoting human rights world wide, and they were able to press their case not only in their own countries, but in various international fora, as well as in the Japanese media and courts. As a result of these trends, while Japan’s international image has improved in many respects recently, it suffers some severe liabilities in Asia, especially in China and Korea. According to a recent (2006) Pew Study, 71 percent of Chinese have a negative view of Japan,56 and despite decades of
55 56

Yinan He, The Search for Reconciliation, op.cit., chapter 3. Pew Research Center, Publics of Asian Powers Hold Negative Views of One Another, p.1.

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Table 5. Korean Views of Japan. Year Dislike Like 1973 58.6 12.9 1978 69.9 7.6 1984 38.9 22.6 1988 50.6 13.6 1990 66 5.4 1995 68.9 5.5 1997 65 8 1999 42.6 9.6 2000 42.2 17.1 2001 56.6 12.1 2005 63 8

Source: Jung Ang Daily (1973, 1978); Dong-A Daily (1984-2005) cited in Yangmo Ku, ‘‘International Reconciliation in the Postwar Era,’’ p.25

trying to improve relations with Korea, the Korean public still has a relatively harsh assessment of Japan. (See Table 5.) These sentiments boiled over in the early twenty-first century, culminating in a regional diplomatic crisis lasting from 2003 to roughly 2005. Japanese diplomatic relations with Korea and China were disrupted during this period, and anti-Japanese demonstrations devolved into sporadic violence. Issues that should have been manageable—and had in fact been managed successfully in the past—became unmanageable, most notably relatively minor territorial disputes between Japan and its Asian neighbors over the Dokdo-Takeshima and Senkaku-Diaoyutai islands. These tensions were contained after Prime Minister Koizumi stepped down from power. The potential for future explosions, however, remains undiminished. In sum, while Japan has some soft power resources in the Asian region, it continues to suffer from the after effects of its efforts to exercise soft power in the first part of the twentieth century. Japan suffers from an image problem in its two closest, and strategically most important neighbors, making East Asia an exceedingly hard place for Japanese soft power. Conclusions The purpose of this essay has not been to dismiss the utility of soft power as a tool for analyzing international relations. During the period when Japan arguably enjoyed its greatest measure of the harder forms of power—the 1960s through the 1980s—its soft power liabilities helped prevent it from successfully using that power to pursue its interests. Nor does this essay deny that Japan has significant soft power resources. In certain respects, Japan’s soft power is even increasing, as it wins greater recognition and appreciation for its democratic accomplishments and the many attractive features of Japanese culture and society. These aspects of Japanese soft power are increasing its appeal, especially in the democratic West, where its cultural products have won new found admiration and where lingering doubts about the quality of Japanese democracy are dissipating. In Asia, however, these positive developments are far more muted, and continue to be overshadowed by the negative liabilities associated with Japanese history.

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BERGER In practical terms, Japan should be both sensitive to these problems and seek to overcome them. It is important, however, that it not place overblown expectations about what a more conciliatory stance on historical issues can bring about. Anti-Japanese sentiments have deep roots in China and Korea, and the experience of other countries—including the Federal Republic of Germany57—suggests that historical issues, by their nature, are difficult to control and require constant effort to contain and manage. It will take a lot of effort to make soft power work for Japan.

Over the past decade, German relations with its Eastern neighbors have also been shaken by disputes over history. For a general discussion of the German versus Japanese experiences with the history problem, see Thomas U. Berger, ‘‘Different Beds, Same Nightmare: The Politics of History in Germany and Japan,’’ Policy Report 39, (Washington DC: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2009), available at http://www.aicgs.org/documents/pubs/ polrep39.pdf.

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