When we say politics we often think of the power a great power. A great power is a nation or state that has the ability to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess economic, military, diplomatic, and cultural strength, which may cause other, smaller nations to consider the opinions of great powers before taking actions of their own.
And Japan did a great part to it. World politics is very important to us that’s why we give great importance to it. Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions.Most commonly it is generalized as “who gets what, when, why, and how.
” Although the term is generally applied to behaviour within civil governments, politics is observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions (Wikipedia, 2008) Politics consists of “social relations involving authority or power” and refers to the regulation of a political unit, and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy. Political science (also political studies) is the study of political behaviour and examines the acquisition and application of power.Related areas of study include political philosophy, which seeks a rationale for politics and an ethic of public behaviour, and public administration, which examines the practices of governance. And we know that Japan has a great role on it.
(Wikipedia, 2008) In the 1630’s under the third shogun, Christianity was banned in Japan. Fearing that Japanese lords who had converted to Christianity would not remain loyal to his government, the shogun ordered all the foreigners to live Japan and all Christian converts to give up their religion. Anyone who refused to obey the order was sentence to death.Many Japanese did renounce Christianity, but others died for their faith.
Beginning in the mid-17th century, not only were foreigners forbidden to Japan, the Japanese themselves were forbidden to travel outside the country. Any who is liable to execution of returning? The reason for the harsh law, like the one banning the Christianity, was to ensure the security of Japan. The one exception to the order against foreigners was in the port city of Nagasaki on Kyushu, far from the capital at Edo, where a handful of Dutch, Chinese, and Korean merchants were permitted to trade.For two centuries, Nagasaki remained Japan’s only outlet to the rest of the world, through which a few books on Western science entered.
Commerce grew within Japan as peace and a more stable society brought economic expansion. Art, literature, and drama reached new heights of expression. The Kabuki plays—more realistic than the earlier No drama—became popular among the emerging cities. While some literature was serious and dealt with heroes and military virtue, most city people preferred romances and comic sketches of ordinary folk.
In the theory the new government was a return to power by the emperor, who left Kyoto and settled in Edo which was, renamed Tokyo. The period in Japanese history followed is known as the Meijii Period, after the Emperor Mutsuhito (1852-1912) who tool the name Meijii , meaning “Enlightened Rule”. In practice, however, the new government was controlled by a very capable and tough minded group of young samurai, who were determined Japan a strong, modern nation, on the model of Western nations.They built railroads, factories, and dockyards, laid telegraph lines, and established banks-all that necessary, in fact, to the economy of a modern nation of time (Carr R.
, 1989) Modernism and Asianism thus powerfully informed Japan’s role in Asia. Military security was a paramount concern for Japanese elites. Japanese industrialization started with heavy industry. Military Keynesianism, supported by foreign loans, was crucial in Japan’s industrialization.
The war machine built with massive military spending was crucial for Japanese imperialism. After the Sino-Japanese War, Japan entered China’s treaty port system.And it acquired its first colony, Taiwan, as a springboard for a southward move. After winning the Russo-Japanese War, Japan colonized Korea in 1911 and began to project its power into Manchuria.
But these two moves met different fates. Japan was stopped in the South. Anglo Chinese business coalitions in British-led maritime Asia were simply too strong for Japanese business to penetrate, as was illustrated in the 1910s by the bankruptcy of the Kanan Bank (South China Bank), a subsidiary of the Bank of Taiwan. Japan’s continental move in Northeast Asia met with less resistance, at least initially.
With Russia out of the way, Japan defined its interests on the mainland as different in kind from those which informed the treaty port system in China. In China, south of the Great Wall, Japanese policy rested, for the sake of trade and investment opportunities, on an acquiescence to Anglo-American ground rules. In Korea and Manchuria, on the other hand, Japan aimed at establishing a military and political foothold that would meet its defense requirements, while also giving Japanese economic interests an advantage over all competitors. The rise of anti-imperialist Chinese nationalism in the 1920s, however, threatened Japanese interests.
When Chinese nationalist forces attacked the treaty port system, informal imperialism in China fell into a systemic crisis. In the face of Chinese nationalism Britain showed a willingness to accept the slow demise of the system. Japan, however, had a great deal more to lose. A widespread consensus about the “special” character of the relationship between Japan and China made the fate of the treaty system “an imperial issue” for the Japanese in a way it had not been for the British.
(Katzenstein & Shiraishi, 2008) Since 1947, Japan’s constitution has forbidden the formation of a traditional military force.The country has maintained only a Self Defense Force (SDF), the mission of which has been to protect the Japanese mainland. Even within these limitations, the SDF has performed a paramilitary, logistical role, supporting U. S.
troops based in Japan in exchange for promises of protection. Some experts now see this dynamic shifting. Arguments for “remilitarization”—or military “normalization,” as many proponents term it—have gained currency over the last two decades. Since 9/11, SDF forces have been deployed overseas for the first time (to Afghanistan and Iraq).
Their roles have been almost exclusively support-based, but their deployment is seen as symbolic of a change in attitudes as well as a challenge to the constitution. Japan is already one of the world’s largest spenders on national defense, and the SDF is a robust force, though expenditures are narrowly targeted and essentially protective—they include no long-range bombers or missiles, no aircraft carries or nuclear submarines. Japan has come under increasing pressure to redirect this focus and expand its military operations, both from the United States and also domestically, in response to feared threats from China and North Korea.Japan’s current constitution was written in 1947 under the auspices of the American forces deployed to occupy and rebuild Japan after World War II.
The new constitution celebrated goals of peace and democracy; as John W. Dower says in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book on postwar Japan, Embracing Defeat, the document was the “crown jewel of the [American] reformist agenda. ” Article Nine explicitly forbade Japan from maintaining a military or from using force internationally for any reason. It permitted only a narrow self-defense operation, which was founded in 1954 as the SDF.
Dower argues that fatigue and disillusionment with wartime nationalism made the Japanese readily willing to accept this doctrine. Much in agreement with General Douglas MacArthur, the leader of the American forces in Japan, they envisioned a “Switzerland of the Far East”—a nation that would make its way by finance, not force. This acquiescence was made possible by promises of continued American military support. Under the 1954 Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement, the United States pledged to protect Japan under the condition that it could establish permanent military bases on Japanese soil.
According to data from 2004, the United States still maintains nearly 50,000 troops at over seventy military bases in Japan, localized overwhelmingly on the southern island of Okinawa. Though some experts say efforts have accelerated recently, the idea of strengthening and modernizing Japan’s military is not new. Yasuhiro Nakasone, conservative prime minister during the 1980s, brought vitality to issues of nationalism and security during his tenure and urged strengthening the SDF and Japanese military ties to the United States.He was also the first prime minister to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial to Japanese soldiers killed in World War II including several convicted “class A” war criminals (Koizumi has been criticized for making visits to the same shrine).
Though Japan rejected U. S. requests for SDF support during the Gulf War, in 1996 the country agreed to provide nonmilitary support to American forces functioning in a military capacity “near Japan. ” The Japanese had only so much choice, says Tamamoto.
“The Cold War ended and everything came into flux.The question was: Can we continue to rely on the United States? The first answer is, well, we have to. So what’s the price? ” The price, says Tamamoto, was cooperation and military modernization at Washington’s behest; hence the 1996 agreement, and, to an even greater extent, the SDF’s participation in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pressure from Washington has only increased since the 9/11 attacks.
Japanese pragmatists increasingly voice concerns about their country’s “rough neighborhood. ” These concerns have fed a desire to bulk up defenses. John H.Miller, a former Foreign Service officer and associate professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, writes in the World Policy Journal that the main catalyst has been the “rising threat perceptions of North Korea and China.
” Miller points to Pyongyang’s 1998 launch of a missile over the Japanese mainland, and to confrontations with North Korean spy boats, including the one sunk in 2001. As two former U. S. ambassadors to the Republic of Korea discussed in this January 2006 CFR meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il continues to engage in “nuclear brinksmanship,” and Japan has increasingly felt the uncomfortable pinch.
China is also increasingly perceived as a threat. According to December 2005 polls conducted jointly by Gallup and Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun, 72 percent of Japanese said they did not trust China (the lowest numbers since the poll began in the 1970s), and 73 percent feel relations will deteriorate further before they improve. Tamamoto agrees on the chilliness of relations, though he adds that “nobody wants a bad relationship with Beijing. The problem, he says, is that “the political class is stuck”—both because of Koizumi’s repeated, controversial visits to the Yasukuni shrine, and because of mutual intransigence surrounding a recent textbook spat.
Finally, there are increasing concerns from within Japan that the United States might not always embrace its role as Japan’s protector, should the political landscape in East Asia begin to crumble.”There is some concern that the U. S. might not be there when Japan needs its support,” says Yuko Nakano, research associate at the Center for Strategic ; International Studies.
When there was a [North Korean] Taepo Dong missile launch in 1998, a conspiracy theory appeared in the Japanese press that the United States was aware of the launch but didn’t inform Japan in a timely fashion. So yes, I think this is a concern of the Japanese. ” The United States has long pressured Japan to take a more robust military posture. Though U.
S. military bases in Japan serve a critical function for the United States—allowing it to project an image of strength in a potentially volatile region—American military resources are already spread thin worldwide, and U. S. fficials have encouraged Japan pick up some of the slack, at least regionally.
Developing this relationship could be essential to maintaining regional stability. As Chris Hughes put it in his recent book, Japan’s Re-emergence as a ‘Normal’ Military Power, “the framework of a strengthened U. S. -Japan alliance will be crucial for the U.
S. in terms of its ability to mobilize regional allies. ” (Lee Hudson Teslik, 2006) In Japan, the purification of the national community requires, not just that the abduction victims and their families be “returned”, but also that they become re-assimilated into the ideal world of the home village.The Japan to which they have returned is, to judge from the media images, one where there are no blond-haired teenagers, no “restructured” salary men, no weary commuters, no foreign residents, no homeless people.
This is the Japan of distantly remembered childhoods, of quiet country lanes and tranquil rice-fields. Into this pure Japan the returnees must immerse themselves through the rituals of re-inscribing their names in the family register, visiting the most scenically attractive local landmarks, or turning the pages of the class album members of the high school alumni association.Such imagery of return to the native and the national is endlessly repeated in press photographs, headlines and the captions which accompany television programs. Most clearly of all, perhaps it is illustrated by the public struggle for the soul of kidnap victim HASUIKE Kaoru.
(Suzuki T. M, 2003) Japan really did a great work in political world especially in the field of military their loyalty, strategies and courage to their country enable them to defeat the countries who want to conquer them.
