Introduction: Japan in a Time of Troubles?

Prima facie this appears an accurate appraisal of contemporary Japan. Unlike China, India and others, Japan is certainly not ‘rising’. But there are two strong caveats to this bleak assessment. Firstly, Japan is well endowed with ‘power resources’ that give it the capital to overcome current misfortunes and successfully ‘reinvent’ itself (Morris-Suzuki 1998; Gibney 1992; Gibney 2000; Takao 2008b; Buruma 2004). It has already achieved a fully developed industrialized high-technology economy and society, with its citizens enjoying vastly greater per capita incomes than those of the rising Asian giants, China and India. It must be remembered that Japan is still the third largest economy in the world, after the US and China, with a GDP of US$4.3 trillion (CIA 2011). It has a large population of 127 million, a highly educated workforce, an advanced manufacturing and information technologies base and dedicates US$52.8 billion (JPY4.68 trillion) to military expenditure (the sixth highest spender in the world) (Hackett 2011).

Secondly, Japan has only just begun to mobilize its vast potential resources in terms of international power projection; that is, a well-defined international agenda, supported by the full spectrum of material and diplomatic instruments needed to implement it. In other words, it has only recently begun to actualize its great resources (latent potential) into power capabilities (de facto tools of diplomacy). This being the case, it is premature and ill-conceived to write Japan off as a power in rapid decline. Some commentators such as George Friedman, despite his tendency towards hyperbole, consider that ‘Japan sooner or later will make a big comeback’ as a ‘great power’ in the future (Friedman 2009; 2010).