JAPAN IS INTERNATIONALLY known as a safe, stable, friendly, and comfortable society, in a prosperous and democratic state. Yet this book argues that that benign and stable surface covers deep-seated contradictions. Under the Abe Shinzo government (2006–2007, 2012-), military expansion is a top government priority, the erratic Trump administration in the United States has no more faithful and uncritical follower, major bills are forcefully pushed through the Diet taking advantage of the government's majority and evading or cutting debate, hate speech proliferates, civic protest is, on occasion, savagely suppressed, the door is shut in the face of refugees, Muslims are subjected to the sort of surveillance that even in the US is forbidden, and so on.

In this second decade of the 21st century, both Japan and the United States find themselves under governments committed to significant institutional change. Both aspire to “greatness,” the one to attain it and the other to regain it. The Abe government of Abe Shinzo was elected in 2012 on a mandate to “shed the post-war” and “take back the country” and the Donald Trump government in Washington was elected in November 2016 promising “to make America great again” and to restore “America first.” Abe's Japanese government rested on the improbable combination of commitments: to “shrug off the husk of the post-war state” and “recover Japan's independence,” even while taking steps to integrate Japan's military forces under US command and freed for global service in the US cause, and to adopt trade, finance, and industrial policies to meet US demands and pressures (despite the fact of the Trump administration ultimately rejecting the TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership project).

In October 2017, by a large majority, Abe and his government was returned to office once again in national elections with a “super-majority” (in excess of two-thirds) in the National Diet. Much as it seemed in the early days of the Trump administration that Abe had accomplished a remarkable personal rapport with him, it remained to be seen how Abe's “beautiful Japan” would fit within Trump's “America First.”

THE IMPROBABLE PACKAGE – IMPERIAL, PACIFIST, DEMOCRATIC

In exploring the nature of the early 21st century Japanese state, I return to some of the central propositions I have developed in the past, including that of Japan as “client state,” “construction state,” “colonial state” (in relation to Okinawa), constitutional democracy and constitutional pacifist state.