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Rice, Oil and the Atom: A Study of the Role of Key Material Resources in the Security and Development of Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Abstract

This article examines the impact on Japan's political economy and foreign policy of its lack of natural resources. Applying the concept of Japan as a ‘reactive’ state to linked case studies of rice, oil and atomic power it explores aspects of the relationship between culture, institutions and political processes in domestic politics and foreign policy. In so doing it argues that Japan's poor resource endowments have driven it to engage (re)actively – and often unwisely – in international affairs, an engagement both facilitated and constrained by its close alliance with the United States. This mediated engagement will continue into the foreseeable future.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2005.

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References

1 By virtue of Article 5 of the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan. It should be noted, however, that there is some doubt regarding the credibility of the US commitment to defend Japan – to sacrifice, say, Washington for Tokyo in the event of a large-scale nuclear war waged on either a regional or global basis.

2 Hanns Maull, Oil and Influence: The Oil Weapon Examined, Adelphi Paper No. 117, London, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1975; Akifumi Ikeda, ‘Japan's Relations with Israel’, in Kaoru Sugihara and J. A. Allen (eds), Japan in the Contemporary Middle East, London, Routledge, 1993, pp. 155–69.

3 Sheila A. Smith, ‘Japan's Future Strategic Options and the US–Japan Alliance’, in Jeffrey W. Thompson and Benjamin L. Self (eds), Japan's Nuclear Option: Security, Politics and Policy in the 21st Century, Washington, DC, The Henry L. Stimson Center, 2003, pp. 3–23.

4 Yamazawa Ippei, ‘Gearing Economic Policy to International Harmony’, in Glenn D. Hook and Michael Weiner (eds), The Internationalization of Japan, London, Routledge, 1992, pp. 119–30.

5 David P. Rapkin and Aurelia George, ‘Rice Liberalization and Japan's Role in the Uruguay Round: A Two-Level Game Approach’, in William P. Avery (ed.), World Agriculture and the GATT, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, pp. 67–71.

6 In this article I focus in particular on the work of Kent Calder. However, for a survey of the broader analytical contours of the ‘passivity and reactivity’ debate in regard to Japan see Dennis T. Yasutomo, The New Multilateralism in Japan's Foreign Policy, New York, St Martin's Press, 1995, ch. 2.

7 Calder, Kent E., ‘Japanese Foreign Economic Policy Formation: Explaining the Reactive State’, World Politics, 40: 4 (1988), pp. 517–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Yasutomo, The New Multilateralism, p. 41.

9 Classic studies include Herman Khan, The Emerging Japanese Superstate, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall, 1970; and Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1982. More recent correctives include Daniel I. Okimoto, Between MITI and the Market: Japanese Industrial Policy for High Technology, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1989; Kent E. Calder, Strategic Capitalism: Private Business and Public Purpose in Japanese Industrial Finance, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1993; T. J. Pempel, Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy, Ithaca, NY, and London, Cornell University Press, 1998; and Ian Neary, The State and Politics in Japan, Cambridge, Polity, 2002.

10 John Welfield, An Empire in Eclipse: Japan in the Postwar American Alliance System, London, Athlone Press, 1988; Donald C. Hellmann, ‘Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy: Elitist Democracy Within an American Greenhouse’, in Takashi Inoguchi and Daniel I. Okimoto (eds), The Political Economy of Japan Volume Two, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1988, pp. 345–78. Yoshida was prime minister in 1946–47 and 1949–54.

11 Calder, ‘Japanese Foreign Economic Policy Formation’, p. 519.

12 John Chapman, Reinhard Drifte and Ian Gow, Japan's Quest for Comprehensive Security: Defence, Diplomacy and Dependence, London, Frances Pinter, 1983; Umemoto Tetsuya, ‘Comprehensive Security and the Evolution of Japan's Security Posture’, in Robert A. Scalapino, Seizaburo Sato, Jusuf Wanandi and Sung-joo Han (eds), Asian Security Issues: Regional and Global, Berkeley, CA, Institute of East Asian Studies/ University of California, 1988, pp. 28–49.

13 Michael Blaker, ‘Evaluating Japan's Diplomatic Performance’, in Gerald L. Curtis (ed.), Japan's Foreign Policy after the Cold War: Coping with Change, Armonk, NY, M. E. Sharpe, 1993, pp. 6–7.

14 Saburo, Okita, ‘Natural Resource Dependency and Japanese Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs, 52: 4 (1974), p. 723.Google Scholar

15 Chapman et al., Japan's Quest for Comprehensive Security, p. xvii.

16 These included a ban on overseas despatch of the Self-Defence Forces (SDF), the ‘non-nuclear-principles’ (never to possess, produce or introduce nuclear weapons into Japan), a ban on weapons exports (even to the USA) and a limit on defence-spending as a proportion of gross national product of 1 per cent or less.

17 Dennis T. Yasutomo, The Manner of Giving: Strategic Aid and Japanese Foreign Policy, Lexington, MA, Lexington Books, 1986; Margee M. Ensign, Doing Good or Doing Well?: Japan's Foreign Aid Program, New York, Columbia University Press, 1992.

18 Dominic Kelly, Japan and the Reconstruction of East Asia, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2002; Rapkin, David P. and Strand, Jonathan, ‘The US and Japan in the Bretton Woods Institutions: Sharing or Contesting Leadership?’, International Journal, 52 (1997), pp. 265–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Alan Swinbank and Carolyn Tanner, Farm Policy and Trade Conflict: The Uruguay Round and CAP Reform, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1996.

20 Rapkin and George, ‘Rice Liberalization and Japan's Role in the Uruguay Round’.

21 John Croome, Reshaping the World Trading System: A History of the Uruguay Round, Geneva, World Trade Organization, 1995, pp. 112–13, 234–5.

22 Christopher C. Meyerson, Domestic Politics and International Relations in US–Japan Trade Policymaking: The GATT Uruguay Round Agricultural Negotiations, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2003.

23 The quotation is from Daniel I. Okimoto and Thomas P. Rohlen (eds), Inside the Japanese System: Readings on Contemporary Society and Political Economy, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1988, p. 1. For an analysis of the Japanese case see Robert J. Smith, ‘The Cultural Context of the Japanese Political Economy’, in Shumpei Kumon and Henry Rosovsky (eds), The Political Economy of Japan Volume 3: Cultural and Social Dynamics, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1992, pp. 13–31.

24 The most comprehensive account I have seen is Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Rice As Self: Japanese Identities through Time, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1993.

25 A short summary of Japan's mythological origins is as follows: ‘the islands of Japan were created by a god and goddess named Izanagi and Izanami, who leaned down from the floating bridge of heaven and stirred the ocean with a jewelled spear. The first island was formed from drops of brine which fell from the spear as it was lifted out. The heavenly couple descended to this island where they gave birth to what is referred to as an Eight Island Country. The sun goddess, Amaterasu, the ultimate ancestress of the imperial line … was then created out of a bronze mirror held in Izanagi's left hand’. Some time later Amaterasu sent her grandson down from heaven whereupon, in the Yamato plain in central Honshu, ‘he established a palace on the first day of spring in 660 bc and became the first Emperor Jimmu’. Joy Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society, 2nd edition, London, Routledge/Nissan Institute, 1995, pp. 8–9. Thus, so the story goes, began the current imperial line, and it is worth noting that this was the official history taught in Japanese schools until 1945.

26 Ohnuki-Tierney, Rice as Self, pp. 48–53.

27 Richard H. Moore, Japanese Agriculture: Patterns of Rural Development, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1990, p. 4.

28 Ohnuki-Tierney, Rice as Self, p. 56.

29 Ibid., chs 4, 5 and 6. See also Moore, Japanese Agriculture.

30 For discussion see Peter Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, London, Croom Helm, 1986; Carol Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1985; Thomas Havens, Farm and Nation in Modern Japan, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1974; and Kosaku Yoshino, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan, London, Routledge, 1992.

31 Ohnuki-Tierney, Rice as Self, pp. 15–17.

32 Ibid., pp. 67–74.

33 Ibid., pp. 77–8.

34 The rice/wheat division should not be over-emphasized. In fact, along with other grains, wheat was cultivated in Japan long before the introduction of rice. What makes rice so special in this instance is its symbolic resonance – a resonance that wheat and other grains cannot match.

35 Ohnuki-Tierney, Rice as Self, pp. 41–2.

36 Penelope Francks, with Johanna Boestel and Choo Hyop Kim, Agriculture and Economic Development in East Asia: From Growth to Protectionism in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, London, Routledge/ESRC Pacific Asia Programme, 1999, p. 84; and Hayami, Yujiro, ‘Rice Policy in Japan's Economic Development’, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 54: 1 (1972), p. 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar At various points Japan actively imported rice. Penelope Francks, ‘Rice for the Masses: Food Policy and the Adoption of Imperial Self-Sufficiency in Early Twentieth-Century Japan’, Japan Forum, 15: 1 (2003), pp. 125–46.

37 Hayami, ‘Rice Policy in Japan's Economic Development’, p. 27.

38 Ibid., p. 26.

39 For a comprehensive analysis see Aurelia George Mulgan, The Politics of Agriculture in Japan, London, Nissan Institute/Routledge, 2000.

40 It is difficult to convey the depth and extent of the power of Nōkyō at this time. In the mid-1980s it had an individual membership of 8 million, making it the largest voluntary mass grouping in Japan. More importantly its operations extend into every aspect of farming and farmers’ lives, catering to their economic, social, cultural and welfare needs as well as organizing politically on their behalf. In its prime it had 350,000 employees, making it the largest employer in Japan, was the country's biggest insurer and its banking business amounted to about half of the total held in the legendary national postal system. These details from Aurelia George and Eric Saxon, ‘The Politics of Agricultural Protection in Japan’, in Kym Anderson and Yujiro Hayami (eds), The Political Economy of Agricultural Protection: East Asia in International Perspective, London, Allen & Unwin, 1986, pp 94–7. Updated details, including its relative decline, can be found in George Mulgan, The Politics of Agriculture in Japan.

41 George, Aurelia, ‘The Politics of Interest Representation in the Japanese Diet: The Case of Agriculture’, Pacific Affairs, 64: 4 (199192), pp. 506–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Ronald Dore, Land Reform in Japan, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1959; Yutaka Yoshioka, ‘Development of Agricultural Policy in Postwar Japan’, in William T. Coyle, Dermot Hayes and Hiroshi Yamauchi (eds), Agriculture and Trade in the Pacific: Toward the Twenty-First Century, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1992, pp. 91–100.

43 Francesca Bray, The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1986; Penelope Francks, Japanese Economic Development: Theory and Practice, London, Routledge, 1992, ch. 7.

44 Japan's farm household population halved between 1960 and 1994, and the number of people engaged in farming as residents of commercial farm households fell from 17.7 million in 1960 to 7.9 million in 1993. Only 3 million people, or 5 per cent of the working population, were engaged in farming as a principal occupation in 1993, down from 12.7 million or 28.7 per cent of the working population in 1960. Mulgan, Aurelia George, ‘Electoral Determinants of Agrarian Power: Measuring Rural Decline in Japan’, Political Studies, 45 (1997), pp. 875–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 George and Saxon, ‘The Politics of Agricultural Protection in Japan’.

46 George Mulgan, The Politics of Agriculture in Japan, p. 33.

47 Hayami, ‘Rice Policy in Japan's Economic Development’, p. 27.

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid., p. 19.

50 Francks, with Boestel and Choo Hyop Kim, Agriculture and Economic Development in East Asia, p. 89. This became a burden because until the 1990s, with a few exceptions, the government buying-price from rice producers was consistently higher than its selling price to consumers. The gap between the two prices was of course a consequence of pressure from farmers for ever-higher prices in tandem with falling demand from consumers as outlined above.

51 George and Saxon, ‘The Politics of Agricultural Protection in Japan’, pp. 101–2.

52 Francks, Penelope, ‘Agriculture and the State in Industrial East Asia: The Rise and Fall of the Food Control System in Japan’, Japan Forum, 10: 1 (1998), p. 14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Ibid., p. 9.

54 Ibid., p. 10.

55 George and Saxon, ‘The Politics of Agricultural Protection in Japan’, pp. 101–2.

56 This happened again in 1989 when the LDP lost its majority in the upper house following Prime Minister Nakasone's 1987 decision to cut the producers’ rice price by 6 per cent, the first reduction in 31 years. Only 59 per cent of farmers voted for LDP candidates in that year compared with 77 per cent who voted for the LDP in 1986. Meyerson, Domestic Politics and International Relations in US–Japan Trade Policymaking, p. 178.

57 These other events included the US grain embargo on the USSR following the invasion of Afghanistan, the implementation of the 200-mile exclusive fishing zone and negotiations on exploitation of deep seabed resources during the Third United Nations Law of the Sea Conference (UNCLOS III) (1973–80), and the 1979 oil shock. On UNCLOS III see Blaker, ‘Evaluating Japan's Diplomatic Performance’. Although Japan was affected by the 1979 oil crisis it was not hit nearly so hard as it had been in 1973. Teruyasu Murakami, ‘The Remarkable Adaptation of Japan's Economy’, in Daniel Yergin and Martin Hillenbrand (eds), Global Insecurity: A Strategy for Energy and Economic Renewal, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1982, pp. 138–67.

58 George and Saxon, ‘The Politics of Agricultural Protection in Japan’, p. 106.

59 Ibid., pp. 108–9.

60 Meyerson, Domestic Politics and International Relations in US–Japan Trade Policymaking, p. 89.

61 For discussion see Francks, ‘Agriculture and the State in Industrial East Asia’, pp. 12–14. See also the Submission of the USA Rice Federation for the 2004 Annual National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers which claims that ‘despite Japan's Uruguay Round commitments, US rice does not enjoy meaningful market access’. Available at www.usarice.com/industry/gov/pop_2004NTE.html.

62 Unless otherwise indicated the figures contained within the following two paragraphs were obtained from the Energy Information Administration, US Department of Energy at www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/japan.html.

63 Hydroelectricity provides 8 per cent and renewable sources (wind, solar and geothermal) 2 per cent.

64 Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (Japan), Preliminary Report on Petroleum Statistics (August 2004), available at www.meti.go.jp.

65 Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, Japan, at www.enecho.meti.go.jp.

66 Currently, however, the Russian Federation supplies only about 1.5 per cent of Japan's oil requirements. Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Preliminary Report on Petroleum Statistics.

67 Japan had, however, developed a web of commercial ties. Hiroshi Shimizu, ‘The Japanese Trade Contact with the Middle East: Lessons from the Pre-oil Period’, in Sugihara and Allen, Japan in the Contemporary Middle East, pp. 27–53.

68 Richard J. Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State: Energy Markets in Comparative and Historical Perspective, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1987, pp. 177–9.

69 Raymond Vernon, Two Hungry Giants: The United States and Japan in the Quest for Oil and Ores, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1983, p. 90.

70 Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, New York, Pocket Books, 1993.

71 Vernon, Two Hungry Giants, p. 89. For an updated analysis see Tetsuo Hamauzu, ‘The Changing Structure of Oil Connections’, in Sugihara and Allen, Japan in the Contemporary Middle East, pp. 54–82.

72 Vernon, Two Hungry Giants, p. 89.

73 Jerome B. Cohen, Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction, Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1973 (first published 1949), p. 133.

74 W. W. Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan: Growth and Structural Change 1868–1938, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1954, p. 388.

75 Welfield, An Empire in Eclipse.

76 Between 1954 and 1958 the average growth rate in real GNP was 7.0 per cent. This same figure was 10.8 per cent for 1959–63, 10.9 per cent for 1964–68, and 9.6 per cent for 1969–73. Shigeto Tsuru, Japan's Capitalism: Creative Defeat and Beyond, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 67.

77 See above, n. 9.

78 Tsuru, Japan's Capitalism, p. 151.

79 Disaggregated the percentage figures in 1993 were: Saudi Arabia 33.8, Iran 17.0, United Arab Emirates 11.4, Kuwait 8.3, Oman 3.7 and Iraq 3.1. Indonesia (13.6 per cent) and Brunei (3.4 per cent) supplied the bulk of the remaining balance. Tsuru, Japan's Capitalism, pp. 152–3. The USA became an importer of oil as early as 1949.

80 Dominic Kelly, ‘The Political Economy of Japanese Trade Policy’, in Dominic Kelly and Wyn Grant (eds), Trade Politics in the Twenty-first Century: Actors, Issues, Regional Dynamics, Houndmills, Palgrave, 2005, pp. 330–45.

81 US sponsorship of Japan's entry into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1955 met with some opposition from European members, several of whom exercised their right not to apply GATT provisions to Japan.

82 Victor Argy and Leslie Stein, The Japanese Economy, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997, ch. 9; and Kaoru Sugihara. ‘Japan, the Middle East and the World Economy: A Note on the Oil Triangle’, in Sugihara and Allen, Japan in the Contemporary Middle East, pp. 1–13. Africa, and particularly South Africa, has been a key source of minerals. See Chapman et al., Japan's Quest for Comprehensive Security, ch. 8. Latin America has been particularly important in terms of its mineral wealth. See Barbara Stallings and Gabriel Székely (eds), Japan, The United States, and Latin America: Toward a Trilateral Relationship in the Western Hemisphere?, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1993.

83 Stephen D. Cohen, An Ocean Apart: Explaining Three Decades of US-Japanese Trade Frictions, Westport, CT, Praeger, 1998.

84 US troops used Japan both as a base of operations and as a location for rest and recuperation throughout the Vietnam War. See Raul Manglapus, Japan in Southeast Asia, New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1976; Sueo Sudo, The International Relations of Japan and South East Asia: Forging a New Regionalism, London, Routledge, 2002, pp. 34–5; and Glenn D. Hook, Militarization and Demilitarization in Contemporary Japan, London, Routledge, 1996.

85 On the long and painful transition from coal to oil see Laura E. Hein, Fueling Growth: The Energy Revolution and Economic Policy in Postwar Japan, Cambridge, MA, Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press, 1990, especially ch. 10.

86 Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State, p. 217.

87 The Seven Sisters were Exxon, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch–Shell, Gulf, Mobil, Standard Oil of California and Texaco.

88 Hein, Fueling Growth, p. 321; Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State, pp. 196ff. The 1951 Security Treaty between the United States and Japan was superseded by the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan.

89 This need had been driven home during the Second World War when the Sumatran oil fields and their related refineries could only be brought up to 60 and 40 per cent of their respective pre-war capacities using 70 per cent of the trained personnel available in Japan. Vernon, Two Hungry Giants, p. 91.

90 Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State, ch, 5.

91 Vernon, Two Hungry Giants, p. 93.

92 Ibid., p. 96. This glosses over the difficulties MITI faced in overcoming the resistance of Japanese oil firms who simply did not want to be regulated by government and who were, at the same time, fearful of damaging their relations with the oil majors. Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State.

93 It should be noted that the first oil shock did not end Japan's economic ‘miracle’. It is generally understood that some combination of the devaluation of the dollar, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates in 1971, a slowdown in the rate of technical progress, decreasing labour productivity, decreased capital formation and creeping inflation had eroded the dynamism of the Japanese economy even before the first oil shock.

94 Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, pp. 297–8; Murakami, ‘The Remarkable Adaptation of Japan's Economy’.

95 Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, pp. 296–300; and Kazuo Takahashi ‘The Iran–Japan Petrochemical Project: A Complex Issue’, in Sugihara and Allen, Japan in the Contemporary Middle East, pp. 83–93.

96 Sugihara and Allen, Japan in the Contemporary Middle East, chs 3, 6 and 7; and the various contributions to Stallings and Székely, Japan, The United States, and Latin America.

97 Figures from Mitsuo Saito, The Japanese Economy, Singapore, World Scientific Publishing, 2000, p. 171, table 7.1.

98 Japan's Diplomatic Bluebook, various years, available at www.mofa.go.jp.

99 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan), Japan's Economic Cooperation in the Middle East, available at www.mofa.go.jp.

100 Ibid.

101 Karasawa Kei, ‘Japan and Petroleum, the Most Critical Natural Resource’, in Warren S. Hunsberger (ed.), Japan's Quest: The Search for International Role, Recognition, and Respect, Armonk, NY, M. E. Sharpe, 1997, pp. 59–76; Hook, Militarization and Demilitarization in Contemporary Japan, ch. 4.

102 Kelly, Japan and the Reconstruction of East Asia, ch. 7.

103 Jonathan Watts, ‘End of an Era as Japan Enters Iraq’, Guardian, 26 July, 2003, p. 15.

104 Energy Information Administration, US Department of Energy, www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/japan.html.

105 Jeffrey W. Thompson and Benjamin L. Self, ‘Nuclear Energy, Space Launch Vehicles, and Advanced Technology: Japan's Prospects for Nuclear Breakout’, in Thompson and Self, Japan's Nuclear Option, p. 150.

106 Hook, Militarization and Demilitarization in Contemporary Japan.

107 Benjamin N. Schiff, International Nuclear Technology Transfer: Dilemmas of Dissemination and Control, London and Canberra, Rowman and Allanheld/Croom Helm, 1984, ch. 2.

108 Kelly, Japan and the Reconstruction of East Asia, ch. 3.

109 Hein, Fueling Growth, pp. 281ff.

110 Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State, p. 234.

111 Hein, Fueling Growth, p. 282.

112 Thompson and Self, ‘Nuclear Energy, Space Launch Vehicles, and Advanced Technology’, p. 154. I am grateful to Benjamin Self for clarifying this point for me in a personal communication.

113 Katsuhisa Furukawa, ‘Nuclear Option, Arms Control, and Extended Deterrence: In Search of a New Framework for Japan's Nuclear Policy’, in Thompson and Self, Japan's Nuclear Option, p. 108.

114 Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State, pp. 238, 240, 248–50.

115 The Uranium Information Centre (at www.uic.com), a privately owned advocate of nuclear power, is a good source of rose-tinted information on all aspects of the nuclear industry. The same can be said of the World Nuclear Association (at www.world-nuclear.org), which has close links to the UIC. Counterpoint to their perspective may be found, amongst many others, at the Nuclear Control Institute (www.nci.org).

116 Hook, Militarization and Demilitarization in Contemporary Japan, chs 2 and 7.

117 Nobumasa Akiyama, ‘The Socio-Political Roots of Japan's Non-Nuclear Posture’, in Thompson and Self, Japan's Nuclear Option, pp. 64–91.

118 Hook, Militarization and Demilitarization in Contemporary Japan, pp. 171–2; Akiyama, ‘The Socio-Political Roots of Japan's Non-Nuclear Posture’, pp. 72–6.

119 The revised guidelines suggest that Japanese forces may have to enforce regional blockades (such as in the Taiwan Straits, perhaps), take part in minesweeping operations, and provide greater logistical support to US forces in Japan.

120 Article 2 of the Atomic Energy Basic Law states: ‘The research, development and utilization of atomic energy shall be limited to peaceful purposes, aimed at ensuring safety and performed independently under democratic management’.

121 For a discussion that casts doubt on Japan's adherence to these principles from the very beginning see Hook, Militarization and Demilitarization in Contemporary Japan, pp. 64–8.

122 Mitsuru Kurosawa, ‘Curbing Nuclear Proliferation: Japanese, G8, and Global Approaches’, in John J. Kirton and Junichi Takase (eds), New Directions in Global Political Governance: The G8 and International Order in the Twenty-First Century, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002, pp. 117–40.

123 Details at the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan), at www.mofa.gov.jp.

124 Mark E. Manyin, Japan–North Korea Relations: Selected Issues, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 26 November 2003.

125 Hughes, Christopher W., ‘Japan–North Korea Relations From the North–South Summit to the Koizumi–Kim Summit’, Asia-Pacific Review, 9: 2 (2002), pp. 6178 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, ‘Japan's Future Strategic Options and the US–Japan Alliance’.

126 Ken Jimbo, ‘Rethinking Japanese Security: New Concepts in Deterrence and Defense’, in Thompson and Self, Japan's Nuclear Option, pp. 24–45.

127 Christopher W. Hughes, Japan's Emergence as a ‘Normal’ Military Power?, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.

128 Kent E. Calder, Asia's Deadly Triangle: How Arms Energy and Growth Threaten to Destabilize Asia Pacific, London, Nicholas Brealey, 1996, p. 68.

129 Cited in Robert Harvey, The Undefeated: The Rise, Fall and Rise of Greater Japan, London, Macmillan, 1994, p. 581.

130 Furukawa, ‘Nuclear Option, Arms Control, and Extended Deterrence’, pp. 95–147.

131 Discussed in detail in Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State, ch. 6.

132 Kenji Hall, ‘Scandal Surfaces as Japan Reconsiders Long-term Nuclear Program’, Associated Press, 6 July 2004.

133 See, for example, Uranium Information Centre Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper 42, ‘Mixed Oxide Fuel (MOX)’, available at www.uic.com.

134 Paul Leventhal and Steven Dolley, ‘Understanding Japan's Nuclear Transports: The Plutonium Context’, Washington, DC, Nuclear Control Institute, 1999.

135 A full report can be found on the UK Health and Safety Executive website at www.hse.gov.uk.

136 Contrasting views on this issue can be found in Leventhal and Dolley, ‘Understanding Japan's Nuclear Transports’, and in a document published by COGEMA (the French company responsible for reprocessing the majority of Japanese spent nuclear fuel and waste) entitled ‘Transport of MOX Fuel from France to Japan’, available at www.cogema.fr.

137 Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State, p. 242; Leventhal and Dolley, ‘Understanding Japan's Nuclear Transports’. Although state-run, the PNC was jointly funded by the public and private sectors.

138 Michael W. Donnelly, ‘Nuclear Safety and Criticality at Tokaimura: A Failure of Governance’, in Kirton and Takase (eds), New Directions in Global Political Governance, pp. 141–87.

139 Ibid., and Michael W. Donnelly, ‘Nuclear Blight in Japan: Criticality at Tokaimura’, in Masao Nakamura (ed.), Japan in the Global Age: Cultural, Historical and Political Issues on Asia, Environment, Households and International Communication, British Columbia, Centre for Japanese Research/University of British Columbia, 2001, pp. 83–92.

140 On the Mihama incident see ‘Bursting Point’, Economist, 14–20 August 2004, pp. 52–3.

141 Temin, Peter, ‘Is it Kosher to Talk about Culture?’, Journal of Economic History, 57: 2 (1997), pp. 267–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

142 Reminiscent, of course, of arguments put forward in Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition, Boston, Little, Brown, 1977.

143 Yasutomo, The New Multilateralism in Japan's Foreign Policy.

144 Ibid., ch. 6.