Since the end of World War II and well into the 1980s, relations between Japan and Europe have been characterized by a Janus-like nature: a certain coldness in terms of diplomatic dialogue alternating with heavy commercial disputes. Cold War geopolitics made a decisive contribution in depriving Japan of an effective, independent foreign policy, and most of its choices in international security matters tended to depend on decisions made in Washington.
Following the end of the Cold War in Asia, the new debate within leading Japanese circles was centred on the need for Tokyo to frame its foreign policy within a new doctrine. Although the Yoshida doctrine delegated national security to the US and included economism among its primary goals, Japan was able to conceptualize a vision of soft security with aims that were widely shared by the European Union (EU). Especially after the signing of the EU–Japan Action Plan in 2001, Tokyo and Brussels initiated a fruitful and multilateral cooperation, as shown by their involvement in projects in countries afflicted by instability and security problems. The fulfilment of the European integration project and the further acceptance of the idea of a Common European Defence programme do not seem to have affected Brussels’ inclination towards soft security, which, like the Japanese approach, focuses primarily on the development of aid, technical assistance, the promotion of democracy, environmental protection and combating terrorism. Although soft security seems to be the area with the highest expectations for EU–Japan joint actions, the exclusion of the EU from the East Asian security discourse, such as the Six-Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue, may have harmed the Japanese–European partnership in terms of credibility, and in some sense may have delegitimized the idea of the EU as a world security provider.
In view of the research carried out and the trends detected in the overall scientific production, it could be useful to highlight the main points of the debate at issue and make some preliminary remarks. First of all, it would be fully legitimate, and indeed helpful, to question how the EU is perceived in Japan, and whether or not Tokyo considers Brussels to be a leading player in foreign policy and global security. The short answers to these questions are most likely ‘positively’ and ‘to what extent and within what limits?’ respectively. On the negative side, ‘common knowledge’ regarding the EU is still very scarce in Japan. It rarely makes the front-page news, and only a relatively small number of Japanese scholars and politicians understand – and are interested in – how Brussels works. However, this phenomenon seems to be undergoing some gradual changes in Japan, with a growing number of universities offering courses in European Studies, the rise of specialized research institutes, the flux of Japanese scholars studying and teaching in Europe (which is constantly increasing) and young people involved in international exchange programmes.1
Since the late 1980s, and especially after the adoption of the Hague Declaration in 1991, a specific ‘EU factor’ began to influence all political relations between Japan and Europe, although the former has continued to reinforce its bilateral ties with individual European states.2 Partly because of the complexity of EU decision-making processes, and partly because of a lack of understanding of how responsibility is distributed between the EU’s institutions and its members, Japanese policy makers still seem uncertain about the true force of Brussels’ weight on the world stage, on which important decisions that affect Japan are taken by each member state and adopted by the Union as a whole. The failure of the referenda on the EU Constitutional Treaty in the Netherlands and France in 2005 was taken by Japanese politicians as a sign that EU integration has limitations and that Tokyo must continue to deal with both the national governments and Brussels in order to ‘get the most out of Europe’.
The logical approach adopted by Japan in expanding its relations with the EU after the end of the Cold War was to ‘diversify’ its international relations and security policies, which until then had been almost entirely defined within the framework of its bilateral alliance with the US.3 Japan believed that privileged relations with the EU would redress the balance of its international diplomacy, making it less vulnerable to accusations that its regional, foreign and security policies needed to be checked, or even ‘approved’, by Washington. In November 2002 a report from the Task Force on Foreign Relations – a body established to advise former Prime Minister Koizumi – identified the EU as a ‘strong partner’ in certain areas of cooperation. As stressed by the report, in a new world order, Japan needs to have a partner in relation to every single issue. Europe could be construed as a rational choice of partner for some topics. The Task Force also warned that it would be necessary for Japan to choose between dealing with the EU or with individual European countries on a bilateral level, on a case-by-case basis. This is indicative of Japan’s desire to be sure that it can continue to interact with single EU members when it best suits its own interests.
Despite the growing importance of the EU in foreign policy and global security, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) still provides substantial human and financial resources for departments dealing with Asia and the US, rather than Europe. In addition, because of the division of labour within the ministry (and also taking into account the competition between the inter-ministerial bureaucrats dealing with economic, political and security matters), Tokyo cannot lay claim to a single coherent strategy concerning the EU.4 From the Japanese point of view, the EU can contribute very little, if at all, to the country’s security given both the close defence ties existing between Washington and Tokyo and East Asia’s still fragile security environment. It would seem that it is a commonly held belief in Japan that any initiative to cooperate with the EU in the field of security can only be complementary to its military relationship with the US, which focuses on hard security, whereas Japanese–European cooperation on security issues emphasizes its non-military aspects.
The effectiveness and outcomes of all joint efforts aimed at contributing to global peace and stability therefore inevitably depend on Japan’s ability to successfully implement the two approaches simultaneously. The discussions that took place during the EU–Japan summit in April 2006 in fact dealt with global political and economic issues, with the management of the global challenges, as well as with a number of other important international issues, including regional cooperation in East Asia and relations with China, the Korean peninsula, Russia, Iran and the Middle East. (However, this was partly anticipated by Wallace and Soogil.)5
Over the past decade, Brussels and Tokyo have participated in many joint initiatives and established a form of dialogue that has focused on many issues, as mentioned above. However, EU–Japan cooperation on nuclear disarmament lacks credibility given that Japan continues to enjoy the protection of the US nuclear umbrella, while it is not seen as a priority in Europe, and indeed it might be said that it is not even an option for at least two member states (the UK and France). After the North Korean nuclear test carried out in October 2006, some prominent members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) indicated that a nuclear-armed North Korea could turn on Japan again in a debate over the development of nuclear deterrents. In September 2005 the EU and Japan launched a ‘strategic dialogue on security in Asia’, in which they discussed issues of regional security in Asia at regular institutional meetings.
Although the embargo imposed on China in 1989 was officially just one of the security issues being discussed under the first EU–Japan ‘strategic dialogue’, it was certainly the most important from the Japanese perspective. Between 2004 and 2005, both Japan and the US were concerned that the EU would lift the embargo and resume (probably thereby increasing) its weapons and military technology exports to China, thus helping Beijing in its efforts to modernize its armed forces. Both countries complained – officially, as well as unofficially – that Brussels did not seem to be sufficiently aware of the possible impact of EU policies towards China, and suggested that these and other questions should be periodically addressed by the EU, the US and Japan on a bilateral basis. We should perhaps question whether ‘strategic dialogue’ between the EU and Japan has a raison d’être beyond the discussions over the embargo, and whether there are enough strategic issues of common interest in Asia to form the basis of a discussion. North Korea and its nuclear programme is certainly one of these problems.
According to Chris Patten, the former EU Commissioner for External Relations, ‘the problem of EU–Japan relations is that there are no problems’. Except for the Iraq crisis, disagreements on political issues between the EU and Japan are extremely rare. The non-military security cooperation between the two parties, the joint support for the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the signing of numerous protocols for disarmament demonstrate the similarity of both actors’ approaches to international security and nonproliferation. As is well known, Japan had been a strong supporter of expansion of the EU in Central and Eastern Europe throughout the 1990s, helping to promote the economic and political reform process in some of the countries that joined the EU in 2004.6 Given the volume of its investments, it is fair to say that Japan was a direct and significant contributor to the economic success of the EU. In return for the significant increase in Japanese investments in Poland and Hungary, both countries have strongly supported Tokyo’s attempts to obtain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. For its part, to encourage nuclear non-proliferation, Japan has persuaded three new EU members (Estonia, Lithuania and Malta) to sign a joint declaration supporting the controls over military exports worldwide.
However, while Japan and the EU have jointly promoted the idea of a comprehensive reform of the United Nations, there has never been a common EU–Japan position on the content of this reform. On the other hand, this should not be surprising given that Japan and Germany, one of the most important EU member states, were primarily focused on obtaining a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The absence of concrete action that would strengthen political and security relations beyond the current level suggests that the timeframe in which the ambitious EU–Japan Joint Action Plan is implemented will remain relatively slow, or ‘without surprises’, in the coming years. This is easily understandable given the priorities of the EU foreign policy agenda, on the one hand, and Japan’s security ties with the US, on the other. However, it should be noted that, in Japan, the perception of the EU as a player in foreign policy and security is, to some extent, improving: its past contributions to security in Asia (for example, the peace-monitoring mission in Aceh) have marked it out as a potentially important and constructive partner for Asia and for Japan itself.
Regulatory issues will remain the priority for economic and commercial Japan–European relations for years to come, and the EU may also remain silent about the obstacles that European companies eager to penetrate the Japanese market will have to overcome. Conducting business with Japan will probably prove difficult for investors, who may continue to be hampered by the bureaucracy involved. The state of economic and business relations between Tokyo and Brussels also depends on the will of Japanese governments to continue to implement economic reforms within the country. Beyond that, however, in the interest of providing a firmer basis for international cooperation, the two sides should consider revisiting the 2001 Joint Action Plan and try to concentrate their cooperation on a smaller number of issues. The promotion of peace and international security should be the primary goal, and it is on this point that the two ‘soft powers’ can make a difference. The EU still has an important place in Japan’s foreign policy agenda in view of the permanent nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula and the need to improve its political relations with Beijing and Seoul.
There is certainly no lack of political rhetoric about the need to expand and deepen EU–Japan relations, as evidenced first by a statement by the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, at a bilateral summit held in April 2006, in which he stated that Japan and the EU are natural strategic partners that share common values and as such the same strategies for dealing with international issues.
Barroso went even further in his speech, identifying Japan as ‘the EU’s most important partner in Asia’. Although some might dismiss this as little more than rhetoric, typical of these high-level bilateral meetings, his remarks must have only partially placated the Japanese political leaders who, together with their counterparts in other Asian countries, criticized the EU’s overall approach to the region in recent years, accusing it of making its relations with China a model for relations with the whole of Asia. This criticism emerged when Brussels and Beijing started to interface with each other as ‘strategic partners’ in September 2003, and as a reaction to the EU’s policy of expanding and strengthening its ties with Beijing as in many areas as possible. The European Security Strategy (ESS) of December 2003 also recognized the EU and Japan as ‘strategic partners’, but it only attracted a fraction of the international attention, which mainly focused on the investments made in Brussels–Beijing diplomatic commitments over the past three years. European and Japanese political leaders still need to fully explain the value that their ‘strategic partnership’ will add to the existing bilateral relations, and how this will help the two parties to implement the ambitious cooperation envisaged under the Joint Action Plan.
Although the progress made to date in terms of combining resources and coordinating policies relating to conflict prevention and peace building is not negligible, Brussels and Tokyo could certainly stand to do more. Moreover, both parties are notoriously ‘inconclusive’ in terms of their public diplomacy. Both have proved mediocre at explaining their development and humanitarian aid policies to the outside world, with the result that they have all but gone unnoticed.
Aims and structure of the study
This book focuses on an investigation into the institutionalization process of relations between Japan and Europe since World War II. As mentioned above, the diplomatic ties between Japan and Europe are often considered weak from a historical perspective, especially in comparison with Japan-US links, or even non-existent. Indeed, although the history of political relations between the two actors did not produce significant results before the 1990s, the course of their previous contacts has been marked by several attempts to interact at a diplomatic level. However, these efforts have been obscured – to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the historical moments determining them – by specific factors, such as the weight of external variables or misperceptions on both sides. Moreover, it would be impossible to compare the Japan–Europe political and diplomatic dialogue with the Japan–US entente, which was created and supported under very different historical conditions. Specifically, the aim of this study is fivefold:
to analyse political and diplomatic relations between Japan and Europe (considered, in the initial phase, as the European Community and, subsequently, as the EU);
to demonstrate that the quality of these diplomatic relations has often been sacrificed to overcome trade issues;
to demonstrate that the weight of external variables (the structure of the international system) has been crucial to the lack of a diplomatic dialogue not only for Europe but also for Japan;
to analyse the ‘ASEM process’ as a case study in the evolution of diplomatic relations between the two actors; and
to demonstrate that the construction of the ‘identity discourse’ is essential for a proper understanding of the course of Japanese–European diplomacy in the post-bipolar era.
The perspective of the first two chapters is historical and political, and traces the development of Japanese–European relations from the early 1950s, passing through the Joint Declaration of 1991 and ending with the Japan–EU Joint Action Plan of 2001. This is considered a turning point in the partnership, which was marked throughout the Cold War years by countless trade conflicts relating to economy and security, and by mutual misunderstandings. This context also provided space for the Japanese security vision to evolve, which, by embracing an holistic approach and using especially ‘soft’ tools, made Japan one of the leading actor in the human security field and, in some respects, aligned it with the EU’s security policy.
The third chapter is centred on the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM), the largest inter-continental forum, which is attended and promoted by the EU and many East Asian countries, including Japan, whereas the US has no seat. Despite its enormous potential at an inter-regional level, ASEM has suffered from 16 years of successful activity alternating with criticism from those who still believe it is nothing more than a talking shop. Everything hinges on the ability of the EU and East Asian states (particularly Japan) to instil legitimacy and concreteness to the dialogue developed within the ASEM framework that is now widely recognized as a factor that reinforces the Eurasian axis and holds the potential to turn into an instrument of global governance.
The fourth chapter is divided into two parts. The first deals with and analyses the terms of the debate on whether or not the EU is able to emerge as a global security provider. The EU’s ability to act as a guarantor of peace and stability on a global level merges with the debate arising around the notions of Europe as a civilian, military and normative power. The complexity of the concept of European security is also compared with the rise of new threats to international peace. These include international terrorism, which marked the emergence of a new post-9/11 geostrategic scenario that was shocked by the centrifugal dynamics of globalization and in turn triggered intra-state and geocultural fragmentation processes. The Copenhagen School paradigm of securitization is the theoretical framework used to explain how some issues, and not others, are interpreted as threats and internalized by a given community. The reference to the explosive force of globalization is inseparable from the analysis of the cultural values that underpin a community and forge its identity. This applies both to a defined entity such as the EU and to a highly heterogeneous regional bloc such as East Asia, and is particularly relevant for a country like Japan.
The analysis of the EU’s international identity issue and its projection in East Asia provides the link to the second section of the chapter, in which a constructivist approach is taken with the aim of highlighting the nature of EU relations with Japan, and with East Asia in general. In particular, taking a view of the international system in which the primary explanatory factors are the inter-subjective forces (i.e. the ‘stock’ of knowledge that includes ideas, culture and identity) as a reference model, East Asia and Japan’s perception of the EU essentially comprises the relationship between the two regions. It shows that, for the EU, participating in East Asia security issues is not just a simple matter of political will, as the cultural dynamics and the individual perceptions of counterparts in Asia play an important role, particularly in the case of Japan.
The sources used in this work can be classified into four bibliographical segments:
official documents and speeches;
interviews;
diplomatic statements and diary entries; and
monographs and scholarly essays.
The official documents and speeches concern both Japanese and European aspects and refer mostly to sources from the MOFA and from the European Commission. Among these, the Gaikō Seisho [Diplomatic Bluebook, MOFA], the Bulletin of the European Communities and the EU’s official sources have been very useful. The interviews were conducted by electronic means, and the people contacted at political organizations and research institutes in Japan and Europe have expressly requested to remain anonymous. The diplomatic statements and diary entries relate, instead, to Japanese prime ministers’ personal diaries or to the journals written by their close informers and collaborators. Of these, Takahashi’s Kishi Nobusuke to Nichi-Bei kankei tsū-shi [‘Kishi Nobusuke and the history of Japan–US relations’, 2000], Sato Eisaku nikki [‘Satō Eisaku memoirs’ (volumes I–VI), 1999], Satō’s Watashi no Tanaka Kakuei nikki [‘My Tanaka Kakuei’s diary’, 1994] and Kataoka’s Tanaka Kakuei tei shosei nikki [‘The diary of Tanaka Kakuei’s houseboy’, 2002] have proved helpful.
Methodological approach and analytical framework
The analytical approach adopted in this book follows two different paths that cover the topics related to Japanese–European interaction over more than half a century: the first concerns the historical-diplomatic dimension and the second political-strategic discourse.
Modern historical relations between Japan and Europe have constantly been inscribed into a narrative that reiterated the absolute pre-eminence of mutual indifference on a diplomatic level, due especially to Japan’s opportunistic, or structural, indifference about high politics discourse. This is an image that has often been constructed without being interpreted in the Japanese context,7 or – in the words of Gluck – without bringing the outside in: ‘[in Japanese eyes] the world sometimes loomed larger in the gazing imagination when it was most absent in the environment of action’.8 The external world has exerted a strong influence on Japan’s domestic history, as a country that once belonged to a pre-existing international order (the Chinese order) that was very far removed from the peculiarities of the Westphalian system. Although occurrences in the European political landscape became ‘experiences’, they were moulded into ‘history’ for Japan, which reacted accordingly. We may see the story as a whole as well as the reverse side of it. The plot that therefore structured the interactions between the two actors was derived from a specific reading of events in both political spaces. Only by correlating the images and perceptions of Japanese history and the European context can we bridge these otherwise apparently unconnected behaviours and elevate their interactions to the status of historical narrative.
This can be considered in the framework of Japan’s history and its political structure, in addition to external structural factors. A number of themes and dimensions – historical, economic and strategic – are involved in its foreign policy with Europe. Furthermore, the role of the US, and more specifically, the evolving post-war relationship between Tokyo and Washington, has conditioned and encouraged Japan to seek a circumscribed, low-profile diplomatic approach to Europe.
To make sense of this, it is necessary to employ a deductive analytical framework that takes into account the wider and deeper political trends occurring in Japan, which has clearly conditioned its engagement with Europe. Inoguchi has proposed an understanding of Japan’s historical models or perceptions as ‘free riders’ (in economic and security terms), ‘challengers’ (in trade terms) and as ‘supporters’ (of international economic and political structures).9 It is the coexistence of these models that represented an enigma to Europe. This inconvenient apposition continued throughout almost the entire Cold War era, although the image of Japan as a supportive – albeit competitive – member of the international community was ascending. These perceptions seem to conciliate, in some way, those provided by Hughes, in accordance with whom, throughout the history of its interaction with Europe, Japan assumed three different images in the eyes of its counterpart, gradually switching over from ‘peril’ (during the 1960s) to ‘partner’ (1980s), and finally to ‘participant’ (from the 1990s onwards).10 The alternation of these phases, which is accompanied by multiple identities and various mutual perceptions, was the product of internal and external historical instances referable to both actors. As we will see in the first two chapters, this correlation between European and Japanese experiences is not only an epistemological stance, but was actually applied for and built into Japanese discourses and practices in order to legitimize the implementation of a Japanese horizontal political community in relation to a not merely America-centred West. As long as what Harootunian emblematically defined ‘America’s Japan’11 has viscerally moulded the image that the country had of itself, Japan’s interactions with Europe have been jeopardized in several ways. According to Gluck, Japan seemed to be in some way a hostage of its own post-war history, mainly through its relationship with the US. In her own words: ‘most countries ceased to speak of themselves as “post-war” in the domestic sense by the late 1950s and became instead “contemporary”. Japan’s “long post-war” was as distinctive as it was anachronistic’.12 As stressed by Iwabuchi, in the post-war years, Japan’s attention was turned to its cultural relations with ‘the West’, predominantly with the US as its most significant ‘cultural Other’, ‘against which Japanese national identity has been constructed’.13
If we look back on the Japanese history of the past 50 years, it would seem that Japan – in a long-term perspective – has successfully managed a series of issues relating to its interactions with Europe by adopting a low-profile approach. During the first half of the Cold War, Japan was criticized for its supposedly single-minded focus on economic expansion, so that in France the public image of Japanese Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato reductively became that of a ‘transistor salesman’. Nevertheless, by the 1970s, Europe started to look to Japan to help manage an economy ever more interdependent on the world stage, whereas during the 1980s, the country had already become a European partner on a political and partly strategic level. Japan’s ability to successfully overcome, albeit as a festina lente, the diplomatic or political impasse with the European counterpart during the post-war decades evidently lies in its attitude to implementing pragmatic changes in its foreign policy. Such changes occurred within a liberal framework that sought to reconcile Japan’s increasing involvement in the international economy with a gradual engagement of the country on regional and global security issues.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, we witnessed the end of the ideological metanarrative on which the entire Cold War historical discourse had been built, as well as the dissolution of the infamous ‘friend-enemy’ dichotomy within the borders of the specific East-West scheme and the decline of the American hegemony that – in Kupchan’s eyes – ‘lost its compass’.14 Huntington’s 1993 thesis in response to Fukuyama’s argument regarding the ‘end of history’ replaced the quintessence of the bipolar antagonism, alerting us to alleged new evidence: the differences between the seven or eight world civilizations would have caused, among other things, ‘fault line conflicts’ destined to severely impact on the new international equilibrium.15 It could, however, be asserted that, in the 1980s, the Huntingtonian thesis already experienced a cultural response with the discourse on ‘Asian values’ of the Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysian Mahathir Mohamad under the slogan ‘Look East’.16 It could be said, although perhaps reductively, that this new perspective aims to emphasize the limits of the supposed universality of Western culture, but no matter how seemingly paradoxical, Huntington’s and Mahathir’s approaches have much more in common than it may seem. Actually, although the two theses are opposed to each other in terms of political orientation, their relationship – as noted by Iwabuchi – ‘can be described as a collusive interplay, as they share much in their essentializing of the cultural/civilizational differences between West and East’.17
Other authors converged on this same position, albeit implicitly, such as Barr, according to whom ‘there is ample evidence that, like Lee, Mahathir’s advocacy of “Asian values” is based on a mixture of political expediency and longstanding, deep-seated impulses and beliefs’.18 Japan occupies a very significant position within this discourse, as it was the country that, in Mahathir’s eyes, would have led ‘the Asian cultural alternative’, thanks to its natural affinity with other Asian nations, while to Huntington, it ‘is a civilization that is a state’, with a unique position vis-à-vis the West.19 This bi-dimensional character of Japanese political culture in relation to the outside world has put the country in a unique geocultural position whereby it is able to ‘[reconcile] tensions between East and West’.20 This emerged with greater clarity in the post-bipolar years, given the changed global geopolitical landscape, but Japan’s ability to act as an intermediate pole between East and West is equally discernible in the history of its diplomatic efforts with Europe during the Cold War years.
Attempting to analyse the historical dimension of Japan–Europe interactions from the perspective of international relations, the first problem regards the theoretical approach to be taken. The matter is not new, and has been a constant concern in the scientific literature focused on the Japanese case. Again, then, it raises the same questions, and thus we face the same methodological restraints: both the nerealist and the neliberal paradigms can explain only partially, and in a limited way, the nature of the Japanese ‘response’ in the context of the interactions that the country modelled with the outside world. So, even in this case, the mainstream international relations theory fails to fully explain Japan’s posture towards Europe during the Cold War era and afterwards. The discussion arises with particular reference to the nerealist paradigm, as the neliberal model is theoretically more flexible and therefore less binding.
We can consider three major theoretical aspects useful for the purposes of our analysis: distribution of power, interdependence and identity. As is widely deducible by reading the text, these elements underlie our analysis, although the structure of the work deliberately emphasizes the historical-diplomatic dimension in particular.
The issue of change or transformation within the international system can be considered the most critical front in the analysis performed on Waltz’s structural realism.21 A problem that is analogously reflected in Mearsheimer’s offensive realism is the inability to explain systemic changes and the issue of power distribution.22
In the specific case of Japan, the weakness of nerealism’s contribution, emphasized by a number of authors, is particularly well suited to the country’s specificities and its conduct in foreign policy, with Japan moreover not being an actor that can put hard political issues at the top of its international agenda. Although there may obviously have been periods of history in which the country pursued its own ‘national interest’ – defined by Katzen-stein as the result of ‘regulatory and constitutive norms’23 – even in the dynamics that have characterized its relations with Europe, Japan may mainly be construed as an actor that followed a mercantilist approach. From the neliberal perspective, rather, many aspects suggest that political performance with Europe can easily be inscribed within a process of ‘complex interdependence’, as defined by Keohane and Nye, at least since the early 1970s.24
Indeed, if in some ways the political interaction between the two actors seems to fit in this interpretative channel easily (i.e. as well as could be said for the nerealist model, as stressed above), the various attempts at diplomatic dialogue that have been recorded produce a new way of understanding that is projected beyond the theoretical boundaries outlined so far. Japanese–European relations, in fact, clearly show that the two actors have often been conditioned by mutual perceptions, as well as misperceptions, that – together with the systemic influences and constraints due, on the Japanese side, to the Yoshida doctrine – have come to greatly reduce their diplomatic relations, stifling any possible enthusiasm. Both players constructed their interaction upon their own identities and interests, and based on the perception that they had of each other. As suggested by the title of a famous essay published in 1992 by Wendt, one of the core social constructivist scholars in the field of international relations, ‘anarchy is what states make of it’.25
According to social constructivism, there are no paradigmatic readings based on the notion of conflict or cooperation as unquestioned givens. Human nature has neither an intrinsic tendency to conflict, nor an inclination to a priori cooperation: the nature of international politics is the result of what the actors decide to make of it, according to their own mode of interaction. In this particular perspective, social constructivism does not aspire to replace the realist and liberal paradigms, but rather – as it ranks among the post-positivist/reflectivist theories – to be complementary to them, even if for both models it rejects the instance that the truths are preestablished, considering the actors’ behaviour as a product of the way they perceive each other. In order to understand how these inter-subjective practices are constructed, it is necessary to take into account the history of the actors involved, as well as the ideas and values on which their identity perceptions are generated. As observed by Suganami, ‘this happens, according to Wendt, along a symbolic interactionist path [and] alter their conceptions of Self and Other in the direction of developing a collective identity’.26 In his milestone work, Wendt argues that:
Whether we are talking about workers, citizens, or states, the constitutive requirements of collective identity formation is the same, namely redefining the boundaries of Self and Other so as to constitute a ‘common in-group identity’ or ‘we-feeling’.27
The author himself intends this theoretical model to be ‘trans-historical and trans-cultural in its applicability’.28 It is an interpretative path that – we may state in conclusion – seems among the most suitable for a qualitative analysis of Japan–EU interactions, both historically and diplomatically.
Notes
1 U. Niemann, ‘The Dynamics of People-to-People Exchanges Between Asia and Europe’, Chulalongkorn University Journal of European Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, July–December 2001, pp. 28–34; P. Lim, ‘Beyond Economic Cooperation: Prospects for Mutual Social, Cultural and Educational Ties’, in The 3rd Seoul ASEM and Asia–Europe Relations, Seoul: Korean Society for Contemporary European Studies, 2000, pp. 109–133; N. Chaban and M. Holland (eds), The European Union and the Asia-Pacific. Media, Public and Elite Perceptions of the EU, London: Routledge, 2008; N. Chaban, M. Holland and P. Ryan (eds), The EU Through the Eyes of Asia. New Cases, New Findings, vol. II, Singapore: World Scientific, 2009. For a detailed historical overview on the subject, starting from the 1970s, see T. Iwasa, West European Academic Images and Stereotypes of Japan Since the 1970s, Doctoral thesis, Florence: European University Institute, Department of History and Civilization, 2007.
2 T. Nakanishi, Naze Yōroppa to te wo musubu no ka. Nichi-Ō shinjidai no sentaku, Tokyo: Bensei shuppan, 1996.
3 Y. Funabashi, China–Japan-US: Managing the Trilateral Relationship, Tokyo: JCIE, 1998.
4 J. Gilson, Japan and the European Union, London: Macmillan, 2000.
5 W. Wallace and Y. Soogil, Asia and Europe: Global Governance as a Challenge to Cooperation, Tokyo: Council for Asia–Europe Cooperation, 2004.
6 J. Dosch, ‘Europe and the Asia Pacific’, in M.K. Connors, R. Davison, J. Dosch (eds), The New Global Politics of the Asia-Pacific, London: Routledge/Curzon, 2004, pp. 104–118.
7 Mazzei and Volpi shed new light on the debate at issue, proposing a comprehensive and enlightening analysis based to a large extent on the ‘identity and culture’ discourse and on the management of cultural diversities, which also takes Europe–Japan relations into account. See F. Mazzei and V. Volpi, Asia al Centro, Milano: EGEA – Università Bocconi Editore, 2006; F. Mazzei, ‘Ripristinare la Via della Seta’, in F. Mazzei and P. Carioti (eds), Oriente, Occidente e Dintorni …, Scritti in onore di Adolfo Tamburello, Napoli: Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’, 2010a, vol. IV, pp. 1617–1630.
8 C. Gluck, ‘Patterns of the Past: Themes in Japanese History’, in C. Gluck and A. T. Embree (eds), Asia in Western and World History, New York: East Gate Books, 1997, p. 759.
9 T. Inoguchi, ‘Tinkering Every 15 Years: A New Major Turn in Japan’s Foreign policy?’, Japan Spotlight: Economic, Culture & History, vol. 23, 2004, pp. 38–39.
10 C.W. Hughes, ‘Japan in Europe: Asian and European Perspectives’, in G.D. Hook, H. Hasegawa (eds), The Political Economy of Japanese Globalization, London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 56–69.
11 D.H. Harootunian, ‘America’s Japan/Japan’s Japan’, in M. Miyoshi and H.D. Harootunian (eds), Japan in the World, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993, pp. 196–221.
12 C. Gluck, ‘The Past in the Present’, in A. Gordon (ed.), Postwar Japan as History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, p. 93.
13 K. Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization. Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, p. 9.
14 C. Kupchan, The End of the American Era: US Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-First Century, New York: Knopf, 2002.
15 S.P. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 72, no. 3, Summer 1993, pp. 22–49; F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, New York: Free Press, 1992.
16 M.T. Berger, ‘The Triumph of the East? The East Asian Miracle and post-Cold War Capitalism’, in M.T. Berger and D.A. Borer (eds), The Rise of East Asia: Critical Visions of the Pacific Century, London: Routledge, 2002, p. 273.
17 Iwabuchi, op. cit., p. 12.
18 M.D. Barr, Cultural Politics and Asian Values: The Tepid War, London: Routledge, 2002, p. 39.
19 S.P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003, p. 44.
20 Iwabuchi, op. cit., p. 13.
21 K.N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis, New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
22 J.J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New York: Norton & Company, 2003.
23 P.J. Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security. Police and Military in Postwar Japan, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996, p. 19.
24 R. Keohane, J. Nye, Power and Interdependence, New York: Pearson Education, 2011.
25 A. Wendt, ‘Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization, vol. 46, no. 2, 1992, pp. 391–425.
26 H. Suganami, ‘Wendt, IR, and Philosophy’, in S. Guzzini and A. Leander (eds), Constructivism and International Relations: Alexander Wendt and His Critics, London: Routledge, 2006, p. 58.
27 A. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 338.
28 Wendt, op. cit.