Abstract
This chapter is to set the scene for Japan’s foreign policy in the 1990s by giving an overview of Japan’s power resources and by outlining the scope and modi operandi of these resources. We will look at the interaction between Japan’s domestic political economy and the external environment, and how this interaction is moderated by ideology and behavioural patterns. After dealing with the actors we will analyse the size of Japan’s economy by breaking it down into trade, investment, financial power and high technology. As we will see in the later chapters, the size and scope of the Japanese economy influences the actions which Japan has to undertake in order to maintain and expand its economy. Its economic might determines the structural, relational and ideological power of Japan towards the outside world.
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Notes
The historical continuity has been best described for the case of MITI by Chalmers Johnson in MITI and the Japanese Miracle. The Growth of Industrial Policy. 1925–1975 (Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1982).
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Royama Michio argues that this trust of the Japanese people in the world’s peace-loving people even at that time was not very convincing because of events after 1945. Royama, Michio, ‘Reisengo” jidai ni okeru Nihon no heiwashugi’ (Japan’s pacifism during the ‘Cold War’), in: Usui, Hisakazu and Uchida, Takeo, Tagen teki kyosei to kokusai network (Pluralism, co-existence, international network) (Tokyo: Yushindo, 1991), p. 119.
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© 1996 Reinhard Drifte
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Drifte, R. (1996). The Political and Economic Framework of Japan’s Foreign Policy. In: Japan’s Foreign Policy in the 1990s. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372368_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372368_2
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