This set brings together a collection of key works about the International Relations of Japan. Written by a range of international experts, the titles cover the essential aspects of Japan’s postwar relationship to the outside world: its changing notion of its role in the international community, and its relations with China and the US.

This set brings together a collection of key works about the International Relations of Japan. Written by a range of international experts, the titles cover the essential aspects of Japan¿s postwar relationship to the outside world: its changing notion of its role in the international community, and its relations with China and the US.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of EU-Japan relations from 1970 to the present. It charts developments over the period, analyses key specific areas of importance to the relationship, and concludes by assessing how the relationship is likely to develop going forward. Throughout, the book discusses the factors on both sides which motivate the relationship, including Japan’s concern to secure markets for its advanced industrial products, and the factors motivating current negotiations for a deeper and more comprehensive economic and cooperative partnership.

The 10 volumes in this set, originally published between 1959 and 1986, analyze the process of radical foreign policy change, explore Marxist-Leninist models of international relations, describe the significance of cultural relations in international affairs, highlight the changing nature of political communities and changing patterns of government and examine the interaction between the realms of ethics and international relations.

Japan and Okinawa provides an up-to-date, coherent and theoretically informed examination of Okinawa from the perspective of political economy and society. It combines a focus on structure and subjectivity as a way to analyze Okinawa, Okinawans and their relationship with global, regional and national structures. The book draws on a range of disciplines to provide new insights into both the contemporary and historical place of Okinawa and the Okinawans. The first half of the book examines Okinawa as part of the global, regional and national structures which impose constraints as well as offer opportunities to Okinawa. Leading specialists examine in detail topics such as Okinawa as a frontier region, Okinawa's Free Trade Zones and response to globalization, and Okinawa as part of the Japanese 'construction state', being particularly concerned with how Okinawa can chart its own course. The second half focuses on questions of identity and subjectivity, examining the multitude of vibrant cultural practices that breathe life into the meaning of being Okinawan and inform their social and political responses to structural constraints. The originality of this book can be found in its elucidation of how the structural constraints of Okinawa's precarious position in the world, the region and as part of Japan impact on subjectivity. For many Okinawans, in the past as now, acceptance and rationalization of their dependency has made them collaborators in their own subordination. At the same time, however, they have demonstrated a capacity to give voice to a separate identity, inscribing cultural practices marking them as different from mainland Japanese.

This book, first published in 1999, compares the strategies of France and Japan in trying to win economic and political influence in the newly emerging Vietnam, which opened to the international community only after the Vietnamese Communist Party had started economic reforms in 1986. These reforms are aimed at transforming the country’s centrally-planned economy into a government-controlled market economy and at opening Vietnam to foreign capital, technology and know-how. This setting provides a unique opportunity for comparing the strategies of two nations from different continents in conducting their economic relations with a unified Vietnam.

When this volume was published in 1993 it was the first comprehensive analysis of the major policy issues confronting Japan’s massive foreign aid programme. It deals with the philosophy behind Japan’s aid, Japanese reactions to the severe criticisms of its programmes and the beginnings of meaningful administrative reform of the complex aid system. Alan Rix goes on to examine the widespread innovation in programmes and policies to make Japan’s aid more responsive and the impact of the Asian bias in Japan’s aid.

Japan’s economic success since the 1950s created a range of serious domestic and international problems which threaten the stability of the country. Within Japan at the start of the 1980s there was a strong mood on the right for remilitarization to give the nation the super-power status her economic performance justified. Outside Japan, there was increasing pressure from the West to make her conform to Western strategic interests. Against the background of these crucial issues the book analyzes the economic, political and military options open to Japan. Focussing on the interconnecting themes of foreign harassment and domestic economic disorder, the author points out many areas of similarity between Japan of the 1930s and Japan of the 1980s.

This Handbook is an interdisciplinary resource that focuses on contemporary Japan and the social and cultural trends that are important at the beginning of the twenty-first century.