Japan's Climate Change Discourse: Toward Climate Securitisation?

This article situates Japan in the international climate security debate by analysing competing climate change discourses. In 2020, for the first time, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment included the term “climate crisis” (kikō kiki) in its annual white paper, and the Japanese parliament adopted a “climate emergency declaration” (kikō hijō jitai sengen). Does this mean that Japan’s climate discourse is turning toward the securitisation of climate change? Drawing on securitisation theory, this article investigates whether we are seeing the emergence of a climate change securitisation discourse that treats climate change as a security issue rather than a conventional political issue. The analysis focuses on different stakeholders in Japan’s climate policy: the Japanese Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the parliament, the Cabinet, and sub- and non-state actors. Through a discourse analysis of ministry white papers and publications by other stakeholders, the article identifies a burgeoning securitisation discourse that challenges, albeit moderately, the status quo of incrementalism and inaction in Japan’s climate policy. This article further highlights Japan’s position in the rapidly evolving global debate on the urgency of climate action and provides explanations for apparent changes and continuities in Japan’s climate change discourse

Changes in Japanese attitudes toward North Korea since "9/17"

This thesis sets out to explore how Japanese attitudes toward North Korea have changed since North Korean leader Kim Jong-il admitted that North Korea systematically abducted Japanese citizens during the 70s and 80s. The shocking abduction confession was made on September 17, 2002, and similarly to 9/11 in the US one year earlier, this day came to be known simply as 9/17 in Japanese abduction issue rhetoric. By providing statistical data and giving an insight to the opinions of the most relevant voices in the Japanese North Korea debate, the thesis points out several changes brought forth by 9/17. The transformation of the abduction issue from suspicion to fact spurred a domestic “witch hunt” for people who had denied or doubted North Korea’s involvement in the disappearances before Kim Jong-il’s admission. The abduction issue came to be used as an ultimate standard of morality which had the power of stripping the doubters of legitimacy while it made the hardliners nearly untouchable. Since 9/17 the North Korea debate has become extremely one-sided as the Japanese government, the media and the public opinion have found common ground in advocating tough measures against North Korea. The new climate of opinion is a far cry from the reconciliatory mood of the 90s when normalization of diplomatic relations with North Korea was on top of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ agenda. As the bilateral relations have bogged down in animosity and distrust, many actors affiliated with the political right have seen their chance to exploit the abduction issue for personal gains. By going through a substantial amount of Japanese literature on the abduction issue, I seek to unravel these agendas and find out how anti-North Korea sentiments have come to be the only tolerated attitudes in today’s North Korea debate. In doing so, I discuss the transformation from assailant to victim in the minds of the Japanese, the public opinion’s hijacking of Japan’s North Korea policy and a threat perception which has reached unprecedented heights and resulted in key actors’ calls for remilitarization and even military action against North Korea. Finally, I assess the future prospects for the Japan – North Korea relationship

War is Peace : The Re-articulation of ‘Peace’ in Japan’s China Discourse

This article demonstrates that a national identity defined by a normative commitment to peace is not necessarily an antidote to remilitarisation and war. More specifically, the article takes issue with the debate about the trajectory of Japan’s security and defence policy. One strand of the debate holds that Japan is normatively committed to peace while the other claims that Japan is in the process of remilitarising. This article argues that the two positions are not mutually exclusive – a point that has been overlooked in the literature. The article uses discourse analysis to trace how ‘peace’ was discussed in debates about China in the Japanese Diet in 1972 and 2009–12. It demonstrates how rearticulations by right wing discourses in the latter period have depicted peace as something that must be defended actively, and thus as compatible with remilitarisation or military normalisation. Japan’s changing peace identity could undermine rather than stabilise peaceful relations with its East Asian neighbours.East Asian Peace Programm

Long live pacifism! : narrative power and Japan’spacifist model

International relations research acknowledges that states can have different security policies but neglects the fact that ‘models’ may exist in the security policy realm. This article suggests that it is useful to think about models, which it argues can become examples for emulation or be undermined through narrative power. It illustrates the argument by analysing Japan’s pacifism—an alternative approach to security policy which failed to become an internationally popular model and, despite serving the country well for many years, has even lost its appeal in Japan. Conventional explanations suggest that Japan’s pacifist policies were ‘abnormal’, and that the Japanese eventually realized this. By contrast, this article argues that narratives undermined Japan’s pacifism by mobilizing deep-seated beliefs about what is realistic and unrealistic in international politics, and launches a counter-narrative that could help make pacifism a more credible model in world politics