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Japan Policy after the Cold War
The post-Cold War world promises an important position
for
Japan. Japanese leaders and popular opinion remains
tentative and
uncertain as to how Japan would use its remarkable
economic power
in order to preserve and enhance Japanese national
interests. There
seems to be little alternative to a continued close
strategic
relationship with the United States and a general
international
outlook designed to promote global peace, development, and
access
to world markets and resources. Japanese leaders and
public opinion
are often eager to see Japan assert a more pronounced
position in
world affairs, but the tradition of caution in Japanese
foreign
policy is reinforced by the still unclear outlines of the
post-Cold
War environment that will affect Japanese foreign policy
in the
years ahead.
* * *
The amount of literature in English on Japan's postwar
foreign
policy is voluminous. James W. Morley's Japan's Foreign
Policy,
1868-1941, Frank C. Langdon's Japan's Foreign
Policy,
Reinhard Drifte's Japan's Foreign Policy, Robert A.
Scalapino's The Foreign Policy of Modern Japan, and
William
R. Nester's Japan's Growing Predominance Over East Asia
and the
World Economy are worthwhile monographs. The most
useful
current assessments appear in publications such as the
Far
Eastern Economic Review, Asian Survey,
Current
History, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign
Policy.
Feature articles also appear in such important news
sources as the
Asian Wall Street Journal. Among United States
government
publications, the most useful are the Foreign Broadcast
Information
Service's Daily Report: East Asia and various
publications
of the United States Congress. (For further information
and
complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of January 1994
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