Ra Mason

North Korea’s contemporary relations with Japan have been fraught with tension. Tactics employed by Pyongyang have included abductions of Japanese citizens, missile launches over Japanese territory, intrusions into Japanese sovereign waters, and nuclear tests in defiance of Japanese and international condemnation. In light of the security risk the DPRK poses, this book examines how the state, market, and society in Japan have framed North Korea as a salient evil, and have in turn constructed and manipulated the risks posed by their neighbour. Using the example of Japan’s post-Cold War responses to North Korea, this book studies the concept of risk in international relations, and its interactive relationship with domestic civil society. It focuses on how security risks are identified and re-evaluated by policy makers, mass media, and civil society stakeholders, and in doing so disentangles the complex processes by which Japan has framed and recalibrated risks in response to the DPRK. By exploring how risks identified with Pyongyang’s behaviour towards Japan have been mediated between the state, market, and society via mainstream discourse in Japan, Ra Mason highlights the way in which these processes are causally linked to key actors’ conceptions of risk. Indeed, this book provides an original theoretical framework – distinguishing between risk and traditional threat perceptions – through which to address issues of national security and identity, as well as the norms which inform them. Japan’s Relations with North Korea and the Recalibration of Risk will be welcomed by students and scholars across a wide range of fields including Japanese politics, Asia-Pacific studies, international relations, and security studies.

Japan's Relations with North Korea and the Recalibration of Risk

Sebastian Maslow

Paul O'Shea

The increase of new complex security challenges and the heightening significance of a diverse array of actors has simultaneously posed a challenge to traditional perspectives on international relations and foreign policy and created an opportunity for new concepts to be applied. Conventional explanations of Japan’s foreign policy have provided us with theoretically predetermined understandings and fallacious predictions. Reformulating risk in its application to the study of international relations and foreign policy, this volume promises new insights into the analysis of contemporary foreign policy in East Asia and Japan’s post-Cold War international relations in particular.

Japan's Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty

Risk State

Glenn D. Hook

Japan’s unusual position in the realm of international politics encapsulates a three-fold juxtaposition: both in and out of Asia, both occupied by and a close ally of the United States, and both a key trade partner and a strategic rival of China. Whilst international relations theory offers a number of ways to analyse these relations, this book instead utilizes the concept of risk to provide an innovative perspective on Japan’s relations with China, North Korea and the US. The book elucidates how risk, potential harm and harm are faced disproportionately by certain groups in society. This is demonstrated by providing an empirically rich analysis of the domestic implications of security relations with China, North Korea and the United States through the presence of US troops in Okinawa. Beginning with a theoretical discussion of risk, it goes on to demonstrate how the concept of risk adds value to the study of international relations in three senses. First, the concept helps to break down the boundaries between the international and domestic. Second, the focus on risk and the everyday directs us to ask basic questions about the costs and benefits of a security policy meant to secure the national population. Third, what implications do these two points have for governance? The question is one of governance as Japan’s externally oriented security policy produces domestic insecurity shared disproportionately, not equally, as this volume makes clear. Developing the theory of risk as a tool for understanding international relations, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Asian politics, Japanese politics, international relations and security studies, as well as to policy makers and practitioners working in the field.

Ra Mason

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