The Search for Strategy and Identity

To understand Japanese foreign policy on its own terms, one must begin with the evolution of the debate about Japan’s role in the world and its relationship with the United States. It was Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, the bespectacled former diplomat and crafty political strategist, who established the formula for Japan’s foreign policy and set the terms of the debate after World War II. What later scholars and diplomats canonized as the Yoshida Doctrine centered on close alliance with the United States, minimal military rearmament, and a focus on economic recovery. This basic formula has served as the framework for Japanese foreign policy ever since. At the time, however, the Yoshida Doctrine was really more of a political compromise than it was a strategic doctrine per se. The fractured state of Japanese politics after the war left Yoshida little time for contemplative policy planning. Former leaders from the zaibatsu and economic ministries wanted to focus on rebuilding Japan’s economic strength. Anticommunists wanted to reconstitute Japanese military power to deal with the domestic and international threats from the Cold War. Pacifists wanted a strict interpretation of Article Nine of the Constitution. Idealists wanted the United Nations to prevent further conflict so that Japan would need neither armament nor protection. Others wanted to restore Japan’s ties to Asia.