This book is based on the papers presented at the 1983 Tokyo conference on East Asian politics. It provides an analytic context for understanding Northeast Asian politics and deals with Japanese foreign policy, with focus on the political challenges Japan faced and its changing international role.

Japan and the Sino-Soviet Alliance 1950-1964 reveals the divisive impact of the Sino-Soviet Alliance on Japanese domestic politics and foreign relations during the turbulent years between 1950 and 1964. Drawing on extensive Japanese sources and unprecedented access to previously classified government documents, C.W. Braddick exposes the myths shrouding this formative era in Japan's postwar development.

Poised to enter the twenty-first century, the Asia-Pacific region has emerged as a global economic and political powerhouse. Mark Borthwicks Pacific Century: The Emergence of Modern Pacific Asia stresses broad, cross-cutting themes of regional history, with an emphasis on the interactions between cultures and nations. This study guide is an indispensable volume that provides a comprehensive overview, chapter-by-chapter outlines, definitions of key terms, identification of key people, places, and events, and a list of books for additional reading.

Examines how the Japanese government used a series of incremental measures in three different periods to manage conflicting international and domestic pressure over defense issues in the context of the county's military dependence on the US since World War II. Details the influence and origins of such constraints as the one-percent of GNP ceiling of defense spending, various international treaties, and the strong public opinion against the military; and concludes that domestic political tranquility is more important to the government than military parity with other countries. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan uses incremental changes to manage conflicting pressures over defence.This work focuses on the establishment of defence policy constraints through 1992. It discusses the various implications of using defence policy as a means of conflict management.

Drawing on the most up-to-date sources, this book provides an in-depth examination of Russia’s relations with China and Japan, the two Asia-Pacific superpowers-in-waiting. For Russia there has always been more than one ‘Asia’: after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were those in the Russian elite who saw Asia as implying the economic dynamism of the Asia-Pacific, with Japan as the main player. However there were others who saw the chance for Russia to reassert its claim to be a great power, based on Russia’s geopolitical and geoeconomic position as a Eurasian power. For these, China was the power to engage with: together China and Russia could control both Heartland and Rim, both Eurasia and Asia-Pacific, whereas accepting Japan’s conception of Asia implied regional fragmentation and shared sovereignty. This book argues that this strand of thinking, mainly confined to nationalists in the El’tsin years, has now, under Putin, become the dominant discourse among Russian policymakers. Despite opportunities for convergence presented by energy resources, even for trilateral cooperation, traditional anxiety regarding loss of control over key resource areas in the Russian Far East is now used to inform regional policy, leading to a new resource nationalism. In light of Russia’s new assertiveness in global affairs and its increasing use of the so-called ‘energy weapon’ in foreign policy, this book will appeal not only to specialists on Russian politics and foreign policy, but also to international relations scholars.