Dear SSJ-Forum members,

On behalf of the Waseda Institute for Asia-Pacific Studies and Waseda's "History, Memory, and Narrative in Contemporary Japanese Politics" Research Group," I am pleased to announce that Professors Saori Katada (University of Southern California) and Kei Koga (Nanyang Technological University) will be discussing their book project "Japan as a Liminal Power: Evolving Grand Strategies from Meiji to Reiwa" on Wednesday, May 22, at 4:30 p.m. on the Waseda University Campus.

Japan as a Liminal Power: Evolving Grand Strategies from Meiji to Reiwa

Abstract:

Japan is a liminal power, as it straddles contrasting identities in term of its power status (e.g. small power to great power) because of fluctuating material capabilities, international reputation, multiple and overlapping affiliations between the West and Asia, as well as its socio-economic or geographic affiliation (e.g. as Western, modern, or Asian). A liminal state faces a difficulty in defining its consistent strategic objective because of fluctuating power status and social role in the international relations. Our project employs a historical institutionalist approach to examine its evolution of Japan's grand strategy as a liminal power from the Meiji period, starting in 1868.  We present four historical and contemporary "critical junctures" as key determinants of Japan's grand strategies: the Meiji era, the inter-war era between World War I and II, the Cold War era, and the Post-Cold War/Indo-Pacific era. In particular, we focus on the contemporary era where Japan that has constructed its "Free and Open Indo-Pacific" strategy/vision. In each period, the strategic environment changed, and thus a window of opportunity opened that offered Japan's core decision-makers a chance to construct - or reconstruct - the country's grand strategy. We identify and analyze three sequential processes that have led to each critical juncture: (1) an anticipated or actual change in the global or regional strategic balance; (2) core domestic decision-makers' perception and decision that contributed to those changes; and (3) the domestic decision-making environment in each period (existence of strong/weak domestic veto players and institutional constraints).

The talk will be held at 4:30 p.m. in Room 711, Building 19 of the Waseda University main campus, and it is part of the WIAPS Colloquium Series.

 

Speakers:

Saori N. Katada is Professor of International Relations at University of Southern California, and the Director of the Center for International Studies. She served as the vice president of International Studies Association and on the editorial team of Review of International Political Economy.

Her single-authored book Japan's New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific was published by Columbia University Press in 2020, and its Japanese version was published from Nikkei Press in 2022.  Her other single authored book Banking on Stability: Japan and the Cross-Pacific Dynamics of International Financial Crisis Management (University of Michigan Press, 2001) received the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Book Award.  She is a co-author of two recent books The BRICS and Collective Financial Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Taming Japan's Deflation: The Debate over Unconventional Monetary Policy (Cornell University Press, 2018).  She has also published six edited and co-edited books, two books in Japanese and numerous articles on the subjects of trade, financial and monetary cooperation in East Asia as well as Japanese foreign aid.  

For her research on regionalism, she was awarded Asia Studies Fellow at the East-West Center in Washington, Japan Foundation Research Grant and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.  She has her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Political Science), and B.A. from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo).  Before joining USC, she served as a researcher at the World Bank in Washington D.C., and as International Program officer at the UNDP in Mexico City.

Kei Koga is Associate Professor at the Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Concurrently, he is a Nonresident Fellow at The National Bureau of Asia Research (NBR), the United States, and a member of RIPS Research Committee, the Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS), Japan. His research focuses on International Security, International/Regional Institutions (particularly ASEAN), and East Asian/Indo-Pacific security. 

Previously, he was Japan Scholar at the Wilson Center in 2022; visiting fellow at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in 2017; a Japan-U.S. Partnership Fellow at the Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS), Tokyo, in 2012-2014; Postdoctoral Fellow in the International Studies Program, The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, in 2012-2013; a Vasey Fellow at the Pacific Forum CSIS in 2009-2010; and RSIS-MacArthur visiting associate fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), NTU in 2010. He received his Ph.D. in International Relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

He has published on topics that include East Asian/Indo-Pacific security, U.S. and Japanese foreign policies, the U.S.-Japan alliance, and ASEAN. His recent publications include Managing Great Power Politics: ASEAN, Institutional Strategy, and the South China Sea (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and "Tactical hedging as coalition-building signal: The evolution of Quad and AUKUS in the Indo-Pacific" (British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2024).