The Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University Japan presents:

Book Talk Brown Bag Lunch

The Senkaku Islands

Confrontation and the Transformation of Japan's Defense

Speaker:

Paul Midford, Meiji Gakuin University

23 June 2025 from 12:15 to 13:30 (doors open 12:00

Temple University Japan Campus | Room 303

RSVP by replying to this email

Contact: dujarric@temple.edu

Overview

In this book, Paul Midford argues that the transformation of Japan's defense since 2012 has been triggered by the emergence of the first threat to Japan's territorial integrity since 1945, namely China's continual challenging of Japan's control of the Senkaku Islands. It shows how this threat led to Japan building its own version of an A2/AD strategy and contributed to the demise of the prohibition on not procuring long-range missiles. It argues that the new security documents of 2022 that mandate increasing defense spending to 2% of GDP, is the culmination of this Senkaku-driven post-2012 defense transformation. Nonetheless, Japan's defense transformation faces significant challenges, including geographic and demographic, base-community relations, and limited SDF capacity. This presentation analyzes the implications of Japan's defense transformation for its involvement in a military conflict over Taiwan between China and the USA. It argues that the attitudinal defensive realism of the Japanese public and many elites explain why the confrontation over the small and remote Senkaku islands led to a transformation of Japanese defense, and why this transformation has been limited to territorial defense and is not leading Japan to play a military role beyond its borders.

Speaker

Dr. Paul Midford is a Professor of Political Science at Meiji Gakuin University in Yokohama Japan. He specializes in Japanese foreign and security policies, renewable energy politics and policy, and East Asian regional politics and security. Midford has published in International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, The Pacific Review, Asian Survey, and Japan Forum. He is author of Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism? (Stanford University Press, 2011); Overcoming Isolationism: Japan's Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism (Stanford University Press, 2020); and The Senkaku Island Confrontation and the Transformation of Japan's Defense (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). He is co-editor with Wilhelm Vosse of New Directions in Japan´s Security: Non-U.S. Centric Evolution (Routledge, 2020), co-editor with Espen Moe of New Challenges and Solutions for Renewable Energy: Japan, East Asia and Northern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), and co-editor of East Asian Maritime Conflicts: The Role of Technology, UNCLOS, and Regional Cooperation (Palgrave Macmillan 2024). Midford received his doctorate in Political Science from Columbia University in 2001, and previously taught at Kanazawa University, Lafayette College, Kwansei Gakuin University, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.

Moderator

Robert Dujarric is the Co-director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS) at Temple University, Japan Campus

Robert Dujarric | Temple University, Japan Campus

Access:

Temple University, Japan Campus

Room 303 3rd floor

1-14-29 Taishido, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo

東京都世田谷区太子堂1-14-29

By train: Sangenjaya Station/三軒茶屋駅

Exit South A/南口A

Maps/Directions: English 日本語