Alexandra Sakaki – författare

This book offers a timely examination of the role of trust – or lack thereof – in contemporary Japanese politics. It portrays the political trust deficit prevalent in Japan through a unique range of case studies, illustrating how mistrust, rather than trust, impacts politics in Japan today. The first chapter introduces key trust concepts and the state of trust research on Japan. The second analyses voters’ trust levels in politics and parties and explores possible consequences of prevalent mistrust, including electoral volatility and instability in the party system. The following case study investigates the government’s choices in rebuilding the Tohoku region, devastated by the ‘3/11’ triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdown in 2011. It highlights how policies eroded already low trust levels among Japanese citizens in their government. The next chapter explores Japanese consumer trust in food safety and related regulations in post-3/11 Japan, finding deficiencies in the government’s risk communication. The fifth case study turns towards multiculturalism in educational policies and schooling practices, scrutinizing Japan’s readiness to face the challenge of trust-building between members of different ethnic groups. The final chapter illuminates the trust deficit in Japan’s relations with China, explaining how trust-building opportunities were missed in the past, leading to a continuous erosion of bilateral ties. The chapters originally published as a special issue in Japan Forum.

The end of the Cold War and the bipolar era constituted a significant change in Germany's and Japan's foreign policy settings, granting both countries greater leeway to pursue policies divergent from Washington's strategy. This important book fills a gap in the existing literature by employing an explicitly comparative framework for analyzing and evaluating Germany's and Japan's post-Cold War regional foreign policy trajectories. Recent non-comparative studies diverge in their assessments of the extent to which the two countries' foreign policies are characterized by continuity or change, as while the majority of analyses on Germany find overall continuity in policies and guiding principles, prominent works on Japan see the country undergoing drastic change. Through a qualitative content analysis of key foreign policy speeches, this book traces and compares German and Japanese national role conceptions by identifying policymakers' perceived duties and responsibilities of their country in international politics. Further, through two case studies on missile defence policies and textbook disputes this study investigates actual foreign policy behaviour in order to question the assertion that post Cold War Germany and Japan are following very different paths. Providing a much needed new analysis of German and Japanese foreign policies, this book will be of great use to students and scholars interested in Japanese politics, German politics, comparative politics and international relations more generally.

This book offers a timely examination of the role of trust – or lack thereof – in contemporary Japanese politics. It portrays the political trust deficit prevalent in Japan through a unique range of case studies, illustrating how mistrust, rather than trust, impacts politics in Japan today. The first chapter introduces key trust concepts and the state of trust research on Japan. The second analyses voters’ trust levels in politics and parties and explores possible consequences of prevalent mistrust, including electoral volatility and instability in the party system. The following case study investigates the government’s choices in rebuilding the Tohoku region, devastated by the ‘3/11’ triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdown in 2011. It highlights how policies eroded already low trust levels among Japanese citizens in their government. The next chapter explores Japanese consumer trust in food safety and related regulations in post-3/11 Japan, finding deficiencies in the government’s risk communication. The fifth case study turns towards multiculturalism in educational policies and schooling practices, scrutinizing Japan’s readiness to face the challenge of trust-building between members of different ethnic groups. The final chapter illuminates the trust deficit in Japan’s relations with China, explaining how trust-building opportunities were missed in the past, leading to a continuous erosion of bilateral ties. The chapters originally published as a special issue in Japan Forum.

Can Germany and Japan do more militarily to uphold the international order?Since the end of World War II, Germany and Japan have been the most reluctant of all major U.S. allies to take on military responsibilities. Given their histories, this reluctance certainly is understandable. But because of their size and economic importance, Germany and Japan are the most important U.S. allies in Europe and in East Asia, respectively, and their long-term reluctance to share the defense burden has become a perennial source of frustration for Washington.The potential security roles of Germany and Japan are becoming increasingly important given the uncertainty, indeed volatility, of today's international environment. Under President Trump, friction among allies over burden-sharing is more intense than ever before. Meanwhile, the security environments in Europe and Asia have deteriorated because of the resurgence of a belligerent Russia under Vladimir Putin, the steady rise of an increasingly assertive China, and North Korea's worrisome acquisition of nuclear weapons.Partly in response to these developments, Germany and Japan in recent years have boosted their security efforts, mainly by increasing defense spending and taking on a somewhat broader range of military missions. Even so, because of their cultures of anti-militarism resistance remains strong in both countries to rebuilding the military and assuming more responsibility for sustaining regional or even global peace.In Reluctant Warriors, a team of noted international experts critically examines how and why Germany and Japan have modified their military postures since 1990 so far, and assesses how far the countries still have to go—and why. The contributors also highlight the risks the United States takes if it makes too simplistic a demand for the two countries to “do more.”