Why does the Japanese government often alter its course of action under pressure from the United States, even when doing so apparently undermines Japan's own interests? Japan's marked responsiveness to U.S. preferences regarding foreign aid policy appears counterintuitive, since Japan's demonstrated capability to donate funds rivals and has previously surpassed that of the U.S. In Limits to Power, Akitoshi Miyashita posits that Japan's deference to the will of the U.S. results from Japan's continuing role as the more dependent partner in the two countries' interdependent diplomatic and...

Japan is living in the shadow of its economic miracle. Its stagnation and decline relative to other advanced economies since the early 1990s is a consequence of business and government difficulty in breaking away from once-successful practices. The Japanese postwar economic miracle created the world's second largest capitalist economy. This remarkable performance, in the face of such enormous obstacles, helped solidify, even sanctify, the institutions, methods, and political arrangements associated with the economic miracle. Based upon a decade of research articles distributed in the Japan...

In Japan and the Security of Asia Louis Hayes studies modern Japan's frustrated search for national security. The book charts Japan's attempts to fashion its own place in the sun in the face of Great Power interventionism and national demands for regional hegemony: first through nascent internationalism and later disastrous totalitarianism that culminated in war in the Pacific. Hayes expertly tracks Japan's shifting foreign-policy goals up to the present day, moving from the preservation of the nation-state by force to the drive for economic self-aggrandizement as a Cold War client of the...