Search

This paper traces the formal and informal aspects of Japan's robust bilateralism on issues of external and internal security and discusses a variety of embryonic multilateral arrangements that have sprung up in the 1990s. Asian-Pacific multilateralism is not yet a strong and unquestioned collectively held norm in either Tokyo or any of the major capitals in the Asia-Pacific. What matters instead are political practices shaped by a strong tradition of bilateralism and, only very recently, by an incipient multilateralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on a relatively unexplored component of Japan's security architecture: the national security secrecy system. Among the protection measures underpinning this system, particular attention is paid to the legal aspects. This system has been caught between two competing pressures. On the one hand, the United States and domestic conservative forces have consistently sought to strengthen what they consider to be an unsatisfactory system of safeguarding national security secrets in Japan. On the other hand, left-leaning political actors, the media and public opinion, informed by the norm of antimilitarism—understood as a deep distrust of Japan's military establishment and opposition to its foreign deployment, arid also broadly predicated on fear of democratic retreat—have been able to thwart these attempts. As a result, Japan lacks a specific anti-espionage or state secrets law and has earned the reputation of a "spy heaven" where foreign agents, domestic collaborators and information leakers have been able to act with seeming impunity. However, over the past decade, rising bilateralism in the security and intelligence fields, under which Japan acts to consolidate alliance relations with its superpower patron, facilitated by the rise of regional security threats and a shift in the domestic political terrain, have contributed to an incremental erosion of the antimilitaristic constraints on the legal component of Japan's security secrecy system. Japanese governments have moved to bolster the secrecy protection regime, although reforms are not as significant as what they would be absent residual antimilitarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in the Asia Pacific region is widely seen as a pragmatic response by governments to the bogging down of the regional and multilateral trade institutions. Analysis of these PTAs has focused primarily on their trade and economic dimensions. There has been less discussion and analysis of the geo-political and strategic dimensions of PTAs in the region. This article explores these issues with reference to the negotiation of a bilateral trade agreement between Australia and Japan. It argues that the drivers for this negotiation are primarily geo-political and strategic rather than economic and commercial, and it explores the potential implications of this. It concludes that the subordination of trade and economic concerns to broader foreign policy objectives in the pursuit of PTAs carries with it considerable risks, not just for Australia and Japan but also for the Asia Pacific region more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese government today is actively and strategically choosing among various institutional forums to deal with its trade partners, namely bilateral venues, multilateral settings, and even preferential regional arrangements. This ongoing high-profile institutional selection is somewhat unprecedented for Japan, and demands a review of the historical and analytical reasons that drive decisionmakers to select one forum over another. Overall, the Japanese case suggests that the aggregate trade forum choices are influenced both by the desire to institutionalize mechanisms for stabilizing a range of expectations and by the necessity of guaranteeing market access and protection of investment in the fastest time possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]