Japan again.(Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose)(Book review)

Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose, by Kenneth B. Pyle (PublicAffairs, 448 pp., $29.95)

KENNETH PYLE, the dean of American Japan hands, has written this book at a critical juncture in Asian international relations. Tokyo is intensely debating its strategic future, as its neighbors and its key ally in Washington watch with interest and some apprehension. Tokyo's resurgence is replete with contradictions. For example, Japan has embraced the promotion of universal values as a core component of its foreign policy--yet it is willing to endure international condemnation for denying that it forced women to become sex slaves during World War II. Japan has been pacifist for 60 years, but is still regarded as militaristic by much of Asia. Pyle's book helps explain the massive turnabouts that Japan has made in its foreign policy over the past century, and why Japan's neighbors regard its recent foreign-policy readjustment with a measure of suspicion.

Pyle builds his thesis around a pair of central propositions: First, Japan is and always has been "realist" in its orientation, seeking to expand its influence and power at every turn. And second, Japan shapes and reshapes its domestic institutions to carry out its realist foreign policy. Thus, when the Sino-centric order was breaking down--to be replaced by Western imperialism --the Meiji ...