The Journal of Japanese Studies

In June 2018, I was fortunate to take a select team of staff and students from my university to the Group of 7 (G7) summit in Quebec, Canada. For three days we worked in the international media center, following developments, attending press conferences, and publishing blogs and policy briefs. Throughout the summit, rumors circulated among the journalists with whom we rubbed shoulders that for the first time in its history the G7 was not going to agree on the text of its final communiqué. The reason was that U.S. president at the time, disrupter-in-chief, and former reality TV star Donald Trump was refusing to allow a statement by which G7 members committed themselves to the promotion of a rules-based international order and trading system, despite the fact that the G7 always makes this commitment at its summits and is an integral part of this order and trading system. Nevertheless, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and announce a jointly agreed communiqué at his final press conference. Yet, this was a fleeting victory, and, in the space of one tweet from Air Force One, Trump managed to take issue with his Canadian counterpart and withdraw U.S. endorsement of the communiqué. In the middle of this diplomatic kerfuffle (or should that be "covfefe"?), our team of policy analysts was able to attend Prime Minister [End Page 226] Abe Shinzō's postsummit press conference and, in contrast, hear him extol Japan's position as "a standard bearer for free trade … determined to exercise strong leadership aimed at spreading markets based on free and fair rules throughout the world, including through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and our economic partnership agreement (EPA) with Europe."¹

I mention this experience not to highlight an innovative learning and teaching initiative but rather as a point of entry into this excellent new volume by Saori Katada, which explores in forensic detail a similar development in Japan's geoeconomic strategy in the Asia-Pacific region. In short, her argument is that "the Japanese government has, for the two decades since the 1990s, shifted its regional geoeconomic strategy from one based on neomercantilism … to a more liberal one that aims to set rules and establish institutions for the region's public good" (p. 1). This shift is explained through the interplay of regional and domestic dynamics, both of which have changed dramatically since the 1990s. On the one hand, the regional picture is almost unrecognizable over this period as a result of the rise of China, U.S.-China trade friction, and Japan assuming the role of poster child for the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CTPP) that emerged out of the Trump administration's withdrawal from the TPP in 2017. On the other hand, the domestic picture has also shifted radically with the Japanese government behaving in a much less dirigiste fashion as Japanese businesses have globalized and the economy has been reformed. The picture that many of us first learned and then taught of Japan Inc. and an iron triangle of Japanese politics is long gone.

Instead, what we are presented with—and this is Katada's key contribution—is a "state-led liberal strategy." This strategy is characterized by "a high level of economic rule setting in the region" especially through formal regional mechanisms and institutions (p. 5), and is the result of Japan's economic maturity and efforts to chart a middle path between the United States and China by which Japan can maintain a voice in the shaping of the region. Katada makes a persuasive case for the importance of this finding. Not only does it capture Japan's unique position but it also provides a potential model of what other similar countries and developmental states, even China, can expect (p. 6).

The book traces...