Japanese leaders and often the media too have substituted symbols for strategy in dealing with Asia. This comprehensive review of four periods over twenty years exposes the strategic gap in viewing individually and collectively China, Taiwan, the Korean peninsula, Russia, Central Asia, and regionalism.

"Twenty five years ago, Japan's major foreign policy challenge seemed to be how to recycle its massive current account surplus. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the stagnation of the domestic economy, the nuclearization of North Korea and the rise of China, the world looks very different today than Japanese strategic planners anticipated. In Japanese Strategic Thought toward Asia, Rozman, Togo and Ferguson have assembled a top-rate team of scholars to assess how these three turbulent decades have shaped Japanese thinking about Northeast Asia and what coordinates might guide Japan's foreign policy under a new generation of more assertive leaders." - Michael Green, Associate Professor, Georgetown University Edmond A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, and former Senior Director for Asian Affairs, the National Security Council

Autorentext
Gilbert Rozman is a Musgrave Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, USA

Inhalt
Overview: G.Rozman, K.Togo & J.P.Ferguson PART 1: CHRONOLOGY Japanese Strategic Thought toward Asia in the 1980s; T.Inoguchi Japan's Strategic Thinking toward Asia in the First Half of the 1990s; T.Hasegawa Japan's Strategic Thinking in the Second Half of the 1990s; K.Togo Japanese Strategy under Koizumi; T.J.Pempel PART 2: GEOGRAPHY Changing Japanese Strategic Thinking toward China; R.Kokubun Japanese Strategic Thinking toward Taiwan; M.Wan Japanese Strategic Thinking toward Korea; C.H.Park Japanese Strategic Thinking toward Russia; J.P.Ferguson Japan's Strategic Thinking toward Central Asia; A.Kawato Japanese Strategic Thinking on Regionalism; G.Rozman