Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity and the Evolution of Security Practice (review)

It is now firmly established that when writing a major work on contemporary Japanese security policy, the title should include the words "Japan" plus one evocative gerund. I may have started this trend inadvertently with Arming Japan (Columbia University Press, 1995). Ken Pyle stole a favorite gerund from the China scholars with Japan Rising (Public Affairs, 2007). Richard Samuels, one of the best titlers in the business (Rich Nation/Strong Army, Machiavelli's Children), chose a simple yet strong gerund for his most recent book on Japan's defense debate with Securing Japan (Cornell University Press, 2008).

Andrew Oros joins the Japan/gerund team with Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity and the Evolution of Security Practice. Compared with "arming," "rising," and "securing," Oros has chosen a gerund that is both calming and opaque; and that is the whole point of the book. Japan's security policies are highly constrained by identity formation, which is a complex interactive and evolutionary process between ideational and material factors not easily predicted. We are far more likely to be able to identify a Japan that has "risen" or is "armed" or is "secure" than a Japan that is "normal." But that is alright, Oros would argue, because the process through which the Japanese people define normalcy is itself most revealing about the future of Japanese security practice.

Oros's approach builds on the work of constructivists who attempted in the mid-1990s to explain Japan's self-constrained approach to security policy by focusing on the culture and norms of antimilitarism and pacifism. Given the dominance of realist approaches to international relations at the time and the easily falsifiable claims of structural realists in particular that Japan would develop military power commensurate with its economic strength, the first wave of constructivists provided a useful corrective to scholarship on Japan. However, the constructivists' assertion that culture and norms were determinative of Japanese security practice had an obvious flaw: antimilitarism had followed devastating defeat in war. If culture and norms could change once because of such an exogenous power shock, they could certainly change again. As a result, realists could adopt the constructivists' insights as intervening variables and still maintain a focus on the distribution of power as the primary driver for change or nonchange in Japanese security practice.

Normalizing Japan pushes back against the realists but this time with a more nuanced appreciation of Japan's antimilitarism. Oros is helped in this effort by the impressive work done over the past few years to define identity as a variable in international politics. Drawing on this work, he argues that security identity affects security practice in three ways: "1) through its influence on policy rhetoric; 2) its structuring of public opinion and the coalition-building opportunities this enables; and 3) its institutionalization into the policy-making process" (p. 193). He stresses that identity is usually contested and is therefore a reflection of the distribution of domestic and international power. But he also presents security identity as a framework that accounts for how ideational and material factors interact.

This thesis is attractive, particularly for realists who also happen to be regionalists. Oros is respectful of previous work in the field and he is careful not to exaggerate or undercredit his own contribution. He tests his security identity framework in case studies on Japan's arms export controls, military space policy, and missile defense. For the most part, his concept of security identity holds up well. However, there are flaws that suggest the need for further refinement or at least careful application of his approach.

The best of the book's three case studies is on Japan's arms export controls. Oros demonstrates how major Japanese corporations have used the narrative of antimilitarism to resist efforts at relaxing the export ban. Many of these larger firms would profit from such a relaxation, but since defense production accounts for only small fractions of...