Nationalism and Power Politics in Japan's Relations with China: A Neoclassical Realist Interpretation.

• Author: King, Amy
• Position: Book review

Nationalism and Power Politics in Japan's Relations with China: A Neoclassical Realist Interpretation. By Lai Yew Meng. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014. Hardcover: 243pp.

The relationship between East Asia's two Great Powers--China and Japan--is mired in dangerous nationalism. This book joins a growing literature that explores how nationalism, identity politics and "history problems" are shaping the politics and security of East Asia. In this volume, Lai Yew Meng seeks to understand whether nationalism is the main driver of Japan's China policy, and the precise conditions under which nationalism matters in shaping that policy. To do so, the book focuses on two significant issues in the China-Japan relationship: the Yasukuni Shrine and the Senkaku/ Diaoyu Islands territorial dispute. Although Lai's empirical research is drawn from the period of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's administration (2001-06), both issues continue to plague the China-Japan relationship and his research will therefore be of interest to many readers.

The book uses a Neoclassical Realist framework that treats nationalism as an intervening variable that mediates between external, systemic pressures and foreign policy outcomes. In adopting this framework, Lai states that his goal is to bridge two major divides in International Relations (IR) scholarship: the first between Aussenpolitik (emphasizing systemic factors) and Innenpolitik (emphasizing domestic factors) approaches, and the second between "mainstream IR" and area studies approaches. While these are laudable goals, Lai tends to overstate these divides, and overlooks more recent IR scholarship that sits at the intersection of these divides (one surprising omission, for instance, was Yinan He's The Search for Reconciliation: Sino-Japanese and German-Polish relations since World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

The most important chapter in this book is Chapter Three, in which Lai explores the concept of nationalism and its evolution in Japan. Drawing on the work of Peter Hays Gries and others, Lai moves beyond unhelpful conceptions of nationalism as a primarily state-led phenomenon. Instead, he acknowledges that nationalism includes both top-down state-led nationalism and bottom-up popular nationalism, and that the two may be correlated and mutually reinforcing. From there, Chapter Three provides a helpful discussion of the driving forces and different strands of nationalism in prewar and post-war...