Description
There has been an ongoing discussion about the extent the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had drifted to further “right” since Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s return to power in 2012. Japan’s security policymaking has undergone change with institutional reforms such as introducing a National Security Council (NSC) and a National Security Strategy (NSS). In the realm of International Relations, it is argued that Japan has become more aggressively realistic with increasing China’s power (Auslin 2016, Hughes 2016). However, it is unclear whether stronger realistic attitude of Japan is being attributed to conservatism in Japan or vice versa. In this regard, this paper explores knowledge production of realism and conservativism in shaping Japanese security policymaking. It attempts to answer the following question: to what extent contemporary Japanese security policymaking got influenced by conservatism in Japan. By specifically focusing on the viewpoints of security policy advisers and existing literature on realism and conservativism in Japan, it closely examine the ways in which security discourses have been shaped within and outside of Japan by analyzing think tank reports and other relevant resources.
