Description
This paper links notions of nation branding, status-seeking, and ontological (in)security to discuss the tension between the Japanese conservatives’ pursuit of ‘normalisation’ of security policy and Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy (FOIP). FOIP is former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s initiative to promote ‘values-based diplomacy’ and rule of law in the Indo-Pacific. I read FOIP as a (nation) branding strategy that informs the Japanese conservatives’ pursuit of ontological security, speaking to their sense of self-esteem (Browning, 2015), status-seeking, and home-seeking practices in the international system (Ejdus, 2019). Though scholarship on nation branding has mostly focused on how states brand their economies in neoliberal markets (Cho, 2017), this paper shifts the focus to how states brand their security policy, and how this informs their ontological (in)security. While Japanese conservatives seek to restore the ‘greatness’ of Japan’s past by removing post-war constraints on security policy, and by constructing a narrative that focuses on Japan’s exceptionality, they also seek club status and acceptance among Western nations and brand their security practices accordingly. Though FOIP is often associated with Japan’s power politics and rivalry with China, this paper suggests that it can be interpreted primarily as a question of being for Japan, which shows how it sells itself in a marketplace of like-minded states (Browning, 2015). Being a case of differentiation through emulation, FOIP epitomises the tension between status-seeking and exceptionality in the Japanese conservatives’ pursuit of ontological security.
