Description
Since the end of the Pacific War, no organization has been so centered in Japan’s narrative of Self as the military, or the rejection thereof, in pursuit of a state identity – first envisioned as the ideal of a ‘peace state’ and transitioning in more recent decades to that of a ‘normal’ one. Despite this, the modern incarnation of the Japanese military, the Self-Defense Forces, and its shifting relationship with the state and society remain largely uninterrogated from the SDF’s own perspective in political science. While there is persistent scholarly interest in how history and war memory shape the contemporary landscape of Japanese politics and security decisions, especially in the context of ontological security, the military’s own sense of Self has not been seriously considered. This talk will attempt to address the gap that exists between state identity and ontological security research and the more organization-centric sociology and civil-military relations literature. By introducing a theory focusing on the ontological security of institutions, this talk will offer insight into how how the institutional identity needs of the Japanese SDF inform its behavior and interact with a wider narrative of Self of the Japanese state in both in the past and present.
