Woolley, Peter J. Japan's Navy: Politics and Paradox, 1971-2000. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999.
Japan's Navy: Politics and Paradox, 1971-2000 is the first comprehensive analysis on the evolution of Japan's post-World War II navy, the Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). In 1973, James E. Auer produced an outstanding historical study on the establishment and development of the JMSDF, the Post War Rearmament of Japanese Maritime Forces, 1945-1971. Now almost three decades later, Peter J. Woolley continues the scholarship on the JMSDF's development, but makes an additional contribution by providing a theoretical discussion about the nature of Japan's defense policy-making, a subject that has a low profile in the existing literature. By unfolding the perplexing political process of the JMSDF's expansion in the last three decades, Woolley provides valuable explanations for the causes and effects in Japan's defense policy-making and political behavior.
In the author's words, the JMSDF is "a first-class navy, among the most powerful and most expensive maritime forces in the world" and, at the end of the twentieth century, "the strongest navy in the Pacific Ocean excepting that of the United States." To the eyes of many, it appears that the JMSDF suddenly came onto the scene as Japan's powerful navy, equipped with modern warships with advanced weapon systems onboard. The JMSDF's relative strength was indeed dramatically increased, after the region witnessed the end of the Cold War and a substantial decrease in the operational capability of the Russian Pacific Fleet. However, as Woolley correctly suggests, this outlook should be viewed as the outcome of Japan's long-standing, cautious and incremental approach to military force planning and the employment of JMSDF. As early as the late 1950s, the Japanese government overcame the legislative difficulties of sending JMSDF ships overseas for training missions. By the late 1970s, the idea of 1,000 nautical miles sea-lane defense emerged. While it raised a political controversy over its conceptual challenge to the constitutional bearing of self-defense, this was officially incorporated into the JMSDF's responsibility by the early 1980s. In 1991, in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf war, the Japanese government sent minesweepers to the theater, marking a distinct departure from its normal uses of its Self-Defense Forces (JSDFs). In the following year, an expansion of Japan's post-Cold War role in international security affairs was underlined by the establishment of a legal foundation for JSDF participation in UN peacekeeping operations. The JMSDF activities have not been confined in Japanese territorial waters, and its purpose today is no longer restrained to a territorial self-defense.
Woolley's scholarly knowledge on naval operations and capabilities contributes much to the book's detailed analysis on the development of JMSDF roles and missions. However, the book is not limited to a mere analysis of the JMSDF development process. For Woolley focusing on the development of the JMSDF is rather a means to an end: to disentangle and explain the puzzling relationship between causes and effects in Japan's defense policy-making. Viewing Japan's naval development as "the result of [Japan's] national decisionmaking process" and at the same time "the result of political considerations on both sides of the Pacific," Woolley examines the above-mentioned prominent episodes to explain why and how Japan's navy developed. His work elucidates Japan's naval development, which includes not only the country's naval capability per se but also its increasing political maturity in utilizing its navy.
The book consists of seven chapters. In making the author's standpoint and approaches explicit, the first chapter guides readers on how to approach Japan. Each of the following five chapters employs a different analytical model to examine the formulation of Japan's policies concerning the development of the JMSDF. By adding cultural and institutional models to the other three, introduced by Graham T. Allison - the rational actor model, the governmental politics model and the organizational model - Woolley provides a comprehensive picture of causes and effects in Japan's defense policy-making. The last chapter provides a perspective on how Japan's overall defense policy and politics fit into the US-Japan alliance posture. The time frame of the study is limited to the last three decades - a transitional period for both the JMSDF and Japan, during which the JMSDF departed from a mere coast guard function to prepare itself for acting as a navy of a sovereign country in which national security interests were increasingly maritime in nature. It was thus the period that Japan itself began taking gradual steps for utilizing its navy for political purposes.
In the first chapter, Woolley warns that the common approach to explaining Japanese politics and society often rely too much on the country's uniqueness and on its differences with the United States. He finds considerable similarities between Japan and the United States, and then introduces the question of how to approach Japan. The four prominent developments of the JMSDF previously mentioned are examined in the following two chapters with cultural and institutional models. These are valuable in grasping the overall flow and picture of the JMSDF's development and also Japan's defense policy-making. Woolley presents his case studies in the next three chapters. In the third chapter, the policy of 1,000 nautical miles sea-lane defense is examined as a result of the political bargaining in and between Japan and the United States. The next chapter explains Japan's decision to send minesweepers to the Persian Gulf in 1991 as an organizational response to the crisis. Chapter five elucidates the politics of the JSDF participation in UN peacekeeping operations with a rational actor model, and reveals why and how this policy was chosen by the Japanese government among other policy options.
It is the second chapter where the readers will find the underlying thesis of the book: an established, cautious and incremental approach by the JMSDF and successive Japanese governments to the expansion of the JSDF roles and missions. By employing a cultural model, Woolley finds a Kata (a Japanese expression indicating pattern or cycle) in the JMSDF development and its effects on the development of the JSDF as a whole. The Kata in the JMSDF is analyzed as: an incremental growth in capability at first, followed by a long process of planning, practice and training for a potential mission, and at last the performance of a new mission and public acceptance of that new mission. The chapter concludes, "It was the JMSDF that generally led the way to new forms, missions, and roles by subtly or gently breaking tradition and yet incorporating the new role neatly into past forms" and enabled "the JSDF to extend its range of activities." By finding a consistent pattern in the JMSDF development process, Woolley's study brings seemingly separated incidents together into a single perspective. In the following three chapters, Japan's cautious and incremental approach to its naval development is re-examined from the different angles. At the same time, each model employed in these chapters reveals some significant political aspects influencing or encouraging Japan's approach.
In the last chapter, Woolley successfully connects the arguments found in his study with Japan's alliance relationship with the United States. Unfortunately, this chapter also constitutes the only weakness of the book, a lack of an emphasis on interrelations among the findings from different analytical models themselves. If a short discussion on this point were added, it would have helped the reader to comprehend the growing maturity of Japan in using its navy and of the JMSDF in acting as Japan's navy. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the book significantly contributes to showing a way to understand Japan's naval development and its defense policy-making. Woolley's profound understanding of culture and systems in Japanese society and politics is strongly reflected throughout the book, giving a brilliant insight into his analyses on the making of Japan's defense policies.
After reading the book, it is strange to realize that there has been so little written about the JMSDF, although the US-Japan alliance is a maritime alliance and increasingly displays a maritime nature. As Woolley emphasizes, "the [US-Japan] alliance had endured five decades and was still evolving," and "Japan's value as a U.S. ally was increased rather than diminished by the rehabilitation of its armed forces."
Isoko Sunakawa
University of Hull