An Active Japanese Foreign Policy Impeded by a Frustrated Public in the Post-Cold War Era

Abstract

The Japanese government sought to take a more active foreign policy in the post-Cold War era, especially after the Gulf War. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made a significant foreign policy decision to visit Pyongyang in September 2002 to begin a process of normalizing relations with North Korea. The move was intended to be emblematic of a reorientation of Japan’s foreign policy onto a new course that was realist, activist, and suited to the post-Cold War era. However, an unmanageable level of domestic frustration among the Japanese people impeded the Japanese government in taking this new orientation any further. This frustration was born out of despondency over domestic economic conditions in the 1990s, the impotence of being an economic superpower with little foreign policy stature, and the emotional shock that came from learning that Japanese citizens had been kidnapped by North Korean agents. Focusing on the conditions that contributed to the development of a more active Japanese foreign policy and those that eventually undermined it (at least for now), this paper, being critical of the propensity of mass opinion to affect foreign policy, suggests that mass bigotry and popular passions can generate an irrational outcome that prevents decision makers from executing a rational foreign policy.