Status Power. Japanese Foreign Policy Making Toward Korea（ステータスの力: 日本の対韓国外交）

Japan is big, wealthy, and powerful compared to South Korea. Yet South Korea
is allowed to occupy a disputed island, use unfair trade practices, and give
the directives for Japan’s policy concerning North Korea. Historical issues
feature prominently in Japanese-Korean relations and give South Korea a
certain power over Japan, which dominant explanations of foreign policies,
centring on material calculations of power and interest, fail to explain.
This book first discusses the existing concepts of interest and power in
the
literature on international relations in general and on Japanese policies
in
particular. The concept of status, including non-material, abstract factors
in an issue area sometimes referred to as “cultural”, “diplomatic”, or
“political”, is considered in depth and placed alongside military and
economic factors. This leads to a framework in which status, based either
on
prestige or on a positive reputation, or moral authority, can be a power
resource similar to military or economic strength. The book argues that an
imbalance in status exists between Japan and South Korea: due to its
historical role as a victim of Japanese aggression, South Korea has from
some viewpoints a higher international status than Japan. It derives
“status power” from this special relationship, which it utilises
efficiently in the economic and even security issue areas to pressurise
Japan into certain policies. The mechanisms of this power and the domestic
Japanese differences over the appropriate ways to raise Japan’s status are
discussed in a number of case studies, ranging from pure “status” issues
like war apologies, history textbooks, and the “comfort women” issue, via
economic issues like the 1981 South Korean loan request and the Takeshima
dispute, to issues related to North Korea and the Korean unification.

more information: http://www.books.tandf.co.uk/
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