Identity Change and Foreign Policy

In recent years, Japan’s foreign and security policies have begun to change, despite seemingly stable ‘peaceful norms’ and ‘antimilitarist culture’. This book seeks to address these changes through engagement with recent developments in identity theory, theorizing identity as a product of processes of differentiation. Contributors argue that Japan’s identity is produced and reproduced, but also transformed, through the drawing of boundaries between ‘self’ and ‘other’. With the current balance between resilience and change, more drastic foreign and security policy transformations might loom just beyond the horizon. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Pacific Review.