Between East and West: Japanese IR at a crossroads

Abstract

That East Asian IR communities are increasingly interested in knowledge production has become self-evident. While the form that this interest is taken in China is predominantly focused on developing a Chinese School of International Relations Theory (IRT), the situation in Japan is much more diverse and complicated. This article examines the impact of the non-Western IRT movement on Japanese IR academia from a sociology of science perspective. It finds that while indigenous theorizing has garnered interests in a portion of Japanese IR academia due to both internal and external driving forces, there have been few claims for and actual theorizing on a ‘Japanese brand-name’ in IRT like the ‘Chinese School.’ The majority of Japanese IR scholars remain strongly attached to mainstream IRT or the traditional historical and area studies. Such development has its roots in the structural restraints embedded in Japan’s unresolved identity as a de facto polity situated between ‘East and West’ and the heritage of its war-time history. Given these characteristics of IR studies in Japan, the different components of Japanese IR academia will most likely follow their own trajectory without integration and synthesis. This will position Japanese IR, just like its current foreign policy, at a crossroads.