University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Signals, tools, and commitments in the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute: the role of Japan's domestic political environment in shaping Japanese foreign policy within the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute

(USC Thesis Other)

Signals, tools, and commitments in the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute: the role of Japan's domestic political environment in shaping Japanese foreign policy within the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content SIGNALS, TOOLS, AND COMMITMENTS IN THE SENKAKU/DIAOYU DISPUTE
THE ROLE OF JAPAN’S DOMESTIC POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT IN SHAPING
JAPANESE FOREIGN POLICY WITHIN THE SENKAKU/DIAOYU DISPUTE
by
Kuper Bergman
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC DORNSIFE COLLEGE OF LETTERS, ARTS, AND SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(EAST ASIAN AREA STUDIES)
August 2024
Copyright 2024 Kuper Bergman

ii
Table of Contents
List of Tables .................................................................................................................................iii
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................iv
Abbreviations ..................................................................................................................................v
Abstract .........................................................................................................................................vii
Chapter 1: Introduction....................................................................................................................1
Chapter 2: Background ...................................................................................................................3
Chapter 3: Literature Review ........................................................................................................11
Chapter 4: Methodology................................................................................................................16
Chapter 5: Geopolitical & Domestic Political Analysis................................................................31
Chapter 6: Counterarguments and Alternative Explanations.........................................................40
Chapter 7: Conclusion and Commentary ......................................................................................43
Bibliography .................................................................................................................................45

iii
List of Tables
Table 1: Dependent Variable Indicators…………………………………………………………23
Table 2: Independent Variable Indicators………………………………………………………..30

iv
List of Figures
Figure 1: Location of Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands................................................................................3
Figure 2: foreign vessels identified within the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands territorial sea and
contiguous zone................................................................................................................................9
Figure 3: Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP, 1952-2020............................................20
Figure 4: Nominal Military Expenditure, 1952-2020....................................................................20
Figure 5: JASDF Scrambles by Region..........................................................................................21
Figure 6: Which party would you choose in proportional representation segment?”..................26
Figure 7: Party support rates.........................................................................................................26
Figure 8: “How concerned are you, if at all, that territorial disputes between China and
neighboring countries could lead to a military conflict?”............................................................27

v
Abbreviations
ADIZ – Air Defense Identification Zone
PRC – People’s Republic of China; “China”
ROC – Republic of China; “Taiwan”
MIC - Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
MOFA - Ministry of Foreign Affairs
LDP – Liberal Democratic Party
DPJ – Democratic Party of Japan
Ishin – Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Ishin no Kai)
JCG – Japan Coast Guard
JFP – Japan First Party
Sanseito - Party of Do it Yourself !!
Reiwa – Reiwa Shinsengumi

vi
JSDF – Japan Self-Defense Forces
JASDF – Japan Air Self-Defense Force

vii
Abstract
Despite territorial and maritime disputes becoming more salient and contentious
throughout Asia during the 21st century, Japan and Japan’s neighbors have avoided war over their
overlapping claims. This thesis examines how these long-standing disputes can remain
unresolved but not lead to armed confrontation by exploring them through the bargaining model
of war. While the bargaining model of war can be a useful framework to help explain how wars
over territorial claims between states may break out, additional consideration of a state’s
domestic political framework is useful for understanding how territorial disputes can remain
unresolved and still not lead to wars. Without consideration of domestic politics or other factors,
the bargaining model of war cannot explain how bargaining can break down, or never
materialize, and states can still refrain from going to war. While Japanese policymakers have
grown more aggressive in their claims and rhetoric surrounding the disputes, and the Japanese
state has become pronounced in their demands, I argue that the purpose of such actions is
broadly to appease the domestic political audience and mobilize political support rather than to
bargain and formally incorporate the disputed territories into the Japanese state. While the
bargaining model of war may expect conflict to break out over such territories or a bargain to be
found, Japanese policymakers benefit from these territories’ liminality while also seeking to
avoid any direct confrontation or concession.
The purpose of this thesis is not to assert that the bargaining model of war or other
rationalist explanations are unusable to help explain Japan’s behavior, but rather the goal is to
contribute to the debate as to how domestic forces contribute to international issues, including

viii
war, and to contextualize territorial disputes further. To properly understand how, why, and when
Japan tackles foreign policy problems, the domestic component must be considered.

1
Chapter 1: Introduction
Concerns over growing danger in East Asia primarily point to a growingly assertive
China, a nuclear-capable North Korea, and a potentially uninterested and unengaged, or worse –
an erratic – United States as probable causes for conflict. In such an environment, many policy
experts and observers have called for Japan to carefully calculate and shore up defensive
capabilities. Within this environment, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute as a flashpoint to a
wider regional conflict takes shape and Japan’s deep geopolitical anxieties surrounding the issue
come into view. However, a security dilemma between an aggressive and proactive China and a
reactive and defensive Japan does not fully account for all the forces moving in the direction of
the uninhabited islets and barren rocks that make up the island group lying between Japan, the
PRC, and the ROC. The findings in this thesis suggest that Tokyo has also become more defiant
in claiming the islands to signal to the domestic audience. While Japan has yet to be overrun with
nationalist fervor in the way other democracies have (Solis 2023, 115), the Senkaku/Diaoyu
Islands dispute has become a core pillar to Japan’s nationalists and a convenient way for political
elites to curry favor and credibly signal their resolve. While disrupting or pressuring the bilateral
relationship with China is not an objective, it is an acceptable cost. In short, despite already
administrating the disputed islands and enjoying significant structural benefits, Japan has
adopted a more aggressive rhetoric and policy to signal resolve domestically. In doing so,
worsening the bilateral relationship with the PRC, while not the intention, is an acceptable cost
for Japanese policymakers.

2
The purpose of this thesis is not to assert that other explanations of Japan’s behavior as it
pertains to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute are misguided. Instead, the goal is to contribute
to the debate as to how domestic factors contribute to international issues and to further
contextualize territorial disputes. While some explanations do not adequately address the
domestic environment, they could be used in conjunction with further domestic consideration to
present powerful arguments that explain not just Japan's or China’s behavior, but rather state
behavior more broadly. However, to best understand how, why, and when Japan implements
foreign policy, the domestic component, as well as external forces, must be considered.
Additionally, this thesis does not claim that Japan has become measurably more assertive
in its posture on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute than the PRC has been in their claims to the
islands, but rather that Japan’s rhetoric and defensive posture have become more pronounced and
proactive1 over time, particularly beginning in the 2000s, because of the domestic political
environment. Borrowing from Fearon’s much-cited “Rationalist Explanations for War” and
“Signaling Foreign Policy Interests” also helps to better explain the puzzle. Rather than looking
at how commitment and information problems can lead to war (Fearon 1995) and how state
leaders can utilize “costly signals” to lend credibility to their foreign policy claims to other states
(Fearon 1997), I will look internally to Japan’s domestic politics and detail how Japanese
political elites employ costly signals to credibly show their resolve to the domestic audience.
1 For the purpose of this thesis, I define “proactive” as rhetoric that are not directly preceded by actions from the
PRC. For example, populist politicians such as Ishihara Shintaro and Hashimoto Toru have employed hawkish
language when referring to the disputed territories without being directly preceded by aggressive maneuvering from
the PRC, presumably because it resonate within the domestic political environment (Takahashi 2013).

3
Chapter 2: Background
Figure 1: Location of Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, “Deconstructing Japan’s Claim Of Sovereignty Over The
Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands 釣魚/尖閣に対する日本の統治権を脱構築する [2012], https://apjjf.org/2012/10/53/ivylee/3877/article
In order to properly understand the contours of the current territorial dispute, the postWWII history regarding the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands needs to be understood.
Particularly, considering the focus of this thesis on Japan’s domestic political environment,
examining how the dispute was managed before the 2010 trawler incident and 2012
nationalization crisis is particularly important. Additionally, mapping out how the dispute has
evolved since those two crises is helpful in understanding how the Japanese general public
frames the dispute today. By delving into the history of what led to considerations to nationalize
some of the islets by Ishihara Shintaro and by the Japanese central government despite potential

4
harsh reactions from the PRC and ROC in 2012 leads to the central puzzle this thesis addresses:
why has Japan proactively and aggressively asserted its administration of the Senkaku/Diaoyu
Islands despite direct challenges from the PRC?
The Senkaku (in Japan)/Diaoyu (in the PRC)/Tiaoyutai (in the ROC) Islands are made up
of five uninhabited islets and three barren rocks which together are approximately seven square
kilometers; small compared to nearby Okinawa, which is approximately 1,200 square kilometers,
but whose waters are less than 200 kilometers away from Taiwan and 400 kilometers away from
the Chinese coastline. In 1895, following Japan’s victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the
Empire of Japan and the Qing Dynasty signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki which ended the
hostilities and presented Japan with numerous territorial gains. While the treaty is explicit in the
cession of Taiwan, Haipeng and Li (2017, 101) strongly believe that it is difficult to link the
acquisition of Senkaku/Diaoyu, in a legal sense, to the treaty. Hall (2023, 94) asserts that the
islands, despite being annexed during the Sino-Japanese War, were never considered a conquest
of the war nor a concession of the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Drifte (2014) also asserts that the
acquisition of the islands did not fall under Japan’s acquisition of Formosa (Taiwan) through the
treaty and instead “occurred after ten years of hesitation by the Japanese government in view of
possible negative Chinese reactions; the decision was not conveyed to other countries at the time,
and was only made public in 1952”. Ozaki (2010, 151) details the competing claims by stating
that “the Japanese government has contended that the Senkaku Islands had been terra nullius (a
territory without owner) until their incorporation into Japanese territory through the decision at
the Japanese Cabinet meeting in 1895; that the islands effectively became Japanese territory in
terms of international law through their incorporation in 1895 and through the effective exercise
of state functions over the islands; and that the legal status of the islands remains unchanged

5
even after World War II. By contrast, both the PRC and ROC have contended that historically
speaking, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands have been their territory; and that Japan, while forcing the
Qing government to cede Taiwan in accordance with the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895),
unilaterally incorporated those islands into her territory; and that the islands should, like Taiwan,
be returned to China” (Ozaki 2010, 151).
The historical timeline is further complicated by the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the U.S.
occupation of Japan, and the U.S. administration of Okinawa from 1945 to 1972. During the
American civil administration of Okinawa, The U.S. exercised authority over the
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands until returning control of the islands to Japan along with Okinawa
Prefecture in 1972. Despite relinquishing authority and recognizing Okinawa Prefecture proper,
the United States has not made any definitive statement over the legal status of the islands –
instead referring to Japan as the effective administrator of them (Drifte 2014).
The current contours of the disputing claims over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands largely
took shape through the late 1960s and into the early 1970s, but would not become a prominent
thorn in China-Japan bilateral relations until later. Hahm and Uk (2019, 65) point to the 1968
United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (UNECAFE) report asserting a
strong possibility of between 10 to 100 billion barrels of oil located on the continental shelf
between Japan and the ROC as a starting flashpoint of the dispute. The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands,
which sits on the edge of that shelf between the ROC and Okinawa, was seen as a potential site
for hydrocarbon resource exploitation. Indeed, Japan and the ROC disputed the territory
following the report, but later held talks concerning potential cooperation for exploring the
resources. Hahm and Uk (2019, 65) explicitly point to the discovery of natural resources as the
genesis point of the modern dispute between the PRC and Japan, but do not consider this to be

6
the central motivating factor in the dispute and the historical timeline supports this: following the
Japan-ROC talks, the PRC made their first claim to islands in May 1970 and in December 1971,
the Chinese Foreign Ministry published an official claim (Drifte 2014), but the issue was not
discussed while Japan and China were normalizing relations in 1972 (Nakano 2022, 167) and
when the Treaty of Peace and Friendship was being negotiated in 1978, both sides agreed to
shelve the issue (Drifte 2014). Japanese Foreign Minister Sonoda Sunao (1977-1979, 1981), who
represented Japan at the signing of the treaty, wrote “While it is true that China is claiming these
islands as their territory, the islands are currently in Japan's hands, and have not become an actual
issue among Japan and China. If Japan takes the trouble to bring up the subject at this occasion
and disturbs a bush only to let a snake out, it will be a total loss for Japan” (Sonoda 1981, 184).
However, it should be noted that the official position of the Japanese MOFA challenges
assertations that Japanese and Chinese negotiators agreed to “shelve” the dispute (Ministry of
Foreign Affairs 2024).
From 1978 to the 1990s, relations between the PRC and Japan were relatively stable, and
political leaders strived to maintain somewhat friendly relations and competition over the status
of the islands was not widely salient in Japan until after the end of the 20th century (Horiuchi
2014, 24). Some Japanese nationalists began their activism as a response to a perceived sense of
government failure over the issue, but activities were mostly small-scale and only manifested as
minor headaches for Tokyo and for Japan-China relations (Hall 2023, 96-100). However, as
relations soured in the 2000s and as security issues became more prominent in daily political
discourse, Japanese political leaders began to take more active and aggressive approaches to the
dispute and the Japanese public became more aware and more incensed by perceived
encroachments from China (Catalinac 2017, 6).

7
The year 2010 marked a pivotal turning point in Japan-PRC relations over the disputed
territory following the 2010 Trawler Incident and the succeeding diplomatic fallout. The 2010
confrontation ignited when the Minjinyu 5179, a Chinese fishing trawler captained by Zhan
Qixiong, was found fishing within the twelve-nautical mile territorial waters of the
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands by the JCG. Zhan refused to allow for the JCG to inspect the ship and
instead attempted to flee, striking two of the JCG ships in the process. Japan then detained the
trawler’s crew and made clear intentions to prosecute Zhan for obstructing the JCG. This soon
escalated into a major diplomatic row between the PRC and Japan with the former alleging that
Japan had made a clear departure from past understandings and management of the disputed
territory (Smith 2016, 188). Throughout September 2010, Beijing would ratchet up diplomatic
pressure on Japan, leading to then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to comment that
challenges over Japan’s administration over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands would trigger the USJapan security alliance and prompt a US response (Smith 2016, 188-189). This incident led to a
clear shift in Japanese attitudes, both the government and the public, on the dispute and relations
with the PRC: that relations with the PRC had become dramatically more dangerous, that the
PRC had become more hostile and unpredictable, and that the dispute was no longer a diplomatic
problem, but a security issue (Smith 2016).
Tensions would continue to rise, paving the way for the 2012 Senkaku/Diaoyu diplomatic
crisis and the ongoing tensions left in its wake. It has been over a decade since perhaps the most
peculiar episode in the ongoing Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute unfolded in 2012 when Ishihara
Shintaro, the governor of Tokyo, proposed buying some of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands from a
private owner. The announcement saw Ishihara pronounce, in his usual style, that “We are
proposing to purchase the islands so that the Japanese people can properly protect the territory of

8
Japan. Does anyone have a problem with that?” (Sunohara 2020, 51). While the remarks were a
shock to Beijing, Taipei, and Washington, the MIC had quietly been leasing the three islets in
question from the private owner since 2002 (Green 2017, 125), and even before Ishihara’s
meetings in 2011, the central government had been negotiating behind closed doors regarding the
nationalization of the privately owned islands (Sunohara 2020, 52; Horiuchi 2014, 38).
Two days after Ishihara’s announcement, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, before a
special session of the House of Representatives Budget Committee, stated that “we will ascertain
the true intent of the owner and consider all options without prejudice” (Sunohara 2020, 53).
Ishihara would respond confidently that “ideally, the government should purchase the islands,
but it won’t. Therefore, Tokyo is stepping up to protect the Senkaku Islands” (Sunohara 2020,
54). The Senkaku Fund set up by Ishihara’s Government began to swell with cash and by
September had a total of 1.47 billion yen (Smith 2016, 219). With no means to block the sale of
the islands, the Noda government was left with two choices: let Ishihara “win” and allow the
Tokyo Metropolitan Government to buy and potentially develop the islands or nationalize the
islands (Smith 2016, 235). Ultimately, the central government landed on the latter. In May 2012,
Noda gathered his top staff and officials in the Foreign Ministry and told them to begin preparing
to nationalize the disputed islets in question (Horiuchi 2014, 38). Despite clear, firm resistance to
any change in the status quo from Beijing, Noda’s government officially nationalized the three
islets that had been subject to the Ishihara proposal on September 11, 2012 (Horiuchi 2014, 38).
Beijing, which had actively protested both the Ishihara and Noda plans to buy the islets,
responded in kind and by mid-September, began deploying naval and aerial assets into the
territorial waters surrounding the islands to contest the administrative control and as the
nationalization plan became clearer, anti-Japanese protests kicked off in both the PRC and ROC.

9
The 2012 diplomatic row underscored how tenuous the circumstances surrounding the dispute
had become between Japan and the PRC, particularly since the 2010 Trawler Incident. Before the
2010s, the dispute was largely characterized as a manageable diplomatic thorn, but after the 2010
and 2012 incidents, the dispute transformed into a major security dilemma between Japan and
the PRC (Smith 2016, 190). While it is disputed whether or not Japan and the PRC agreed to
shelve the issue when Japan and the PRC normalized relations in the 1970s, the disputed territory
was a contained diplomatic problem, but as relations soured in the 2000s and as security issues
became more prominent in daily political discourse, Japanese political leaders began to take
more active and aggressive approaches to the dispute and the Japanese public became more
aware and more incensed by perceived encroachments from China (Catalinac 2017, 6).
Figure 2: Number of foreign vessels identified within the Senkaku/Diayou Islands territorial sea and contiguous zone
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, “Trends in China Coast Guard and other vessels in the waters surrounding the Senkaku
Islands, and Japan’s response [2023], https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/page23e_000021.html

10
While Ishihara’s proposal to use public funds to purchase the privately owned islands can
be partially explained by the former author and actor’s general flair for the dramatic and personal
nationalist orientation, the consideration (before Ishihara’s announcement) and decision by
Japan’s central government, led by the DPJ, to nationalize the islands is more puzzling. Smith
(2016, 235) and Sunohara (2020, 115) both explain that the Noda Cabinet decided to nationalize
the islands in the wake of Ishihara’s announcement to quiet a growing domestic uproar over the
dispute and to manage tensions with the PRC. However, what led to considerations to nationalize
the islets before Ishihara shook the status quo? Additionally, why would the Noda government,
which, while not certain (Bukh 2018, 198), was privy to what a Chinese reaction could look like
and understood the associated risks both through simulation and direct communication, still
decide to go through with a nationalization that would surely have at least elicited a diplomatic
response (Sunohara 2020, 109-111)?
The dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands is the most salient, contentious, and
intractable territorial dispute in the sphere of Japanese domestic politics and has become a forum
for nationalists to flex their electoral muscles (Smith 2016; Horiuchi 2014; Hall 2020; Solis
2023). While strictly nationalist and populist parties are still firmly outside of the governing
coalition and have yet to consolidate significant electoral gains (Solis 2023; Lind & Ueki 2021),
the territorial dispute, along with issues surrounding Yasukuni Shrine, has become a unique
opportunity for nationalists to effectively dictate the domestic debate and shape Japanese official
policy (Smith 2016; Hall 2020). A curiosity indeed because the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are the
territorial dispute where Japan currently administers the islands, as opposed to Northern
Territories/South Kuriles and Takeshima/Dokdo where the other claimants hold authority.

11
Chapter 3: Literature Review
There has been extensive research conducted on Japan’s bilateral relationship with the
PRC and the ongoing dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, though fewer scholars have
examined the territorial issue through Japan’s relationship with the ROC. While there is an
extensive library of academic works that examine the dispute in a variety of creative and unique
methods, realist and rationalist theories remains a guiding light for scholars and researchers and
remains one of the most commonly used frameworks for understanding territorial disputes.
These theories provide useful scaffolding for understanding the disputes but downplay an
important factor when understanding how Japan operates within the context of the disputed
territories. Rather than only signaling to other states in the system, Japanese political elites are
signaling to their own domestic political audiences.
Fearon’s 1995 article “Rationalist Explanations for War” remains one of the most
enduring and influential pieces of writing in the field of international relations and has become a
widely looked-at framing of studies of war and peace. However, rationalist theory and the
bargaining model of war are not without their critics: Walt (1999) questions the premise on
which the bargaining model of war stands, Kang (2023) criticizes rationalist theory as not
accurately predicting state behavior in Asia, and in his 2010 article “Two Cheers for Bargaining
Theory: Assessing Rationalist Explanations of the Iraq War,” Lake asserts that the model is illequipped to explain contemporary conflicts, in particular the Iraq War, on four primary accounts:
that we should not assume that states are singular actors, states may signal to other actors, not
just to each other, the model assumes war ends when a settlement is reached, and that states may
not behavior entirely rationally (on account of biases). These are important considerations, and

12
this thesis primarily augments Lake’s first criticism of the bargaining model of war by more
seriously considering the domestic factor in how conflict and peace emerge within the context of
Japan’s territorial disputes.
As previously stated, the purpose of this thesis is not to assert that the bargaining model
of war or other rationalist explanations are unable to explain Japan’s behavior, but rather to
contribute to the debate as to how political elites’ relationship with the domestic audience
contributes to international relations, including war, and to further contextualize territorial
disputes further. Additionally, this paper does not seek to explain the PRC’s considerations and
behaviors, though potential calculations are considered throughout. Instead, this thesis focuses on
Japan’s behavior in both avoiding war and bargaining over the disputed territories. This thesis,
centered on Japan’s territorial dispute with the PRC, will focus primarily on Japan’s domestic
political environment, but will also touch on the other stakeholders in these territorial disputes:
the PRC (and to a lesser extent the ROC). In this thesis, I assert two primary points related to the
bargaining model of war and Japan’s territorial disputes: First, the bargaining model of war fails
to fully consider the contours of disputes between states that neither lead to negotiations nor to
war. Second, Japan’s domestic politics have played a decisive role in prolonging these territorial
disputes and hindering Japan’s ability to seek a negotiation.
Rationalist theory broadly runs into trouble explaining Japan’s behavior (Kang 2003) and
despite some lurching towards further militarization, there has been a significant pushback, both
due to popular sentiment and structural problems, from revising the constitution and assuming a
more “normal” military posture (Kang 2003; Samuels 2008; Green 2022). Here too do Japan’s
realist ambitions as they pertain to the territorial disputes come into question. Even if Japan were
to settle these territorial disputes immediately (as the sole possessor, finding a shared agreement,

13
or abandoning all claims), it is unlikely that any major power shift would occur between Japan
and its neighbors.
Despite rationalist theory imagining states as “black boxes” that act unitarily, there is a
rich literature that helps explain how domestic actors chart the course of a state’s foreign policy.
Significantly, in Institutions and Information: Domestic Politics and International Relations,
Milner (1997) asserts that domestic politics and international relations are linked and strongly
contends that realist theory which considers states to be unitary actors is largely incorrect. In War
and Democratic Constraint: How the Public Influences Foreign Policy, Baum and Potter (2015)
assert that some democracies do better in reflecting their public’s foreign policy preferences than
others primarily due to information, via the opposition and free media, which operate as a
counter to policy elites and explore how this information flows within states and how states
interact with and initiate conflict with other states. More specific to Japan’s territorial disputes,
McCarthy and Bukh (2020) believe that Japan’s territorial disputes, and whether Japan’s statelevel policies have been successful, are best understood by examining several viewpoints,
including a domestic lens, rather than simply assessing the state-to-state relationship. McCarthy
and Bukh (2020) consider that Japan, at times, primarily focused not on negotiating with the
other claimants in the territorial disputes and is certainly not interested in going to war over them
and that Japan’s strategy and policy have shifted depending on structural, policy elite
preferences, and domestic politics.
In These Islands Are Ours: The Social Construction of Territorial Disputes in Northeast
Asia, Bukh (2020, 5) utilizes a “bottom-up” analytical framework that examines territorial
disputes being initiated by non-state actors and distinguishes between the territorial disputes on a
state-to-state level and the social construction of the disputes. Bukh (2020, 11) also considers

14
that nationalism is ambiguous and difficult to measure in a robust manner and notes how the
term nationalism has been used in a wide-variety of manners in different contexts and time
periods. Additionally, Bukh (2020, 12) describes how ideational motivation does not always
equate to how invoked ideas are pursued by political elites and how ideas and norms can be used
as framing techniques in pursuit of fundamentally different values by illustrating how the
conservative Gekkan Nippon criticized potentially more-open immigration legislation.
Outside of scholarly work, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Island dispute has been widely covered
both from Japan’s and the PRC’s perspectives in both theoretical and policy-focused lenses.
Interestingly, long-form works often use the dispute as a vehicle to recommend policy for the
United States rather than offering policy solutions to either Japan or the PRC. In The Senkaku
Paradox, O’Hanlon (2019) uses the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute as an example of a potential pattern
where aggressive state behavior over territorial issues ignites wider wars, turning local crises into
major conflicts. Rather than dissecting the dispute through a theoretical lens, O’Hanlon (2019)
more broadly uses the dispute to argue that the United States needs to adopt a more
comprehensive set of responses, or “integrated deterrence”. In China, Japan, and Senkaku
Islands, Chansoria (2018) extensively details the contours of US national security strategy within
the context of the dispute and concludes with an extensive list of specific policy
recommendations for the United States and other democratic states in the Indo-Pacific.
The bilateral relationship between Japan and the PRC has also been studied in-depth from
both historical and international relations lenses. In Sino-Japanese Relations: Interaction, Logic,
and Transformation, Wan (2008) critiques numerous widely-held assumptions about
contemporary relations between the PRC and Japan, arguing that the relationship is politically
manageable despite becoming more confrontational and dispute-prone. Wan (2008) highlights a

15
juxtaposition as the PRC and Japan become more intertwined economically and in terms of
public interaction but have become more opposed psychologically and more militarily
dangerous. In Rethinking Sino-Japanese Alienation: History, Problems and Historical
Opportunities, Buzan and Goh (2020) examine the relationship through a historical framework
by dissecting contemporary tensions that germinated through collective memories of war and
Japan’s colonization and empire-building project. Buzan and Goh (2020) develop a new
approach to these thorns in the bilateral relationship by crafting a framework focused on
contextualizing the historical memories, placing the relationship in a global setting, and
exploring modes where the PRC and Japan have been able to forge agreements and
understandings.

16
Chapter 4: Methodology
To assess whether Japanese rhetoric and policy on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute
has become more assertive and is influenced by domestic nationalist sentiment, a two-part
question needs to be addressed:
1.) Why has Japan’s policy regarding the dispute evolved to become measurably more
proactive and has the domestic debate become more hawkish?
a. How has that shift been driven by internal forces (the domestic debate), or by
external forces (a more assertive PRC)?
To claim that Japan’s domestic politics is driving Japan to be more aggressive and
proactive within the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute, the above questions need to be answered
and Japanese foreign policy (as it pertains to the dispute and its relation to PRC) and domestic
politics (as it pertains to the nature of the debate around the issue) need to be defined and
operationalized. This requires, as Johnston (2017, 13) notes in his article on Chinese nationalism,
“conceptually valid, consistent, and observable and measurable indicators,” and a baseline of
comparison (either temporal or spatial).
Dependent Variable: Japanese foreign policy and rhetoric toward the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands
dispute vis-à-vis the PRC:
This thesis defines aggressive foreign policy and rhetoric as the extent to which a state
proactively deploys power projection or rhetorically reiterates a particular claim. I measure
foreign policy and rhetoric through the following indicators: institutional or broadly accepted
restraints on the usage of military power, defense spending as a percentage of GDP, deployment

17
of military assets to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, how frequently policy elites publicly discuss
national security and how frequently policy elites invoke or publicly discuss the dispute.
Additionally, I measure these indicators both temporally (how Japanese policy has changed over
time) and spatially (how Japanese policy has changed relative to the PRC).
Independent Variable: Japanese Domestic Politics vis-à-vis growing nationalistic attitudes on
the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute:
For this thesis, I measure the domestic debate through the following indicators: public
opinion data as it relates to the disputed territory, public opinion data as it pertains to attitudes
toward the PRC, the frequency in which nationalist groups invoke the dispute, and how
frequently nationalist groups demonstrate or travel to the disputed territory. Additionally, I
measure these indicators temporally (how Japan has evolved) rather than spatially (how Japan
has evolved relative to the PRC).
Japanese Rhetoric and Policy:
Following the normalization and establishment of a formal bilateral relationship between
the PRC and Japan, both sides agreed to “shelve” the dispute to prevent it from destabilizing ties
and to prioritize economic cooperation between the two countries (Drifte 2014). While the
dispute did manifest in various ways throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, both
governments actively cooperated to prevent tensions from spiraling out of control and seriously
damaging the bilateral relationship and flourishing economic ties between the two states (Bukh
2018, 197). The September 2010 Trawler Incident and the 2012 Nationalization Crisis mark a
clear departure from that agreed framework.

18
Under former Prime Minister Abe (who served as Prime Minister from September 2006
to September 2007 and then, more prominently, from December 2012 to September 2020), the
ruling LDP embarked on institutional changes to Japan’s pacificist constitution and further
expanded Japan’s capabilities by breaking down broadly accepted restraints on the use of
military force. While Abe’s government, and the succeeding Suga and Kishida governments,
largely failed or abandoned plans to nix or rewrite Article 9 in the constitution (and it is unclear
whether there is political will to take up such an agenda), the Abe government did pursue and
accomplish major changes to how Japan’s defense operates. The establishment of a Japanese
National Security Council, centralizing intelligence functions and the passage of the State
Secrecy Law, and reforming the Ground SDF, Maritime SDF, and JCG into more interoperable
forces (both amongst themselves and with the United States) were all major steps in preparing a
more proactive military posture (Green 2022, 196-206). Perhaps most significantly, in 2014 the
Abe cabinet lifted the ban on collective self-defense with a keen eye on strengthening the
alliance with the United States. Doing so not through amending the constitution, but by
reinterpreting the principles laid out in the constitution was controversial – but Abe skillfully
targeted more limited adjustments to move towards this goal (Solis 2023, 183), and despite being
a limited reform in scope, it did directly address Japan’s goals of maintaining peace and security
of global commons and freedom of navigation (Kurosaki 2018). While falling short of reforming
the SDF into a military force, the LDP successfully created a more proactive defense posture in
the post-2010/2012 Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute landscape.
This is the most difficult indicator to examine spatially (has Japan become more
aggressive in this regard compared to the PRC) as the PRC has no such restrictions on their use
of military force and does not have a formal defense treaty with the United States or any other

19
state. While one can extrapolate that Japan has indeed become more aggressive in that regard,
such assertions are incomplete. Indeed, if we take the premise that Japan is becoming a more
“normal” nation through this evolution (Patalano 2020, 155), a gap in capability and use is
shrinking between the PRC and Japan, but this is a curiosity of Japan’s place in the international
system rather than a distinct shift between the PRC and Japan.
Under the LDP, Japan embarked on another step toward becoming a more “normal”
nation by striving to spend two percent of GDP on defense. To reach that by 2027, a sixty percent
increase over five years, Japan would be on pace to become the world’s third largest defense
spender – notable as Japan has recently fallen behind India in spending and South Korea has
rapidly caught up (Solis 2023, 196). Such an increase would dramatically increase Japan’s
defense capabilities, but this has yet to fully manifest, though an additional 6.8-billion-dollar
plan for defense spending was approved in November 2021 (Solis 2023, 211), and it is difficult
to assess whether this shift is evidence of a more aggressive and proactive Japan. Beyond
questions of where Japan plans to budget such a dramatic increase, questions as to how such an
increase can be leveraged remain unanswered. As such, it is difficult to assess whether this
promise indicates a more aggressive and defense-oriented foreign policy, but it does paint a
picture of Japan moving in that direction (Lind and Ueki 2021, 372).
While such a move would reduce the gap in defense spending between Japan and the
PRC, that gap would remain substantial. Although China has not dramatically increased spending
as a percentage of GDP, China’s rapid economic growth has fueled what is now clearly the
world’s second-largest defense budget. Nevertheless, such a move demonstrates how Japan is

20
trying to address tensions more directly in the region and specifically with China.
: Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP, 1952-2020 (Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute [2023] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-share
gdp?tab=chart&country=CHN~JPN~KOR~TWN
Figure 4: Nominal Military Expenditure, 1952-2020 (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [2023]
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-total?tab=chart&country=JPN~CHN~IND~TWN~KOR
Japanese deployment of military assets to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has dramatically
increased since the beginning of the 2010s, and since 2013 Japan has significantly militarized its’
coast guard (Green 2022, 206) and begun reorienting the general military posture away from a
Figure 3

21
Cold War structure focused on defending the country’s northern borders to deter threats from the
southwest (Green 2022, 210). Some maneuvers have drawn protest from Beijing, such as when
in 2016, the PRC protested Japanese bomber/fighter flights nearby (Smith 2019, 121), but Japan
has continued to increasingly expand its military infrastructure in Okinawa Prefecture and on the
Japanese main islands with an explicit focus on defending the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands from
encroachment. This has been done by setting up new garrisons on Ishigaki Island, establishing
the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade (Suirikukidodan) in Nagasaki Prefecture, and
bringing new F-15 squadrons to the Naha Air Base, (Smith 2019; Smith 2016; Green, 2022).
Figure 5: JASDF Scrambles by Region, (Asia Maritime Transit Initiative [2014] https://amti.csis.org/east-chinasea-tensions/

22
However, an increase in Chinese deployment to the disputed territory has been even more
pronounced since the early 2010s disputes. In 2013, the PRC announced a new ADIZ that
directly challenged Japan’s over the East China Sea (Smith 2019, 121), China continues to send
navy frigates and destroyers into the disputed waters (Smith 2019, 117) and began sending coast
guard vessels to the waters regularly (Liu 2021, 11). The ASDF has increasingly responded to
breaches of Japan’s airspace around the islands, from less than 100 in 2010 to more than 850 in
2016, (Smith 2019, 116). As such, it is difficult to assert that Japan has become more aggressive
compared to the PRC (though Japan has certainly become more aggressive over time); rather,
China may have militarized the dispute more quickly and forcefully than Japan.
Japanese policy elites have also more frequently, and forcefully, explicitly mentioned the
disputed territory publicly, a dramatic shift from the era of détente between the PRC and Japan
that saw the island problem shelved. In Electoral Reform and National Security in Japan: From
Pork to Foreign Policy, Catalinac argues that Japanese policymakers since the 1990s electoral
reforms have had more incentive to explicitly pitch national security issues as a policy platform
over specific-district pork (Catalinac 2017) and this shift is prominently seen in how
policymakers discuss the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Regional nationalist leaders in the 2000s,
such as Ishihara and Hashimoto Toru, the former governor of Osaka and former leader of Ishin,
repeatedly referred to the need to defend the islands (Sunohara 2020; Hall 2023), but more
importantly, the defense of the disputed territory has become a core tenet of the more mainstream
LDP’s political strategy (Suzuki 2014, 95-96). LDP Prime Ministers have raised the issue with
more frequency and during their time in power and DPJ Prime Ministers did so indirectly (Liu
2021, 2-4). Additionally, the dispute has become a pronounced plank in the official LDP security

23
strategy and continues to be so, appearing in each year’s diplomatic bluebook from 2013 to 2023
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan 2023). Still, this increased focus can also be seen in the
PRC: managed nationalist protests and concentrated gray zone tactics (Weiss 2013; Solis 193)
both augment a highly salient strategy that has moved the issue to the center of the relationship, a
clear change from when Tokyo and Beijing agreed to shelve the issue during the “golden age” of
diplomacy with Japan (Buzan and Go 2020, 154-155). While Japan has grown more aggressive
over time when compared to the PRC, the relative weight of that change is more mixed.
Indicator Temporal Change Spatial Change
Institutional or broadly accepted restraints
on the usage of military power
More Aggressive N/A
Defense spending as a percentage of GDP Potentially More
Aggressive
Potentially More
Aggressive
Deployment of military assets to the
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands
More Frequent Less Frequent
Frequency of policy elites’ public
discussion of national security/invoke or
publicly discuss the dispute
More Frequent No Change
Dependent Variable Indicators
Table 1: Dependent Variable Indicators

24
Japan’s Domestic Debate:
Much ink has been spilled pondering whether Japan is experiencing a new wave of
nationalism and populism that was ushered in during the Abe era and to what extent that may
influence Japanese foreign and defense policy. Several academics contend that Japan has a
growing nationalist sector: Bruce Stronach (1995) does so in Beyond The Rising Sun, and Junki
Nakahara (2021) details efforts undertaken during Abe’s tenure in “Deconstructing Abe Shinzo’s
“Take Back Japan” Nationalism.” However, there is significant doubt among scholars that Japan
has become a haven for nationalism such as: “Is Japan back? measuring nationalism and military
assertiveness in Asia’s other great power,” by Lind and Ueki (2021), and Japan’s Quiet
Leadership: Reshaping the Indo-Pacific by Mireya Solis (2023). In popular media, the story is
more uniform; Japan is indeed undergoing a right-wing, nationalist transformation. Some
popular publications have concluded that Japan is experiencing a wave of rightward nationalism
that, at least in part, explains a more hawkish foreign policy stance and a growing appetite to
challenge globalization and deny the historical record. A popular YouTube political-newsfocused channel, Vox (2017), asserts this in a video titled “Japan’s rising right-wing nationalism,”
and in The Diplomat, Minami (2019) ponders that the recent electoral victories of the left-leaning
Reiwa, may be a harbinger of more populist success and that a growing socioeconomic divide
and dissatisfaction with party politics are vectors for future populist gains to come. However,
academic and Japan-watcher expert opinions have been far more mixed and some have strongly
pushed back on such contentions that Japan has become engulfed in the wave of popular
nationalism. In Japan’s Quiet Leadership: Reshaping the Indo-Pac, Solis (2023, 112) contends
that politicians who may be considered “populist,” are generally political insiders, rather than
anti-pluralist outsiders looking to shatter the legitimacy of institutions, that political polarization

25
and hyper-partisanship have yet to take hold in Japan (Solis 2023, 114-115), and that regional
populist political elites, such as Hashimoto, are not traditional “xenophobic demagogues” and
have yet to take the reins of national politics (Solis 2023, 112-113). In “Is Japan Back?
Measuring Nationalism and Military Assertiveness in Asia’s Other Great Power,” Lind and Ueki
(2021, 391) conclude that “despite frequent claims about Japan’s ‘rising nationalism’ and
‘remilitarization,’ our article finds support for neither claim”.
Indeed, when one considers the current domestic political landscape and basic contours
of the Japanese Diet, such notions of a nationalistic or populist takeover of the country’s politics
seem far-fetched. Parties such as Ishin and Reiwa have enjoyed some electoral success but have
struggled to replicate their PR block success2
to consistently winning seats around the country
and are still firmly outside of the governing coalition. More fringe groups, such as the JFP and
Sanseito, sit even farther away from the central nexus of political power in the country with few
or no seats in either Japan’s lower or upper houses. Even the JFP’s founder, Sakurai Makoto,
whom Vox (2017) interviewed at length, amassed a mere 9,449 (3.96%) votes when he ran in
Tokyo’s 15th district. Opinion polls since 2021 do not suggest that these expressive populist and
nationalist parties, aside from Ishin, seem to be making significant gains among the Japanese
electorate, and Ishin’s gains are sporadic and inconsistent. Broadly speaking, a consistent pattern
of nationalist party gains relative to the ruling LDP-Komeito coalition has yet to manifest.
2 The Japanese House of Representatives (lower house) is composed of 465 members, of which 176 are elected from
11 multi-member constituencies. These members are elected from a party list (IE the order is set by the individual
political parties), proportional representation system. The House of Councillors (upper house) is currently composed
of 248 members, of which 100 are elected from a “open-list” nationwide constituency.

26
I have included the above to underscore an important distinction: a nationalist or populist
tidal wave has yet to wash over Japanese partisan politics and a distinctly nationalist or populist
political party has not been able to consolidate significant political power either on a
parliamentary or municipal level. While Ishin currently enjoys moderate support and political
representation, populist leaders and nationalist parties have not yet stormed into the national
debate, but despite this resistance to any such nationalist takeover, the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute
has become a forum where attitudes have sharpened, and nationalists have moved closer to the
center of the national discourse: public opinion towards the dispute has become more
pronounced, concerned, and aggressive since 2010, the DPJ was heavily criticized by both the
“left” and “right” in Japan for the handling of the 2010 and 2012 crises (Suzuki 2014, 110), and
Kobayashi and Katagiri (2018, 313) found through their experiment that a perceived territorial
threat from the PRC generated significant anger. While this thesis does not consider Chinese
attitudes, it is notable that the Japanese public appears to be more concerned regarding a
potential military conflict over disputed territories than their Chinese counterparts:
Figure 6: “Which party would you choose in proportional
representation segment?” (Asahi Shimbun, “Who should
lead the government? 46% pick LDP, 22% favor CDP)
[2021], https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14465331
Figure 7: Party support rates (Nikkei, “Who is Ishin? Japan opposition
party plans to shake up politics) [2023],
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Who-is-Ishin-Japan-opposition-partyplans-to-shake-up-politics

27
More general attitudes within Japan toward the PRC have taken a nosedive, which
Horiuchi believes is heavily influenced by the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute and other hotbutton issues (such as reactions to the Fukushima nuclear disaster and following water
discharges) stressing the bilateral relationship (Horiuchi 2014, 31-32). Horiuchi (2014, 32)
describes how attitudes went from generally friendly to overwhelmingly negative throughout the
bilateral relationship:
Figure 8: “How concerned are you, if at all, that territorial disputes between China and
neighboring countries could lead to a military conflict?” (Pew Research Center, “Hostile
Neighbors: China vs Japan)
[2016], https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2016/09/13/hostile-neighbors-china-vs-japan/

28
“Japanese people’s impression of China has greatly deteriorated. From the normalization of
diplomatic relations in 1972 to the mid-1990s, the Japanese public held a very favorable view of
China. For example, in a 1980 public opinion poll conducted by the Japanese government, 79%
of the respondents said they held “friendly feelings” toward China, while only 15% said they did
not. After the middle of the 1990s, however, the number of those who did not hold friendly
feelings toward China began to exceed the number of those who did. This trend continued
through the 2000s due to the various bilateral issues mentioned above. In the latest survey
conducted by the government in October 2012, the percentage of respondents having friendly
feelings toward China was as low as 18%, whereas that of those who had no such feelings
reached 80.6%. Many other public opinion polls conducted by various organizations have found
similar results. For example, a survey by Kyodo News in 2012 found that 84% of the
respondents held an unfavorable impression of China.”
A 2016 Pew Research Center survey found that 86% of Japanese survey respondents had
an unfavorable view of the PRC, while 81% of respondents associated “arrogant” with China
compared to only 12% who associated “Honest” with China (Stokes 2016) and a 2021 Genron
NPO/China International Publishing Group survey found that 87% of Japanese respondents had a
bad impression of the PRC, with 58.9% (the most common reason in the survey) of those
surveyed stating that “violations of Japanese territorial waters and airspace around the Senkaku
Islands” were a primary reason (Opinion polls 2022). Suzuki (2014, 112) echoes this sentiment
and notes that even among liberal parties in Japan, the PRC is being seen as the key “other.”
The Senkaku/Diaoyu Island dispute has become increasingly more core to the identity of
nationalist groups in Japan. Motivated by the opportunities presented and the new landscape of
perceptions of the PRC in 2010, Japanese nationalist groups began making the disputed territory

29
a key tenet of their identity. Hall (2023, 98) asserts that the online right-wing news site, Channel
Sakura, explicitly moved to take advantage of the 2010 incident to mobilize support for the
nationalist cause. More formal groups, such as Nippon Kaigi, have adopted strong stances in
defense of Japanese authority over the disputed territory (Kato 2014). This nationalist activity
extends beyond rhetoric; activists sent nine fishing expeditions in 2011 and 2012, with the largest
being some 20 boats carrying right-wing nationalists near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands despite
such action being forbidden by the Japanese authorities (Hall 2023, 90-105). While there were
sporadic landings on the islands during the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, there was a pause that
followed in the next two decades (Hall 2023, 93-95). However, the 2012 expeditions kicked off a
renewed push in which nationalist groups would make going to the islands a clear and present
objective. 2013 and 2014 trips were scheduled, and it was only when Japan’s Fisheries Agency
began intervening that the trips slowed (Hall 2023, 108-109). Still, from 2011 to 2020 some 24
fishing missions were attempted, with 18 reaching the disputed islands (Hall 2023, 109). These
boat activities were preceded and succeeded by frequent demonstrations stemming from the 2010
incident, often organized by the right-wing group Ganbare Nippon, the largest being a 4,000-
person event attended by future Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko in November 2010 (Hall 2023,
98-102).
It should be noted that “boat” nationalism was not isolated to only Japanese actors and
expeditions from the ROC and Hong Kong were also launched to the disputed territory. The
earliest instances of activist landings occurred in 1970 when a group of Taiwanese journalists
landed on the islands, which were at the time still administered by the Americans, in order to
pressure the ROC to be more assertive in claiming the islands (Hall 2023, 96). It would not be
until 1978 when Japanese nationalists first embarked on landing on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands

30
in an effort to construct a lighthouse on Uosturijima Island organized by Ishihara (Hall 2023,
96). However, it was Japanese nationalists who were behind most of the early major landings
throughout the 1980s and 1990s with the right-wing uyoku group Nihon Seinensha leading the
most prominent and organized landings (Hall 2023, 97-98). Nationalists from Hong Kong and
the ROC would respond to landings done by Japanese groups with their own expeditions, though
Japan, the PRC, and the ROC largely worked to curtail such duallings in fear of how they might
upend bilateral relations (Hall 2023, 99). As relations soured in the 2010s, landings and “counterlandings” by competing nationalist groups became more frequent.
Indicator Temporal Change
Public Opinion Attitudes towards the disputed
territory
More Aggressive
Public Opinion Attitudes toward the PRC More Aggressive
Frequency in which the dispute is invoked by
nationalist groups
More Frequent
Frequency in which nationalist groups
demonstrate or travel to the disputed territory
More Frequent
Independent Variable Indicators
Table 2: Independent Variable Indicators

31
Chapter 5: Geopolitical & Domestic Political Analysis
The findings above transmit two different messages: domestically, the results are much
more uniform - the Japanese public is more skeptical of the PRC’s intentions and the Japanese
state is more willing to reinforce the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands
dispute has become more central to Japanese nationalist identity and messaging. While the
indicators measured do not suggest that Japan has become comprehensively more nationalist, it
does show that the disputed territory has become a forum where nationalists shape the debate
around foreign policy and that Japanese policymakers are both listening and responding.
However, while concerns over China’s growing hard power certainly influence Japanese policy,
why is Japan not more rapidly balancing against China through a more assertive military
posture? Japan has given itself more space to expand further (through reimagining Article 9) and
has pledged to double military spending, but progress has been slow, and evidence that strongly
suggests a hard buildup is underway remains elusive (Green, 2022 210). Why nationalize any of
the disputed islands if a cohesive plan to confront China militarily remains incomplete? Japan
has been proactive, aggressive, and disrupted the status quo in 2012, but rather than responding
to the PRC’s aggression directly and promptly, Tokyo has been much more careful. Why has
Japan at times been proactively aggressive but slow to hard balance against China?
Bukh (2018, 198) explains this central puzzle by assessing the relative success and failure
of Japanese policy toward their domestic disputes:
“The territorial dispute did become a major issue in Japan’s relations with China. Thus, it
can be argued that Japan’s policy of preventing the Senkaku issue from affecting bilateral
relations has failed to achieve its goal. However, to fully understand the effects of the recent

32
escalation on Japan’s policy, it is important to look at Japan’s domestic politics and the important
changes in Japan’s foreign policy doctrine.”
Bukh (2020, 198) continues to extrapolate that for the LDP and the Abe government, the
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute proved to be a useful catalyst for affirming and enhancing
Japan’s defense posture. This is a compelling case of how the dispute can be leveraged to further
a domestic agenda and in the following section, I draw on the methodology in this paper and
consider the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute as a function of how Japanese political elites use
escalating foreign policy and rhetoric to signal credible resolve to the domestic audience. When
Japan adopts an aggressive policy, it does not have only the PRC in mind but is rather looking to
send signals to a more hawkish electorate. Confronting a more assertive PRC and further
exacerbating tensions between the two countries are not the intended purposes of such actions,
but rather acceptable costs. To augment the findings, I look to Fearon (1995; 1997) but rather
than using these rationalist explanations to explain war between two states, I examine how
political elites can use costly signals to show resolve.
However, the importance of the US security umbrella and the role the US-Japan security
alliance plays within a potential security dilemma with the PRC must also be addressed as
Japanese policymakers also consider how willing the United States is to come to Japan’s defense
when making policy decisions. There is a rich literature that dissects to what degree Japan is
“free-riding” or being entrapped by the security agreement with the United States and in
Securing Japan, Samuels (2006) identifies how Japan’s relationship with the United States in the
context of that security agreement has changed and how Tokyo weighs and balances national
interests, national security and relations with Washington and Beijing. Additionally, Japan is not
only sending signals to the PRC but also to the United States and other states in the region. This

33
has been amplified as former president Donald Trump has openly questioned US responsibility
to security partners and allies in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Security competition and
nationalism do not exist in a dyadic vacuum where the PRC, Japan, and their respective domestic
audiences are the only players.
Fearon’s (1995, 69) article "Rationalist Explanations for War," examines how states may
work to overcome a central dilemma in foreign policy: how can leaders credibly communicate
their willingness to employ force to resolve foreign policy problems? Fearon (1995, 69-70)
asserts that states will deploy “costly signals” to make their threats more credible, by incurring a
cost onto itself – a state appears less likely to back down from a confrontation. Fearon broadly
categorizes these “costly signals” into two types: sunk costs and tying hands. Sunk costs involve
a state pouring resources, such as manufacturing arms or deploying troops, incurring
irrecoverable costs that could have been used elsewhere while tying hands, such as making
political proclamations, incurring audience costs, where the leader may face domestic
ramifications from mishandling a dispute (Fearon 1995, 70). It is within this model that
democracies may have an advantage in international disputes as their threats become more
credible because they are more likely to incur audience costs from backing down (Weiss 2013, 1-
2). Fearon’s (1995) approach has been augmented by scholars who have redefined or expanded
on these costly signals (Quek 2021) or have applied it to specific circumstances (Weiss 2013).
Liu (2021, 16) applies Fearon’s approach to Japan more specifically and asserts the following:
“Through incurring public opinion costs from talking about proactive policies and
exposing themselves to audience costs if they do not follow through with such promises, leaders
seek to effectively signal resolve and increase security leverage vis-à-vis Japan’s rivals.”

34
In the following section, I will employ Fearon’s approach to explain the central finding
from the above methodology: that Japan is both tying hands and sinking costs to make credible
signals. However, instead of peering into how a state, Japan, is working to overcome the
commitment problem when convincing another state (PRC) by employing costly signals, I focus
on how Japanese political elites are using these costly signals to credibly commit to their
domestic political audience.
Japan’s deployment of an increasing number of military resources directly facing the
disputed territory can be understood within Fearon’s framing. Instead of drawing down military
spending since the end of the Cold War, Japan has begun increasing military expenditure as a
percentage of GDP and has actively been reorienting its posture in the direction of the PRC,
rather than Russia (Green 2022, 210). Fearon might point to this as an example of a sunk cost to
credibly signal to the PRC Japan’s intent to defend the islands. Indeed, the redeployment of
resources to Okinawa Prefecture is costly and Japan has been upgrading its military systems and
reinforcing operations by ordering the military to defend Japanese territory from incursions more
frequently (Smith 2016, 111). Japan’s responses to PRC air and sea incursions can also be seen
as a sunk cost since such deployments are costly, both in terms of the material cost of producing
and upkeeping the air and sea power required to respond to such provocations, but also in the
nonmaterial costs, such as the risk of accidents or misuse (Quek 2021, 539). By deploying such
assets in response, Tokyo is sending a costly signal to Beijing regarding its resolve to defend the
islands. However, some features of these deployments and responses do not fit into Fearon’s
model seamlessly. Tokyo’s strategy for responding to PRC incursions has yet to deter the PRC’s
claims and has not mitigated these violations, rather they have continued to increase (see Figure
1). Furthermore, with the 2014 reiteration of US support for the Senkaku/Diaoyu Island dispute

35
(Green 2022, 100), why incur these sunk costs when Japan could continue to bandwagon with
the US? Here, Japan’s domestic political environment can lend us clues as to why Tokyo has
chosen to escalate its response and proactively move military hardware in the direction of the
disputed territories. Scrambling fighter jets in response to violations is a means for Tokyo to
show the domestic audience it is serious about defending the territory since both the material and
nonmaterial costs are high. Instead of bandwagoning on the US, the policy demonstrates to
Japan’s anti-China population their commitment to defending the territory. Here, the risk of
accidental war may be large (O’Hanlon 2019, 5), but that is an acceptable cost for Japan when
signaling to the domestic audience. Cooperation with the United States in terms of security
shapes to what degree Japanese policymakers are able to bang the nationalistic drum and lean
into those elements with Japanese domestic politics. If the United States had not reaffirmed its
commitment to defending Japan in the context of the disputed islands, Japan may not be able to
view such costs as acceptable as the PRC would be much more likely to risk war if US
intervention was less of a guarantee. Deployments of troops and resources to Okinawa Prefecture
are also materially costly but incur far less nonmaterial costs. However, when considering how
large the gap between the PRC and Japan’s military capacity may be (Solis 2023, 196-197), the
usefulness of such forward deployments comes into question, especially when considering the
above findings that question whether Japan is truly hard balancing against the PRC (Solis 2023;
Green 2022). However, the deployment and overall strategy of situating the Senkaku/Diaoyu
Islands at the center of Japan’s security strategy is a useful costly signal for policy elites to
telegraph to the domestic audience that strongly considers the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands a core
issue. Japan’s external balancing is far more important in tackling China’s assertiveness (Green
2022), while Japan’s internal balancing is more of a show of force to the domestic electorate, and

36
these credible commitment signals also help show resolve in the face of Japan’s slow
militarization. Smith (2016, 120) agrees that this military preparedness is joined by an upsurge of
anti-Chinese sentiment, stating the following:
“The growing presence of Chinese ships in Japanese waters, especially near the Senkaku
Islands, angered many. The island dispute with China unleashed dangerous nationalist politics in
Tokyo, as well as in Beijing.”
Sinking costs into the dispute can help explain the decision to nationalize the islands from
the perspective of the DPJ. There are some material costs, though they are admittedly low when
considering Japan’s overall budget (Sunohara 2020, 168); however, the nonmaterial costs are
high since the potential reaction from the PRC could be significant. When pushed by Ishihara,
the Noda government decided to “sink cost” into the dispute and purchase the islands, signaling
to the Japanese electorate that was still fuming from the 2010 incident that despite pushback
from the PRC, it was as committed as Ishihara was in “defending Japan’s territories and
territorial waters” (Sunohara 2020, 170). The Noda government's willingness to endure an
unprecedented incursion of six PRC vessels and growing anti-Japanese demonstrations
(Sunohara 2020, 188) perhaps demonstrated resolve, though it would not save the DPJ at the
ballot box that year. Ishihara resigned from the Tokyo governorship to join Hashimoto in forming
Ishin, winning 54 seats in the 2012 lower house election (Smith 2016, 235).
Weiss (2013, 4) cleverly applies Fearon’s approach to nationalist protests in the PRC,
asserting that allowing antiforeign protests produces a highly visible example of leadership
resolve through tying hands due to the potential for increased popular support, instability, and
involvement outside of the elite. Since repression is costly and protests can shake the state’s
legitimacy, the backing of such protests sends a powerful signal (Weiss 2013, 5). The same line

37
of thinking can be applied to policy elite participation in Japanese nationalist protests before and
after the 2012 nationalization crises. Koike’s participation in the 2010 anti-Chinese protest rally
can be understood as her “tying her hands” and generating audience costs to mobilize nationalist
and hawkish support for her (Smith 2016, 221). By participating in the rally, Koike ran both the
risk of provoking a response from the PRC and generating potential criticism for any future
political ambitions, such as her successful run for Tokyo’s governorship in 2016. For Koike, this
costly signal paid off. Not only did Koike win Tokyo’s governorship in 2016, but she has also
become a household name in Japanese politics and, after leaving the LDP, contested the 2017
election as the leader of a conservative and nationalist minor party.
Tying hands can also help better explain the puzzle first introduced in this paper: what
motivated Ishihara and then later the DPJ-led central government to push for nationalizing the
disputed territory. Ishihara’s loud pronouncements to purchase the islands for Tokyo can be seen
as incurring a serious domestic-focused audience cost. If the central government decided against
nationalization, Ishihara would be on the hook to purchase the islands and if he backed down, he
would surely suffer domestic ramifications. Such a costly signal shows the hawkish domestic
environment and his nationalist supporters that Ishihara is credibly committed, boosting his
popularity, and mobilizing support (Catalinac 2017, 150). Even when the DPJ did nationalize the
islands, Ishihara managed to mobilize significant political support by portraying himself as a
staunch defender of the territory (Catalinac 2017, 219). The DPJ’s decision to nationalize the
islands also becomes clearer when considering the possibility of sending credible commitment
signals internally. Noda and the DPJ had approached the disputed territory in much the same way
that previous LDP governments had but with nationalists having more control over the debate,
the Noda government needed to credibly communicate resolve on the issue to mobilize support

38
(Smith 2019, 242). As the country moved in a more pronounced and aggressive direction vis-àvis the disputed territory, the Noda government was forced to respond to Ishihara by signaling
their commitment to the issue. While the Noda government did not seek to antagonize China,
such costs were acceptable when making a credible commitment domestically and the risks of
such a move added weight to the decision to nationalize the islands (Horiuchi 2014, 36). Not
only did Ishihara and the DPJ move to more aggressive positions on issues of national defense
during this period, but politicians of all stripes began to focus more on national security in a
rightward direction (Catalinac 2017, 144-146).
More generally, Japan’s position of active defense of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands can be
understood in terms of generating audience costs both to signal resolve to the PRC, but also
domestically. If the PRC were to attempt a takeover of the territory and if Japan were to retreat
from the commitments made during the second Abe administration (Smith 2019, 231), surely
domestic audience costs would be paid, and thus, these commitments can be understood as an
effort to mobilize support for the LDP. Horiuchi (2014) explains the significant role public
opinion had in the policymaking process toward nationalizing the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in
2012 and more broadly illustrates how public opinion has shaped Japanese policy as it pertains to
the disputed territory and relations with the PRC, and Bukh (2018), Smith (2016) and Catalinac
(2017) all address the connections between Japanese domestic politics and a more proactive
defense policy. When considering the domestic component, the dramatic shift from a reactive
policy under the DPJ to a more proactive approach taken by the LDP comes into focus. For
example, Abe’s publicization of the radar-lock incident and urging the PRC to refrain from
escalating (Smith 2019, 231) can be seen as his government creating audience costs to credibly

39
signal intent to mobilize popular support for the LDP. If the PRC were to continue to escalate and
Abe did not respond, he would be in essence “backing down” from his more aggressive stance.
Employing these credible commitment signals also helps the ruling LDP-run coalition
blunt the effectiveness of newer, more nationalist-forward parties, especially since they have new
space to maneuver when considering the dispute (Smith 2016, 234). By creating audience costs
and making credible commitments to defending the islands, the LDP can mobilize support for
their coalition rather than allowing smaller, more nationalist parties to capitalize on the hawkish
domestic environment. This runs the risk of exacerbating tensions with China, but that risk is an
acceptable cost to properly signal resolve to the domestic audience. Considering the current
domestic environment, the LDP can no longer look to take a reactionary and cautious approach,
and while these nationalist parties are still not in a position to lead the government, they can use
the issue to punish the LDP. While it is unlikely that these more proactive and aggressive policies
have led to a sort of “rally around the flag effect” (Liu 2021; Kobayashi and Katagiri 2021), the
domestic political environment incentivizes both mainstream and more explicitly nationalist
politicians to incur audience costs to show resolve vis-à-vis the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute.

40
Chapter 7: Counterarguments and Alternative Explanations
Prominent counterarguments and alternative explanations that downplay Japanese
domestic politics largely emphasize PRC aggression and territorial ambitions in the region and
realist theory. This thesis has examined both Chinese aggression’s role in the dispute and realist
theory in chapters 1, 2, and 4 and the following chapter will synthesize possible explanations for
the contours of the dispute through those lenses.
Arguments that squarely blame the PRC as the aggressor have become the conventional
viewpoint in Japan and the United States. The official position of the MOFA dismisses any
dispute of sovereignty over the islands and instead The MOFA comments that “Japan will act
firmly and calmly to maintain its territorial integrity” and denies that there were any agreements
to shelve any issues related to the islands (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2024). Japan’s perspective
is that the PRC challenges Japan’s sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands as a component
within a larger strategy to undermine territorial claims and political control of states in both
Northeast and Southeast Asia. Tokyo sees China’s increasingly frequent grey-zone tactics within
the context of the disputed islands as being buttressed alongside other grey-zone tactics in the
South China Sea, China’s refusal to recognize UNCLOS within disputes between the PRC and
the Philippines, attempts to isolate individual counterclaimants in the South China Sea, and
increasingly militarizing the region. This linkage from Tokyo’s view motivates to Japan to both
respond to the PRC within the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands as well as vocalizing Japan’s
opposition to the PRC in the South China Sea and framing Japan as a key stakeholder in the
South China Sea.

41
Tokyo has made this position clear through statements made by former Prime Minister
Abe deriding that the South China Sea was becoming “Lake Beijing” and Prime Minister
Kishida’s joint statement with Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh denouncing China’s
attempts to unilaterally alter the status quo.
While Western policymakers and academics have not as clearly linked disputes in
Northeast Asia to ongoing disputes in the South China Sea, perspectives that see the PRC as the
lone aggressor far outnumber those that consider Japan’s role in escalating the dispute. Many
Western policymakers and scholars have adopted offensive realist perspectives when explaining
China’s aggression and view the disputed territory within the context of the PRC’s rise in the
international system and through a growing rivalry with Japan, The United States, and the
collective “West.”
Prominently, Mearsheimer (2014, 700-706) argues that the PRC is attempting to
dominate the Indo-Pacific region and become the sole hegemon in the system and that Japan has
joined a balancing coalition led by the United States. Mearsheimer (2014) believes that this is not
due to the PRC’s leadership or political system, but rather a function of how the system operates
and bemoans that conflict is likely to occur in this security. Mearsheimer (2014, 725-726), like
Tokyo, groups the Senkaku/Diaoyu sovereignty dispute alongside the disputes in the South
China Sea and then goes further by grouping all of the PRC’s territorial disputes together within
the context of its quest to become the hegemon in the Indo-Pacific and asserts that China intends
to settle these disputes via coercion (Mearsheimer 2014, 728).
Other Western scholars and policymakers borrow from Mearsheimer’s theory of
offensive realism but instead of solely blaming the anarchical system, place more emphasis on
China’s leadership and political structure as primary motivators to the PRC’s aggression.

42
The above frameworks are all valuable and do much to augment our understanding of the
Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute. However, Japan’s role in escalating the stakes of the dispute and the
shifting nature of Japan’s domestic political landscape should not be ignored. Placing the
Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute within these greater contexts fleshes out our understanding of the PRC’s
grand strategies in the Indo-Pacific, but doing so also allows for key factors, such as Japan’s
domestic politics, to be downplayed or omitted and potentially ignores the agency of states aside
from the United States and PRC outside of them joining coalitions with the competing great
powers. Mearsheimer (2014, 740-776) does admit that the PRC may be bent to the will of
popular nationalism, but does not make such statements about other states in the Indo-Pacific,
and when describing the PRC’s actions in 2012 over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands does not seem
to consider Tokyo’s moves ahead of China’s reaction.

43
Chapter 8: Conclusion and Commentary
Other theoretical approaches and arguments that either downplay Japanese proactiveness
or stress a nationalist takeover of Japan should more fully consider the domestic environment of
Japan. Additionally, it should be noted that Japan has yet to experience a nationalist takeover
(Solis 2023) and that the nationalist forces influencing the debate around the Senkaku/Diaoyu
Islands do not have the same interest or pull over other issues plaguing the bilateral relationship
with the PRC. Nationalists have found the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands to be a unique issue where
they can shape the public debate (Smith 2016, 242). While still valuable for explaining the
interaction between Japan and the PRC, these frameworks omit Japanese domestic politics and
how voters inside Japan play a role in either prolonging or destabilizing the dispute.
The US-Japan Security agreement’s role in allowing Japanese policy elites to appeal to
nationalists in the country should also examined further. US military might remains the most
compelling piece of deterrence Japan has when it comes to countering PRC aggression towards
the disputed territory and in turn, creates a space where Japanese policy elites can signal to
nationalists. Without security guarantees from the United States, Japan may have to more
carefully curtail its reaction to incursions into the disputed territory and tamp down the
increasingly anti-Chinese rhetoric at home. The question of whether US security encourages antiChinese sentiment among US allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific is one that should be more
fully measured.
Additionally, the degree to which Japanese policy elites are leading domestic politics to a
more nationalistic and anti-Chinese through signaling (as opposed to how nationalists are
shaping policymaking) should also be further studied. Much research has been done along this

44
vein in the context of the United States domestic political debate, both in terms of foreign policy
and in more domestic-facing issues.
More theoretical consideration and research are needed here, and additional framing
should be considered. Some scholars such as Hall (2023), Horiuchi (2014), and Nakano (2022),
come to more stark conclusions surrounding the state of nationalism in Japan’s politics, while
others (Solis 2023; Lind and Ueki 2021) resist the characterization that Japanese party politics
has been overrun by populist forces. Further research with new and creative methods should
continue to build upon and add to the debate here. Additionally, seminal texts on Japanese
security and strategy such as Samuels (2008) and Green (2022) should continue to be drawn
upon with further considerations of the domestic political environment and the nature of how it
shapes Japanese defense policy. The Japanese-Chinese bilateral relationship should continue to
be explored with both realist and other theoretical structures in mind. Smith (2016), and Buzan
and Go (2020) provide both important research and strong conclusions about the relationship and
are important tools that scholars can leverage in conjunction with a wide variety of theoretical
approaches. The structure of Japanese domestic politics and the effects on domestic audience
behavior, party politics, and the structural component of foreign policy should also be further
examined. Catalinac (2017) should continue to be used as a cornerstone. Finally, while security
issues in East Asia and the “Indo-Pacific” can be understood as a struggle between the United
States and China, other actors, both major and minor, cannot be ignored. Here, Japan proves a
useful example of how countries outside of the US and China still have agency and contribute to
both the stability and the disarray in the region.

45
Bibliography
Baum, Matthew A., and Potter Philip B K. War and Democratic Constraint: How the Public
Influences Foreign Policy. Princeton University Press, 2015.
Bukh, Alexander. “Japan’s Territorial-Disputes Policy: Success or Failure?” Routledge Handbook
of Japanese Foreign Policy, Routledge, London ; New York, NY, 2018, pp. 188–201.
Bukh, Alexander. These Islands Are Ours: The Social Construction of Territorial Disputes in
Northeast Asia. Stanford University Press, 2020.
Buzan, Barry, and Evelyn Goh. Rethinking Sino-Japanese Alienation: History Problems and
Historical Opportunities. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Catalinac, Amy. Electoral Reform and National Security in Japan: From Pork to Foreign Policy.
Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Chansoria, Monika. China, Japan, and Senkaku Islands: Conflict in the East China Sea amid an
American Shadow. Routledge; Taylor & Francis Group, 2018.
“Could Asia Really Go to War over These?” The Economist, The Economist Newspaper, Sept.
2012, www.economist.com/leaders/2012/09/22/could-asia-really-go-to-war-over-these
Dell’Era, Alice. “Securitizing Beijing through the Maritime Commons: The ‘China Threat’ and
Japan’s security discourse in the abe era.” The Pacific Review, 2022, pp. 1–34,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2022.2137569.
Drifte, Reinhard “Senkaku chogyo shoto o meguru Nitchu tairitsu tanaage to gekika no aida to
wa” [The Japan-China Confrontation Over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands – Between “shelving”
and “dispute escalation,”] The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 12-30-3, July 27, 2014.
Fearon, James D. “Rationalist explanations for war.” International Organization, vol. 49, no. 3,
1995, pp. 379–414, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020818300033324.
Fearon, James D. “Signaling foreign policy interests.” Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 41,
no. 1, 1997, pp. 68–90, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002797041001004.
Green, Michael, et al. “Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia The Theory and Practice of Gray
Zone Deterrence. Center for Strategic and International, 2017. https://csis-websiteprod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fspublic/publication/170505_GreenM_CounteringCoercionAsia_Web.pdf
Green, Michael J. Line of Advantage: Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzō.
Columbia University Press, 2022.

46
Hahm, Sung Deuk, and Uk Heo. “History and Territorial Disputes, Domestic Politics, and
International Relations an Analysis of the Relationship among South Korea, China, and
Japan.” Korea Observer - Institute of Korean Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, 2019, pp. 53–80.,
https://doi.org/10.29152/koiks.2019.50.1.53.
Haipeng, Zhang, and Li Guoqiang. “The Treaty of Shimonoseki, the Diaoyu Islands and the
Ryukyu Issue.” International Critical Thought, vol. 7, no. 1, 2017, pp. 93–108.,
https://doi.org/10.1080/21598282.2017.1288362.
Hall, Jeffrey J. Japan’s Nationalist Right in the Internet Age: Online Media and Grassroots
Conservative Activism. First ed., Routledge, 2023.
Horiuchi, Toru. “Public Opinion in Japan and the Nationalization of the Senkaku Islands.” East
Asia, vol. 31, no. 1, 2014, pp. 23–47., https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-014-9202-6.
Johnston, Alastair Iain. “Is Chinese nationalism rising? evidence from Beijing.” International
Security, vol. 41, no. 3, 2017, pp. 7–43, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00265.
Kang, David C. “Getting Asia Wrong: The need for new analytical frameworks.” International
Security, vol. 27, no. 4, 2003, pp. 57–85, https://doi.org/10.1162/016228803321951090.
Kato, Norihiro. “Opinion | Japan’s Rising Nationalism - The New York Times.” New York
Times, 12 Sept. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/opinion/tea-party-politics-injapan.html.
Kobayashi, Tetsuro, and Azusa Katagiri. “The “Rally ’Round the flag” effect in territorial
disputes: Experimental evidence from Japan–China relations.” Journal of East Asian
Studies, vol. 18, no. 3, 2018, pp. 299–319, https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2018.21.
Kurosaki, Masahiro. “Japan’s Evolving Position on the Use of Force in Collective SelfDefense.” Default, 23 Aug. 2018, www.lawfaremedia.org/article/japans-evolving-positionuse-force-collective-self-defense.
Lai, Christina. “South Korea’s and Taiwan’s territorial disputes with Japan, 1990s
to 2018.” Asian Survey, vol. 60, no. 3, 2020, pp. 583–606,
https://doi.org/10.1525/as.2020.60.3.583.
Lake, David A. “Two cheers for bargaining theory: Assessing rationalist explanations of the Iraq
War.” International Security, vol. 35, no. 3, 2010, pp. 7–52,
https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00029.
Lind, Jennifer, and Ueki, Kawakatsu Chikako. “Is Japan back? measuring nationalism and
military assertiveness in Asia’s other great power.” Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 21,
no. 3, 2021, pp. 367–401, https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2021.20.

47
Liu, Christine. “Why talk tough? explaining Japanese prime ministers’ proactiveness in National
Defense Rhetoric.” Foreign Policy Analysis, vol. 18, no. 1, 2021,
https://doi.org/10.1093/fpa/orab035.
McCarthy, Mary, and Bukh, Alexander. “Japan’s Territorial-Disputes Policy: Success or
Failure?” Routledge Handbook of Japanese Foreign Policy, Routledge, London ; New
York, NY, 2020, pp. 188–201.
McCarthy, Mary M., and Alessio Patalano. “‘Japan as a Maritime Power: Deterrence,
Diplomacy, and Maritime Security.’” Routledge Handbook of Japanese Foreign Policy,
Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, London, UK, 2018, pp. 155–172.
Mearsheimer, John J. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Updated ed., W. W. Norton &
Company, 2014.
Minami, Daisuke. “Is Populism Finally Coming to Japan?” – The Diplomat, The Diplomat, 31
July 2019, thediplomat.com/2019/07/is-populism-finally-coming-to-japan/.
Milner, Helen V. Interests, Institutions, and Information: Domestic Politics and International
Relations. Princeton University Press, 1997.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. “外交青書.” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 31 Oct.
2023, www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/bluebook/index.html.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. “Situation of the Senkaku Islands,” 31 May. 2024,
https://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/c_m1/senkaku/page1we_000010.html
Moore, Gregory J. “‘In your face’: Domestic politics, Nationalism, and ‘face’ in the SinoJapanese islands dispute.” Asian Perspective, vol. 38, no. 2, 2014, pp. 219–240,
https://doi.org/10.1353/apr.2014.0009.
Nakahara, Junki. “Deconstructing Abe Shinzo’s ‘Take Back Japan’ Nationalism.” Asia-Pacific
Journal, vol. 19, no. 24, 15 Dec. 2021. 1.
Nakano, Koichi. “Rightward Shift of Japanese Politics.” Japan in the Heisei Era (1989-2019):
Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, UK, 2022, pp. 160–171.
O’Hanlon, Michael E. The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War over Small Stakes.
Brookings Institution Press, 2019.
“Opinion Polls Show Majority of Chinese and over 40% of Japanese Foresee Future Military
Conflict in Taiwan Strait.” Nippon.com, 7 July 2023, www.nippon.com/en/japandata/h01525/.

48
Ozaki, Shigeyoshi. “Territorial issues on the East China Sea: A Japanese position.” Journal of
East Asia and International Law, vol. 3, no. 1, 30 May 2010, pp. 8–8,
https://doi.org/10.14330/jeail.2010.3.1.08.
Patalano, Alessio. “Japan as a Maritime Power: Deterrence, Diplomacy, and Maritime
Security?” Routledge Handbook of Japanese Foreign Policy, Routledge, London ; New
York, NY, 2020, pp. 155–172.
Panda, Ankit. “Rationalist Explanations for War in the East China Sea.” The Diplomat, The
Diplomat, 12 Dec. 2013, thediplomat.com/2013/12/rationalist-explanations-for-war-in-theeast-china-sea/.
Powell, Robert. “War as a commitment problem.” International Organization, vol. 60, no. 01,
2006, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020818306060061.
Quek, Kai. “Four costly signaling mechanisms.” American Political Science Review, vol. 115,
no. 2, 2021, pp. 537–549, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055420001094.
Reiter, Dan. “Exploring the bargaining model of war.” Perspective on Politics, vol. 1, no. 1,
2003, pp. 27–43, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592703000033
Samuels, Richard J. Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia.
Cornell University Press, 2008.
Schultz, Kenneth A., and Henk E. Goemans. “Aims, claims, and the bargaining model of
war.” International Theory, vol. 11, no. 3, 2019, pp. 344–374,
https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752971919000071.
Smith, Sheila A. Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China. Columbia
University Press, 2016.
Smith, Sheila A. Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power. Harvard University Press,
2019.
Solís, Mireya. Japan’s Quiet Leadership: Reshaping the Indo-Pacific. Brookings Institution
Press, 2023.
Sonoda, Sunao. Sekai Nihon Ai [World, Japan, Love]. Daisan Seikei Kenkyūkai, 1981.
Stronach, Bruce. Beyond the Rising Sun: Nationalism in Contemporary Japan. Praeger, 1995.
Stokes, Bruce. “Hostile Neighbors: China vs. Japan.” Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes
Project, Pew Research Center, 13 Sept. 2016,
www.pewresearch.org/global/2016/09/13/hostile-neighbors-china-vs-japan/.

49
Sunohara, Tsuyoshi. Anto Senkaku kokuyu-ka [Fencing in the Dark: Japan, China, and the
Senkakus]. Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2020.
Suzuki, Shogo. “The rise of the Chinese ‘other’ in Japan’s construction of identity: Is China a
focal point of Japanese nationalism?” The Pacific Review, vol. 28, no. 1, 2014, pp. 95–116,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2014.970049.
Takahashi, Toshiya. “Oversimplifying Japan’s Right Turn.” East Asia Forum, 28 Mar. 2013,
eastasiaforum.org/2013/03/28/oversimplifying-japans-right-turn/.
Vox. Japan’s Rising Right-Wing Nationalism. YouTube, YouTube, 26 May 2017,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHJsoCAREsg. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
Walt, Stephen M. “Rigor or rigor mortis? rational choice and security studies.” International
Security, vol. 23, no. 4, 1999, pp. 5–48, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.23.4.5.
Wan, Ming. Sino-Japanese Relations: Interaction, Logic, and Transformation. Stanford
University Press, 2008.
Weiss, Jessica Chen. “Authoritarian signaling, mass audiences, and nationalist protest in China.”
International Organization, vol. 67, no. 1, 2013, pp. 1–35,
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020818312000380.

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Waves of Japanese foreign policy: from constrained bilateralism and political multilateralism to reinforced bilateralism in the post-Cold War era

PDF

The business of nationalism: how commodification sustains bilateral tensions

PDF

Mercantilism and marketization? Analysis of China's reserve accumulation and changes in exchange rate regime using the monetary policy trilemma

PDF

Creating destruction: the political economy of zombie firms

PDF

From amity to enmity: the breakdown in Sino-Japanese relations

PDF

International politics and domestic institutional change: the rise of executive war-making autonomy in the United States

PDF

The origins and evolution of the U.S. alliance network: how military allies transform and transact

PDF

Anti-foreign boycotts as a tool of economic coercion: the case of China

PDF

The partial Good Samaritan states: China and Japan in the international relations of autocracy and democracy

PDF

Challenges from below: the origins of status competitions in world politics

PDF

Perceiving and coping with threat: explaining East Asian perceptions toward China’s rise

PDF

Nationalisms in the era of global quality TV: how SVODs main/stream the local

Asset Metadata

Creator Bergman, Kuper (author)

Core Title Signals, tools, and commitments in the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute: the role of Japan's domestic political environment in shaping Japanese foreign policy within the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Area Studies

Degree Conferral Date 2024-08

Publication Date 07/12/2024

Defense Date 07/12/2024

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag China,Chinese foreign policy,Diaoyu,Diaoyu Islands,disputed territories,Japan,Japanese domestic politics,Japanese foreign policy,OAI-PMH Harvest,Senkaku,Senkaku Islands,Taiwan

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Katada, Saori (committee chair), Kang, Dave (committee member), Rosen, Stan (committee member)

Creator Email kuper.bergman@gmail.com,kuperb@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113997OI7

Unique identifier UC113997OI7

Identifier etd-BergmanKup-13231.pdf (filename)

Legacy Identifier etd-BergmanKup-13231

Document Type Thesis

Format theses (aat)

Rights Bergman, Kuper

Internet Media Type application/pdf

Type texts

Source 20240715-usctheses-batch-1182 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu