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Japanese Public Opinion and the War on Terrorism (The Palgrave Macmillan Series in International Political Communication)

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Japan might not be a perfect democracy, but in the area of defense policy, general public opinion matters a lot. This book provides a broad overview of how Japanese public opinion has influenced government decision in the so-called "war on terrorism" since 9/11. In his introduction, Paul Midford explains how mass opinion has played a significant role in constraining Japanese foreign and defense policy in the postwar period, and in what ways it has done so during the decision by Prime Minister Koizumi to support the US war first against Afghanistan and then against Iraq. The following six chapters focus on the most important domestic actors and how they have used but more often in what ways they have been constrained by the still powerful non-militarist attitudes in Japan. The chapters analyze the role of mass media in general (Ch. 2) and role of the media "selling" the SDF dispatch to Iraq in 2004 (Ch. 3), how Japan's governing and opposition parties used public opinion to further their arguments (Ch. 4). Robert D. Eldridge and Yasuaki Chidiwa do a very good job in explaining the role of intellectuals in this debate, and Paul Scott highlight the role of NGOs and public protest movements against the Iraq deployment. In the final chapter, Robert Eldridge returns to an area he has done research on for many years, namely the nagging problem of US bases in Okinawa.
Overall, this is an indispensable book for anyone who wants to better understand the often under-reported but nevertheless decisive domestic factors that have not only influenced Japan's policy on the war of terror, but Japanese foreign and defense policy in general. The editors have done a great job in bringing together original research papers by experts in their field.