Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures
Preface
Note on Names and Currency
1. Japan’s Aging Peace
2. Multiple Militarisms
3. Who Will Fight? The JSDF’s Demographic Crises
4. Technical-Infrastructural Constraints and the Capacity Crises
5. Antimilitarism and the Politics of Restraint
6. Peace Culture and Normative Restraints
7. Crafting Peace Among Militarisms
8. Aging Gracefully
Appendix A: Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation (Abridged)
Appendix B: Peace and War Museums in Japan
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Tom Phuong Le is assistant professor of politics at Pomona College.

Reviews

As China’s power and ambitions grow, how will its neighbors respond? Japan’s Aging Peace addresses the future of Japanese national security policy, providing an important update to a longstanding debate. Arguing that a country’s security policy is supported by an ‘ecosystem’ of diverse social attributes—such as demographics, religion, and gender inequality—Le enriches debates about Japan’s, and East Asia’s, future.
*Jennifer Lind, author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics*

Tom Phuong Le has written a landmark study challenging widespread claims that Japan is “normalizing” and “remilitarizing.” Developing a useful taxonomy of militarism, antimilitarism, and pacifism, Le demonstrates the continued salience of normative constraints on deploying Japan’s military and offers an original argument about how Japan’s aging and declining population also limits the country’s supposed remilitarization. Japan’s Aging Peace deserves to be read by anyone interested in Japan, international politics in East Asia, U.S. policy in this region, or militarism and pacifism more generally.
*Paul Midford, author of Overcoming Isolationism: Japan’s Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism*

Japan’s Aging Peace innovatively explores the connection between Japan’s rapidly aging and shrinking population and the direction of its national security policy. Le marshals a wide range of evidence to support the view that Japan’s distinctive antimilitarist culture will continue to constrain nationalist impulses for years to come.
*Andrew Oros, author of Japan’s Security Renaissance: New Policies and Politics for the Twenty-First Century*

How is Japan not a “normal” country in security policy and why? No one but Tom Phuong Le has ever brought to bear anywhere near this volume or variety of evidence, nor this variety of conceptual lenses, to answering this question. Japan’s Aging Peace is a masterwork in providing a subtle, sophisticated, and penetrating understanding of Japanese antimilitarism.
*David Welch, author of Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change*