Russian direction of Japan’s foreign policy: Contents and forming factors

Abstract

The article provides a general evaluation of the Russian direction of Japan’s foreign policy as of late 2023 and analyzes the factors that determine its contents. It considers the speeches of the Prime Minister of Japan, the sections of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s publications which focus on Russia-Japan relations, analyzes the state of economic ties given the sanctions imposed by Japan on Russia, and studies the place of Russia in Japan’s National Security Strategy, adopted in late 2022. The author comes to the conclusion that, despite the obvious influence of the U.S. on the Japanese position regarding Russia, one can hardly speak of Washington bluntly imposing its views on Tokyo. Rather, we find an already established consensus regarding this issue between Japan and the U.S. Meanwhile, the “foreign pressure” is not limited to interaction with the United States, as cooperation with multilateral formats of the “collective West” starts to play an increasingly important role for Japan. From the point of view of domestic politics, the situation also facilitates the continuation of Tokyo’s anti -Russian course, as, within the country, those expressing alternative points of view are de-facto subject to ostracism and “cancelling.” But, even given all these negative factors, one can still glimpse some signs of pragmatism in the Russian direction of Japan’s foreign policy. This lets one hope that, should the Ukrainian crisis be resolved, the Japanese leadership will not put obstacles in the way of normalization of Russia-Japan relations.

Keywords

• japan
• foreign policy
• russia-japan relations
• ukrainian crisis
• foreign policy decision making process
• japan-u.s. relations