The Dragon’s Shadow: The Rise of China and Japan’s New Nationalism
| Date | Tuesday, December 19, 2006 |
| Location | The Henry L. Stimson Center 1111 19th Street NW, 12th Floor, Washington, DC 20036 |
Benjamin Self returned to the Stimson Center on December 19th to speak upon the launch of his new publication: The Dragon’s Shadow: The Rise of China and Japan’s New Nationalism. Also presenting was Stimson Center Senior Associate Rich Cronin, who provided the book’s afterword on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s election and its implications for the evolving situation in northeast Asia. According to Self, Sino-Japanese relations flourished in the post-war paradigm of ‘Friendship Diplomacy.’ But several factors have since threatened relations between the traditional Asian rivals, including the collapse of the Cold War justification for the US-Japan security alliance, China’s worrying ascendancy in economic and military power, and North Korea’s nuclear program. These developments have prompted Japan to adopt a form of 'reluctant realism,' and have given traction to a new form of revisionist nationalism amongst a new generation of Japanese politicians and voters. Former Prime Minister Koizumi’s insistent visits to the Yasukuni war shrine, for example, revealed a fundamental impasse in Sino-Japanese relations, and offer a foreboding glimpse of future tensions. However, the resurgence of Japanese nationalism may be more superficial than it appears, cautions Rich Cronin in the afterword: Shinzo Abe’s thus-far decision to refrain from visiting the Yasukuni shrine, and apparent doubts about the domestic appeal of his personal brand of nationalism, may justify more nuanced predictions of Sino-Japanese relations.