Japan’s Security and Historical Revisionism: Explaining the Variation in Responses to and Impact of Textbook Controversies

This article builds on previous academic works to elucidate a theory as to how Japan’s historical revisionism could have a negative impact on Japan’s security. It then tests this theory by examining the impact that the 1982, 1986, 2001 and 2005 controversies had on Japan’s relationships with China, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. It concludes that historical revisionism does not have a significant security impact, defined as audience states’ distancing themselves from Japan, diplomatically ‘soft’ balancing Japan, or militarily ‘hard’ balancing Japan. This research design is an improvement over previous works on this subject because it draws a clear distinction between reaction and impact. Even though it is ‘cheap’ to impute Japanese motives following an act of historical revisionism, it is ‘costly’ to act on such accusations by either distancing from Japan or balancing against Japan. This helps clarify what concerns– if any–Japan should have about the collateral damage arising from historical revisionism. Based on the empirical evidence examined, historical revisionism per se does not pose a serious problem to Japan because the most important determinant of how severe a controversy’s impact on Japan’s relationship with a given audience state is the pre-existing nature of Japan’s security and economic relationship with that state. The most significant consequence of revisionism is that it presents an opening for China—Japan’s main security rival in the region—to attempt to ‘soft’ balance Japan by rallying international opinion against Japan in such a way as to impede other Japanese diplomatic objectives.