Change in Japans Grand Strategy: Why and How Much?
by Mike M. Mochizuki The authors of these excellent books on Japanese grand strategy traverse beyond their home disciplines. The historian Kenneth B. Pyle explains shifts in Japan by applying a political science theory that argues that the international system shapes a country’s domestic institutions as well as its external behavior. The political scientist Richard J. Samuels places the current Japanese debates about strategy in a broad historical context to “connect the ideological dots” of national discourse over nearly 150 years of history. Both books seek to assess the degree and nature of change in Japanese strategy, to explain this change, and to suggest where Japan might be headed. Although there is much about which Pyle and Samuels agree, there are also some significant differences.
