Description

As the ongoing crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program starkly illustrates, coordinating effective international responses to serious regional challenges can be extremely difficult. Part of the difficulty rests with the fact that in every major geopolitical flashpoint in the region, important countries either stand on opposite sides of the issue or have at best partially overlapping interests.  The United States, of course, has been a key player in every major security issue in East Asia since 1945. It has relied heavily both on its network of bilateral alliances and on its forward presence, primarily in Japan. Its two most important allies in the region are Japan and South Korea, which are not formal allies, but which share a broad range of values and interests. Arguably, there is considerable scope for enhancing security cooperation both bilaterally and trilaterally.  The purpose of the symposium was to explore the possibilities and limits of enhanced security cooperation in East Asia, primarily between these three countries, and in the first instance specifically with respect to North Korea, but also more broadly.  

"The American Approach to Security in Asia" by Professor Peter D. Feaver  Since the end of the Cold War, a bipartisan consensus, more or less, has guided U.S. grand strategy globally, and specifically in the Asian region.  As a candidate, Donald Trump campaigned on themes that indicated he would take U.S. foreign policy in dramatically different directions.  He has made some significant departures in policy, in particular dropping the TPP and withdrawing from the Paris Accords.  And he has made many more departures in rhetoric, in particular in the way he talks about the value of traditional alliances, the goals of international trade, and the way he wishes to confront the North Korean nuclear threat.  Yet overall, have Trump’s policies been more discontinuous or continuous?  I discussed the bidding, how we got here and where American foreign policy appears to be heading, paying special attention to the faultlines within the Trump Administration.  

Peter D. FEAVER (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1990), Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. Dr. Feaver is Director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS) and also Director of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy (AGS). Feaver is author of “Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations” (Harvard Press, 2003) and “Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons in the United States” (Cornell University Press, 1992). He is co-author: with Christopher Gelpi and Jason Reifler, of “Paying the Human Costs of War” (Princeton Press, 2009); with Susan Wasiolek and Anne Crossman, of “Getting the Best Out of College” (Ten Speed Press, 2008, 2nd edition 2012); and with Christopher Gelpi, of “Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force” (Princeton Press, 2004).  He has also authored a variety of monographs, scholarly articles, book chapters, and policy pieces on American foreign policy, public opinion, nuclear proliferation, civil-military relations, information warfare, and U.S. national security.  He is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and co-curator of the Elephants in the Room blog on ForeignPolicy.com. From June 2005 to July 2007, he served as Special Advisor for Strategic Planning and Institutional Reform on the National Security Council Staff at the White House where his responsibilities included the national security strategy, regional strategy reviews, and other political-military issues. In 1993-94, he served as Director for Defense Policy and Arms Control on the National Security Council at the White House where his responsibilities included the national security strategy review, counterproliferation policy, regional nuclear arms control, and other defense policy issues.  "History or Security?  Politics and Diplomacy over the Issue of Comfort Women among Japan, South Korea, and the United States" by Professor Naoko Kumagai   This presentation demonstrates how matters of geopolitical security have been able to override the historical issue of comfort women in the Japan-South Korea relationship.  The presentation explores the vicious circle wherein Korean and international criticism of Japan, partly fueled by Korean and international activists, stirred the “revisionist” backlash from Japan and worsened the overall Japan-South Korean diplomatic relationship. The presentation highlighted two distinctive problems in the vicious circle: the balance between reconciliation and factual accuracy and the neglect of moral or legal responsibilities. Japan’s hardliner conservatives havedenied the importance of moral responsibility, while anti-Japanese critics have overemphasized Japan’s legal responsibility. The presentation then examined how and to what extent America’s encouragement of reconciliation between Japan and South Korea, out of security concerns in the face of the North Korean nuclear and missile crisis and the rise of China, has served to ameliorate the problems and facilitate reconciliation.

 Naoko KUMAGAI (Ph.D., Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2009), Associate Professor and Director of the International Relations Program, International University of Japan, Minamiuonuma, Niigata Prefecture. Dr. Kumagai is the author of Jūgun Ianfu Mondai (Chikuma Shinsho, 2014), which was translated into English, "The Comfort Women: Historical, Political, Legal, and Moral Perspectives (English version of Jūgun Ianfu Mondai. Translated by David Noble)” (I-House Press, July 2016), selected for the 2014 LTCB (Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan) International Library for English translation. She published various papers and articles on Japan-Korea relations, forgiveness and reconciliation, international security, humanitarian law, and Japan-India relations. Among her articles are “The Absence of Consensus in Japan over the Issue of Comfort Women–With the Case of the Asian Women’s Fund from the Approach of Ontological Security” (Social Science Japan Journal, July 2015) and “Asian Women’s Fund Revisited” (Asia-Pacific Review, Vol.2, Issue 2, 2014). She is a recipient of the Nakasone Yasuhiro Award Incentive Award in July 2016. Her current research interests include disarmament and international security, weapons research and development, humanitarianism, the protection of civilians in armed conflict, and state sovereignty and transnational civil society.  

"Incompatible National Historical Narratives as an Obstacle to Security Cooperation" by Dr. Seung Hyok Lee.  In the current South Korea-Japan relations, incompatible ‘national historical narratives’ concerning certain past events at the citizen level are an influential factor binding governmental interactions in publicized bilateral issues. However, while the two societies increasingly disagree on the ‘contents’ of their respective narratives, the underlying patterns of how they permeate in each society are similar. The first pattern is a belief in ‘national exceptionalism’, and the second is a belief that their unique historical accomplishments are now being subjected to their neighbour’s distortion. Most citizens in each country, at present, are unaware that the two same ideational patterns are equally at work on the other side.  By promoting Japanese and South Korean public to recognize this fact, rather than focusing on the incompatible contents of the diverging national historical narratives, the two countries could attain a genuine ‘maturation’ in the bilateral relations. This presentation argued that in the long run, this mutual recognition at the citizen level is what will sustain a stable and lasting bilateral cooperation, including in the regional security issues.  Seung Hyok LEE (Ph.D., University of Toronto, 2011), Lecturer in Political Science, University of Toronto-Scarborough, and Associate at the Centre for the Study of Global Japan, Munk School of Global Affairs. Dr. Lee has served as Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Law, Hokkaido University, as well as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace and at the Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has also been Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Renison University College, University of Waterloo, and Visiting Scholar at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs. His main research interest is domestic society’s influence on publicized foreign policy issues, with a specific focus on Japan and the Korean Peninsula. He is the author of Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat (University of Toronto Press, 2016), “North Korea in South Korea-Japan Relations as a Source of Mutual Security Anxiety among Democratic Societies,” (The International Relations of the Asia-Pacific), and “Be Mature and Distinguish the ‘Forest’ from the ‘Trees’: Overcoming Korea-Japan Disputes Based on Incompatible National Historical Narratives” (Asteion).  Chair:  David A. WELCH (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1990), Dean’s Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Endowed Chair Program in Japanese Politics and Global Affairs, University of Toronto; CIGI Chair of Global Security, Balsillie School of International Affairs; Professor of Political Science, University of Waterloo; and Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation. Dr. Welch is author of Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (Princeton University Press, 2005), Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge University Press, 1993), and co-editor of Japan as a ‘Normal Country’? A Nation in Search of Its Place in the World (University of Toronto Press, 2011). He has recently been researching and writing on Asia-Pacific Security, with a particular focus on confidence, trust, empathy, threat perception, misperception, North Korea, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea.

Description

There have been a number of dynamics impacting the geopolitical landscape in East Asia over the past few years. The most acute – and recent –  examples of this have been the intensifying provocations from North Korea, which continues to look at enhancing its nuclear and missile program. But, there are also a number of other critical changes in the region – from new leadership in South Korea to leadership consolidation in China. The region also continues to adapt to a new administration in the US and its changing views on trade and – perhaps – alliances. All of these factors have made Japan’s geo-strategic environment more complex. How is Japan adapting to this change and what are the tripwires to watch for?  

Speaker Biography:  Jonathan Berkshire Miller is an international affairs professional with expertise on security, defense and intelligence issues in Northeast Asia. He is currently a senior visiting fellow with the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) based in Tokyo and a Distinguished Fellow with the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada. Additionally, he is the Director and co-founder of the Council on International Policy and a Senior Fellow on East Asia for the Asian Forum Japan.  Previously, he was an international affairs fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, and held a senior fellowship (2014 – 2017) with the EastWest Institute and a fellowship on Japan with the Pacific Forum CSIS from 2013 – 2016. In addition, Miller previously spent nearly a decade working on economic and security issues related to Asia with the Canadian federal government.  Miller is a regular contributor to The Economist Intelligence Unit, Foreign Affairs, Forbes and Newsweek Japan. He has also published widely in Foreign Policy, the World Affairs Journal, the Nikkei Asian Review, the Japan Times, the Mainichi Shimbun, the ASAN Forum, Jane’s Intelligence Review and Global Asia and been interviewed extensively by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, CNN, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, the Japan Times, Asahi Shimbun, the Voice of America and ABC News.

Description

In 2018, Japan celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration.  Canada’s own sesquicentennial year ended in 2017.  And 2018 marked the 90th anniversary of the formal establishment of Canada-Japan diplomatic relations. The questions that motivated this symposium reflected on those seminal moments.  What can we learn from Japan’s early global engagement and its embrace of modernity? What are the implications for Japan’s current leadership and diplomacy in regional and global settings? What needs to be done to strengthen relationships between Canada and Japan and to deepen their cooperation in pursuit of shared interests?  A distinguished group of speakers from Japan and Canada addressed such questions and opened an important, future-oriented conversation.

Program:  12:00-1:00  Registration and light lunch  1:00-2:15  Welcome Professor Randall Hansen Interim Director, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto  Ms Takako Ito, Consul General of Japan, Toronto  Professor David Welch, Dean’s Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Endowed Chair Program in Japanese Politics and Global Affairs, University of Toronto; Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo  Opening Keynote Ms Koko Kato, Special Advisor to the Cabinet Office, Government of Japan "Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution in Heavy Industry"  2:15-3:45  Panel 1: Japan’s Entry into International Society  Featured speaker: Professor Tomoko Okagaki, Dokkyo University Commentators:  Professor Robert Vipond, Department of Political Science Ms Deanna Horton, Distinguished Fellow, Asia Pacific Foundation  3:45-4:00  Break  4:00-5:30  Panel 2: Japan’s Future Challenges: Lessons from the Meiji Era  Featured speaker: Professor Yuichi Hosoya, Keio University Commentator:   Professor David Welch  5:30-6:30  Closing Roundtable Discussion  Dr. Sarah Taylor, Director General for North Asia and Oceania, Global Affairs Canada Professor Yuichi Hosoya Professor Tomoko Okagaki Ms Koko Kato  6:30-7:30  Reception   Panel 1: Japan’s Entry into International Society with feature speaker ProfessorTomoko Okagaki  What did the Meiji Restoration in 1868 entail for Japanese society, for its external relations, and for international society as a whole? The Meiji Restoration represented not only the official return to imperial rule from the Shogunate system, but also Japan’s modern nation-building and entry into international society. How did Japan embrace international constraints placed by the Euro-dominant international society of the late 19th century?  How did Japan embark on reforms and restructuring of feudal society?  What explains the rapidity and seeming facility of Japan in accepting international norms of the era? With particular focus on Japan’s conformity with international law, the talk will cover the nature of Japan’s encounter with the West and discuss universal themes involving nation-building and accession to international society by latecomer states. Meiji Japan’s experience may also share a common motif of foreign policy with Canada, which gradually achieved its diplomatic independence from Britain since Confederation, searching for its place in the changing distribution of power in the international system.  Panel 2: Japan’s Future Challenges: Lessons from the Meiji Era with featured speaker Professor Yuichi Hosoya  Japan’s experience in the last 150 years is extraordinary one.  150 years of modern Japanese history can be divided into two opposing periods. The first one lasted for 77 years since 1868 until 1945, and the second one lasted for 73 years since 1945 until today. Japan had become the first non-Western modernized nation-state that equaled to major Western powers.  Meanwhile Japan had presented the vision of a “rich nation and strong army” since the Meiji Era.  Japan had lost its “strong army” at the end of the Second World War.  In the second period, Japan had pursued the path of a peace-loving country based on its second largest economy in the world. But Japan has been losing certain features of a “rich nation” in the “lost decades” since the end of the Cold War.  Today, Japan is trying to present a new international identity to the world, reflecting its own historical lessons of the last 150 years.      Speaker Bios:  Deanna Horton, Fellow, Munk School of Global Affairs served for over 30 years in Canada’s foreign service, including 12 years at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, most recently as Minister and Deputy Head of Mission.  She spent two years at the U.S. State Department Foreign Service Institute in Yokohama studying Japan’s language, history, and culture.  Her most recent writing on Japan can be found at: http://www.asiapacific.ca/op-eds/cultivating-cool-branding-lessons-canada-japan  HOSOYA Yuichi is Professor of International Politics at Keio University, Tokyo. He is also Senior Researcher at the Institute for International Policy Studies (IIPS), Senior Fellow at The Tokyo Foundation (TKFD), and also Adjunct Fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA). Professor Hosoya was a member of the Advisory Board at Japan’s National Security Council (NSC) (2014-2016). He was also a member of Prime Minister’s Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security (2013-14), and Prime Minister’s Advisory Panel on National Security and Defense Capabilities (2013), in which capacity he assisted to draft Japan’s first National Security Strategy. Professor Hosoya studied international politics at Rikkyo (BA), Birmingham (MIS), and Keio (Ph.D.).  He was a visiting professor and Japan Chair (2009–2010) at Sciences-Po in Paris (Institut d’Études Politiques) and a visiting fellow (Fulbright Fellow, 2008–2009) at Princeton University. His research interests include the postwar international history, British diplomatic history, Japanese foreign and security policy, and contemporary East Asian international politics. His comments appeared at New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, USA Today, Die Welt and Le Monde, as well as at major Japanese media.  Koko Kato is Special Advisor to the Cabinet Office, Government of Japan; Project Coordinator, Sakubei Yamamoto Collection inscribed in Memory of the World; Managing Director, National Congress of Industrial Heritage Foundation; Coordinator, Cabinet Secretariat Industrial History Project Team; and Coordinator, The World Heritage Council for the Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution. Ms Kato graduated from Keio University, majoring in literature. She built up her career as a conference interpreter, and by working at CBS News, Tokyo branch. After completing the Master of Community and Regional Planning (MCRP) program at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, she started her own business in Tokyo. She has also devoted her energies to the research on domestic and international industrial heritages. She played the leading role in the inscription of the “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution – Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining” on the World Heritage List in 2015. Publication: “Industrial Heritage” (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc., 1998) as well as many articles in magazines such as “Gakutou” and “Chiri.” Ms Kato also scripted and total produced the Nomination file on the “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution” to be inscribed on the World Heritage List.  Tomoko T. Okagaki (Ph.D., The University of Michigan, 2005) is Professor of Political Science at Dokkyo University in Japan and author of The Logic of Conformity: Japan’s Entry in International Society (The University of Toronto Press, 2013). She was a visiting student at the University of Toronto (Sankei Scholarship) in 1986-1987 and also studied Canadian foreign policy at the University of British Columbia as a recipient of Government of Canada Award 1988-89, obtaining her master’s degree there. Her long-standing research interests in international politics include, inter alia, state socialization, comparative regionalism, and theories of international relations. She held an Abe Fellowship from 2008-2010, spending a total of two years at Harvard University, as an academic associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and as a visiting scholar at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. In 2014 she taught Asian regionalism at le Département de Géographie, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne as a professeure invitée and at le Centre d’etudes japonaises, L’institut national des langues et civilisations orientales as a chercheuse invitée.  Sarah Taylor is the Director-General for North Asia and Oceania at Global Affairs Canada. She was Deputy Head of Mission and Minister for Political-Economic Relations and Public Diplomacy at the Embassy of Canada to the People’s Republic of China from August 2011 to July 2015, and Special Advisor to the Assistant Deputy Minister for Asia Pacific at Global Affairs Canada from July 2015 to June 2016. Prior to her assignment in China, she worked from 2006 to 2011 in the Privy Council Office, the department supporting Canada’s Prime Minister. Within the Privy Council Office she served as acting Executive Director of the International Assessment Staff, and before that as its Deputy Executive Director, and as Director of its Asia Division. From 1990 to 2006 she was a foreign service officer with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. In that capacity she served abroad at Canadian missions in Jakarta (2000-2003), Beijing (1992-1995) and Hong Kong (1991-1992). At headquarters she held positions including liaison officer and speech-writer for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Director of the Southeast Asia Division and Director of the Development Policies and Institutions Division. Dr. Taylor holds a doctorate (1990) and an M.Phil. degree (1984) from Cambridge University, both in East Asian archaeology. She spent a year at Beijing University (1982-83) under the auspices of the Canada-China Scholarly Exchange programme, and has also studied for shorter periods in Korea and Japan. She holds an Honours B.A. from the University of Toronto.  Robert Vipond is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for the Study of the United States at the University of Toronto. He has written broadly on the political development of Canada. This includes co-editorship of Roads to Confederation: The Making of Confederation, 1867 (U of T Press, 2017), a two-volume anthology of leading essays on the Confederation era.  Chair:  David A. WELCH (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1990), Dean’s Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Endowed Chair Program in Japanese Politics and Global Affairs, University of Toronto; CIGI Chair of Global Security, Balsillie School of International Affairs; Professor of Political Science, University of Waterloo; and Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation. Dr. Welch is author of Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (Princeton University Press, 2005), Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge University Press, 1993), and co-editor of Japan as a ‘Normal Country’? A Nation in Search of Its Place in the World (University of Toronto Press, 2011). He has recently been researching and writing on Asia-Pacific Security, with a particular focus on confidence, trust, empathy, threat perception, misperception, North Korea, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea.

Description

 In February 2018, fourteen University of Toronto students participated in the Kakehashi Project.  Promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan and organized by the Centre for the Study of Global Japan in association with the Canadian administrator of the project, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, the program aimed to develop a network of exchanges that will lead to deepening mutual understanding and friendship between Japan and Canada.  This workshop, with support from the Consul-General of Japan Takako Ito, provided a forum for the participating students to present their reflections and discuss how the experience helped shape their academic and cultural perceptions of Japan. Students addressed topics ranging from Japanese security policy to the implications of an aging population.  A light lunch was provided.