Introduction

Japan has been a pacifist country and a reliable ally of the West for more than half a century. Today, most casual observers take this situation for granted, and generally assume that Japan's defeat and subsequent occupation by the United States left the country with virtually no other option. It is true that Japan had limited options – the country was officially occupied for seven years and, later, Cold War dynamics narrowed Japan's room for maneuver. However, a careful look at Japan in the decades after the crushing defeat of 1945 reveals a country that not only made some unexpected choices and stuck to them, but also a state that was as preoccupied with its international stature as it had been before the war.