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Characteristics of the Foreign Policy Decision-Making System in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Chihiro Hosoya
Chihiro Hosoya
Affiliation:
Hitotsubachi University
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Extract

In his pioneering essay, “The Element of Decision in the Pattern of of War,” Theodore Abel argues, on the basis of twenty-five sample studies, “The rational, calculating decision for war is reached far in advance of the actual outbreak of hostilities,” and “in no case is the decision precipitated by emotional tensions, sentimentality, crowd behavior, or other irrational motivation. In every case, the decision is based upon a careful weighing of chances and of anticipating consequences.” This thesis—that a state selects an action of war from a number of alternatives in a conscious decision to maximize its goals after a careful weighing of available means and of possible consequences—may be applied as a conceptual scheme which we could term the rational calculation model.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , April 1974 , pp. 353 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1974

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References

1 Abel, Theodore, “The Element of Decision in the Pattern of War,” American Sociological Review, VI (December 1941), 855–59Google Scholar.

2 Thomson, James C. Jr., “The Role of the Department of State,” unpub. essay delivered at the Conference on Japanese-American Relations, 1931–1941 (Kawaguchi-ko, Japan, July 14–18, 1969), 21Google Scholar.

3 Quoted in Wohlstetter, Roberta, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford 1962), 264Google Scholar.

4 Quoted in Minear, Richard H., Victor's Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (Princeton 1971), 128–31Google Scholar.

5 For example, see Hunter, Douglas E., “Application of Deterrence Theory to the 1941 Japanese Decision for War,” unpub. (UCLA 1964)Google Scholar.

6 Russett, Bruce M., Journal of Peace Research, IV, No. 2 (1967), 89, 98–99Google Scholar.

7 Fumimaro, Konoye, Heiwa e no Doryoku [Efforts to Maintain Peace] (Tokyo 1946), 94Google Scholar.

8 Russett (fn. 6), 91; emphasis added.

9 Hosoya, , “Twenty-five Years After Pearl Harbor: A New Look at Japan's Decision for War,” in Imperial Japan and Asia: A Reassessment, compiled by Grant K. Goodman, Occasional Papers of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University (New York 1967)Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., 58–59; Ike, Nobutaka, Japan's Decision for War: Records of the 1941 Policy Conferences (Stanford 1967), Introduction, xxv–xxviGoogle Scholar.

11 “Assumptions of Rationality and Non-Rationality in Models of the International System,” in Knorr, Klaus and Verba, Sidney, eds., The International System: Theoretical Essays (Princeton 1961), 103Google Scholar.

12 U. S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 1939, Vol. III, 606–7.

13 Craigie to Eden, Report No. 2173, November 1, 1941 (F.O. 371/35957), Public Record Office.

14 Hilsman, Roger, To Move a Nation (New York 1964), 3–10Google Scholar; Allison, Graham T., Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York 1971)Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., 144.

16 Regarding Japan's decision for Pearl Harbor, see Allison, Graham T. and Halperin, Morton H., “Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications,” World Politics, XXIV (Spring Supplement 1972), 66–70Google Scholar.

17 Report No. 2173 (fn. 13), April 23, 1943.

18 The most relevant and informative accounts are Hisao, Tani, Kimitsu Nichi-Ro Sen-shi [The Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War] (Tokyo 1966)Google Scholar, and Okamoto, Shumpei, The Japanese Oligarchy and the Russo-Japanese War (New York 1970), 57–102Google Scholar.

19 Ike (fn. 10), 262–83.

20 Hosoya, , Shiberia Shuppei no shi-teki Kenkyii [Japan's Armed Intervention in Siberia] (Tokyo 1955)Google Scholar; Morley, James W., The Japanese Thrust Into Siberia, 1918 (New York 1957)Google Scholar.

21 Hosoya, , Roshia Kakumei to ‘Nippon [The Russian Revolution and Japan] (Tokyo 1971), 21Google Scholar.

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23 Bōei, Bōeichō Senshi-shitsu, Kenshushō, ed., Daihonei Rilugunbu [Section of Military History, Ministry of Defense, ed., Division of War, General Headquarters], Vol. I (Tokyo 1967), 303–5Google Scholar.

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25 Neu, Charles E., “The United States and East Asia, 1906–1913,” unpub. paper presented at the Cuernavaca Conference (January 1970), 5–7Google Scholar.

26 Regarding the formulation of the United States policy toward Russia in early March 1918, see Kennan, George F., Russia Leaves the War (Princeton 1956), 479–83Google Scholar.

27 Maruyama, Masao, Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics, ed. Morris, Ivan (Oxford 1963), 107Google Scholar.

28 Butow, Robert J. C., Tojo and the Coming of the War (Princeton 1961), 308Google Scholar.

29 Hosoya, , “Retrogression in Japan's Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process,” in Morley, James W., ed., Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan (Princeton 1971), 93–94Google Scholar.

30 Tsuji, Kiyoaki, “Decision-Making in the Japanese Government: A Study of Ringisei” in Ward, Robert E., ed., Political Development in Modern Japan (Princeton 1968), 458Google Scholar.

31 Tatsuo, Kobayashi, ed., Suiusō Nikki [Suiusō Diary of Itō Miyoji] (Tokyo 1966), 125–96Google Scholar.

32 Hosoya, , “A Case Study of the Japanese Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process: Japan's Response to the German-Soviet War, 1941,” unpub. paper delivered at the University Seminar on Modern East Asia: Japan (Columbia University, May 11, 1963)Google Scholar.

33 See, for instance, Kennan, George F., Memoirs, 2 vols. (Boston 1967 and 1972)Google Scholar; Acheson, Deany, Present at the Creation (New York 1969)Google Scholar; Hilsman (fn. 14).