Arming Japan

Through five decades of postwar alliance with the United States, Japanese bureaucrats, politicians, and industrialists have debated the advantages of kokusanka - the indigenous development and production of weapons of war. Arming Japan explores the evolution of the kokusanka debate, elucidating clearly the question of Japanese political and military autonomy in the postwar era. Drawing on scores of original documents, Michael Green brings life to the institutions, individuals, ideas, and interests that have shaped Japanese policymaking in an area where technology, security, and economics intersect. Beginning with an explanation of the prewar precedents for kokusanka, Arming Japan follows the growth of Japan's postwar defense industrial base from its rebirth in the Korean War to its collision with the United States Congress in the FSX controversy of the late 1980s. By chronicling the rise and fall of postwar Japanese strategies for kokusanka, Green demonstrates both the limits of technonationalism and the challenges of managing an alliance when the members' relative economic power shifts.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.