(4.17.2017) Powerful or powerless Japan? Investigating the full extent of the world's third-largest power Slides for speaker, Dr. Guibourg Delamotte. Speaker: Dr. Guibourg Delamotte, Associate Professor of Political science at the French Institute of Oriental Studies (Inalco)’s Japanese studies department Discussant: Dr. Satoru Nagao, Research Fellow at the Institute for Future Engineering, Visiting Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Oriental Cultures at Gakushuin University, Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, and Lecturer at Aoyama-Gakuin and Komazawa universities. ICAS public lecture series videos are posted on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAA67B040B82B8AEF

1. Powerful or
powerless Japan?
Guibourg DELAMOTTE, PhD
Assoc. Prof. of Political Science, Japanese studies Dpt, National Oriental Studies Institute
(Paris),
Adjunct Fellow, Temple University
17 April 2017

2. Defining power
• “the capacity to do, to make do, to prevent from doing or to
refuse to do “ or “the capacity to do things and in social
situations to affect others to get the outcomes we want” .
• “the ability of a country to structure a situation so that other
countries will develop preferences or define their interest in
ways consistent with its own”. Is Japan powerful according to
these definitions?

3. The changing nature of
Japanese power
I. Japan’s power after WWII: economic and financial might
II. The impact of the end of the CW: discovering “international
cooperation”
III. PM Abe’s policy and Japanese power: Japan as a
“hardening” power
IV. Japan’s soft power (1. Is there any soft power without hard
power? 2. A limited resource)

4. Japan’s weaknesses
I. Economic aspects:
1. Massive public debt 2. Demographics
I. International influence:
1. Japan in International organisations
2. History and Japan’s international image
I. The 2015 reforms and regional security challenges:
1. Article 9 as strength or weakness? (...an element of national
identity)
2. Beyond the constitutional framework: SDF operational
capabilities
3. Dependency on the US (…and coping with Donald Trump)