Identity, Foreign Policy and the 'Other': Japan's 'Russia'

This article examines contemporary Japan's identity construction through the self/other lens, focusing on USSR/Russia as Japan's 'other'. It identifies two main constitutive dimensions, political and socio-cultural, along which Japan's identity vis-a-vis the Soviet Union was constructed during the Cold War years. The origins and the nature of these constructs are examined in the first part of this case study. Unlike the existent Japan-related constructivist scholarship, this article argues that postwar Japan's identity had both domestic and international sources and that certain dimensions of the contemporary identity discourse can be traced to the prewar years. It also argues that the political and the socio-cultural identities, while overlapping in certain parts, led to different constructions of the Japanese 'self'. The operation of these constructions in Japan's relations with post-communist Russia is examined in the second part of this article, with special attention paid to the territorial dispute which continues to haunt bilateral relations.