Book Description
Geography, this author contends, is the indisputably unique feature of any country. Geography and Japan’s Strategic Choices begins by explaining Japan’s unique location and topography in comparison to other countries. Peter Woolley then examines the ways in which the country’s political leaders in various eras understood and acted on those geographical limitations and advantages. Proceeding chronologically through several distinct political eras, the book compares the Tokugawa era, the opening to the West, the Meiji Restoration, the long era of colonialization, industrialization and liberalization, the militarist reaction and World War II, the occupation, the Cold War, and finally the rudderless fin de siécle. Finally Woolley demonstrates how Japan’s strategic situation in the twenty-first century is informed by past and present geo-strategic calculations as well as by current domestic and international changes. For students and scholars of U.S.–Japan relations and of Japanese history and politics, this book offers any informed reader a fresh perspective on a critical international relationship.
About the author
PETER J. WOOLLEY is a professor of comparative politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University and the executive director of the university’s survey research center, PublicMind. He is the author of Japan’s Navy: Politics and Paradox, 1971–2000 and co-editor of American Politics: Core Argument/Current Controversy. He lives in Madison, New Jersey.
