How Japanese Influence Is Rising

Past studies of Japan’s relevance as a global and regional actor have often focused on contradictions, whether tensions between the country’s success as a fast-growth economy in the 1960s and 1970s and its lost decades of relative economic stagnation after the 1990s, or the apparent historic unwillingness of its public or leaders to shape the international order.

Mireya Solis’s timely study challenges these familiar narratives with a picture of a much more engaged and effective government. Far from dominated by sclerotic institutions or risk aversion, Japan under Fumio Kishida (and predecessors, most notably the late Shinzo Abe) is becoming a far more influential actor. In four key respects — resistance to populist politics; ability to develop strong executive decision-making; promotion of network diplomacy, and ability to take the lead bilaterally, multilaterally and in key institutions such as the G20 and G7 — Japan’s influence compensates for the weaknesses and introspective tendencies of other states, including, strikingly, the US. Yes, Japan faces major challenges, including demographic pressures, limits to immigration, high domestic debt, popular disengagement from politics and threats from authoritarian states, particularly China. Nonetheless, its experience provides numerous past and present lessons (eloquently described in Solis’s comprehensive analysis) for other states on how to adapt to today’s geostrategic and geoeconomic pressures.

Japan’s Quiet Leadership: Reshaping the Indo-pacific

By Mireya Solis

Brookings Institution Press, 2023, 260 pages, $74.42 (Hardback)