Risk State ─ Japan's Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty

The increase of new complex security challenges and the heightening significance of a diverse array of actors has simultaneously posed a challenge to traditional perspectives on international relations and foreign policy and created an opportunity for new concepts to be applied. Conventional explanations of Japana€?s foreign policy have provided us with theoretically predetermined understandings and fallacious predictions. Reformulating risk in its application to the study of international relations and foreign policy, this volume promises new insights into the analysis of contemporary foreign policy in East Asia and Japana€?s post-Cold War international relations in particular.

Sebastian Maslow is a doctoral student at Tohoku Universitya€?s Graduate School of Law where he is completing research on North Koreaa€?s impact on Japana€?s foreign and national security policy process. Previously, he taught at the Centre for East Asia Studies at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Ra Mason is lecturer in Asia-Pacific Studies at the University of Central Lancashire, visiting research fellow with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at the University of the Ryukyus and an Honorary Fellow of the White Rose East Asia Centre, University of Sheffield. Paul Oa€?Shea is assistant professor at the Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, and an honorary research fellow at the White Rose East Asia Centre.