Literature has tended to characterise Japanese foreign policy as primarily reactive to US interests, with many analyses focusing on aspects such as the gaiatsu or US pressure on Tokyo. Some analysts go further and depict Japan as a ‘reactive state’ with a foreign policy characterised as passive, risk-avoiding, ineffective and lacking of assertiveness. Accordingly, changes in Japanese diplomacy occur as a response to international stimuli rather than to domestic needs. However, while outside pressure is crucial in accounting for Japan’s foreign policy, approaches based solely on the gaiatsu/‘reactive state thesis’ fail to provide a full explanation of Japan’s behaviour, particularly in the promotion of regional initiatives. This article studies Japan’s post-Cold War Asian regional policy and shows that its Asia-Pacific strategy cannot be explained as merely a reactive policy with a tendency to concede to US pressure. We aim to fill this gap by adopting a neoclassical realist approach that incorporates gaiatsu and their interplay with intervening variables at the individual and domestic levels. We demonstrate that domestic political actors have played a primary role in defining Tokyo’s Asia-Pacific policy choices and argue that Japan has pursued a relatively independent regional strategy vis-à-vis the USA in the post-Cold War period.

中文翻译：

---

超越外压模式：日本的亚太政策与新古典现实主义

文献倾向于将日本的外交政策描述为主要是对美国利益的反应，许多分析侧重于诸如gaiatsu或美国对东京的压力等方面。一些分析人士更进一步，将日本描述为一个“被动的国家”，其外交政策的特点是被动、规避风险、效率低下和缺乏自信。因此，日本外交的变化是对国际刺激而非国内需求的回应。然而，虽然外部压力对于解释日本的外交政策至关重要，但仅基于外压的方法/“反应性国家论点”未能全面解释日本的行为，特别是在促进地区倡议方面。本文研究了冷战后日本的亚洲地区政策，并表明其亚太战略不能仅仅解释为一种倾向于向美国施压的反应性政策。我们的目标是通过采用新古典现实主义方法来填补这一空白，该方法将gaiatsu及其与个人和家庭层面的干预变量的相互作用结合起来。我们证明了国内政治行为体在定义东京的亚太政策选择方面发挥了主要作用，并认为日本在冷战后时期对美国采取了相对独立的区域战略。