Japan’s Quiet Leadership Reshaping the Indo-Pacific

By Mireya Solis

Why has Japan emerged from the “lost decades” unscathed from the populist wave and a far more consequential actor in the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific?

In answering this question, Japan’s Quiet Leadership provides a sweeping look at Japan’s domestic economic and political evolution, its economic statecraft, and the array of geopolitical challenges that have triggered a gradual but substantial shift in the country’s security profile. This deep dive into Japan’s trajectory over the last three decades underscores Japan’s hidden strengths in its democratic resilience, social stability, and proactive diplomacy; while reckoning with the profound challenges the nation faces: depopulation, rising inequality, voter disengagement, and threats to Asia’s long peace. The book traces the profound currents of change coursing through the Japanese polity and its external environment; and the myriad ways in which Japan’s experience has become more relevant to countries coping with slow growth, adverse demographics, adjustment to economic globalization, and the emergence of a powerful and assertive China. This is a story of Japan’s reinvention as a network power to overcome the harsh realities of diminishing relative capabilities.

Mireya Solís is Director of the Center for Policy Studies and Knight Chair in Japan Studies at the Brookings Institution, where she specializes in Japanese foreign economic policy, regional integration in East Asia and U.S. economic strategy in Asia.

Illuminates where the Japanese polity, economy, and people are heading as we move past the Abe era, and well into the 2020s and beyond.

Brookings Institution Press

September 2023

232 pages

22 illustrations

Hardback 978 0 8157 4026 1

Paperback 978 0 8157 3997 5 eBook 978 0 8157 3998 2

Political Science • World / Asian