"In the name of peace"

The interplay of foreign policy and state identity is at the core of how issues are produced as meaningful and as in need of being acted upon. This book approaches the articulation of Japan’s identity through the 2015 Legislation of Peace and Security by employing a radical poststructuralist framework, questioning the unveiled links by analyzing their relations to others. Here, Japan’s ‘peaceful’ identity is discursively produced and maintained in relation to multiple ‘aggressive’ others such as China and North Korea. ‘Pacifism’ is articulated in a Janus-faced manner that is continuous in its belief and aim and aligns it with existent concepts related to the self but with the focus on acting ‘proactively’ bears a different set of practices to achieve and fulfill this pursuit. This is how the rearticulation of ‘pacifism’ is made accord with a more proactive use of military capabilities and opens the way for new security and foreign policy practices for Japan.