Deconstructing Japan's foreign and security policy transformation: Patterns of change and continuity

Based on the presumption that Japan's defense strategy has changed considerably since the end of the Cold War, this thesis explains Japan's rationale for the transformation of its foreign and security policies by using discourse analysis as its method. Due to the deterioration of the security environment surrounding Japan, the Japanese government has improved Japan's military capabilities and formed the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) to maintain the rules-based international order. Through the investigation of primary documents and policy statements of political figures, firstly, the thesis aims to show that Japan has made security reforms in response to growing security threats emanating from aggressive powers, which can be best understood with the Balance of Threat theory. On the other hand, while certain aspects of Japan's defense posture can be understood within the framework of Realism, there are also norm-based, inclusive elements in Japan's FOIP that Realist theory falls short of explaining. To that end, secondly, the thesis aims to reveal that the FOIP is inherently consistent with the concept of Security Community as a premise of Constructivism. In the end, through identifying the change in Japan's foreign and security policy as gradual, the thesis aims to demonstrate the consistency rooted in Japan's foreign and security policy discourse.