NBAS: "Japan’s Grand Strategy: Liminal Power in an Uncertain World"

About the Talk

Japan is a liminal power, straddling contrasting identities in terms of its power status—from small power to great power—shaped by shifts in material capabilities, international standing, and overlapping social and geographic affiliations (e.g. Western, modern, and Asian). Using a historical institutionalist approach, this book traces the evolution of Japan’s grand strategy from the Meiji period (1868) to the 2020s. Drawing on selected chapters, this talk focuses on the contemporary era, examining how Japan has constructed its Indo-Pacific grand strategy around the concept of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific.” It argues that major shifts in the strategic environment created windows of opportunity that enabled Japan’s core decision-makers to construct—and reconstruct—its grand strategy. To learn more about the book, visit Oxford University Press's website here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/japans-grand-strategy-9780198872627?q=japan%27s%20grand%20strategy&cc=gb&lang=en.

About the Speakers

Saori N. Katada is Professor of International Relations and the Director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. She served as the vice president of the International Studies Association and on the editorial team of Review of International Political Economy. Her single-authored book, Japan's New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific, was published by Columbia University Press in 2020, and her co-authored book, Japan’s Grand Strategy: Liminal Power in an Uncertain World, with Kei Koga, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in March 2026. Her other single-authored book Banking on Stability: Japan and the Cross-Pacific Dynamics of International Financial Crisis Management (University of Michigan Press, 2001) received the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Book Award. Her research covers geoeconomics, international political economy of trade and finance, monetary policy, and Japanese foreign policy. Her Ph.D. is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her B.A. is from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo). Katada is a research fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Japan Institute of International Affairs, and she has received prestigious awards and grants, including the Center for Global Partnerships, Intellectual Exchange Grant, and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.

Kei Koga is Associate Professor/ Head of Division at the Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Concurrently, he is a Nonresident Fellow at The National Bureau of Asia Research (NBR), the United States, and a member of RIPS Research Committee, the Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS), Japan. His research focuses on International Security, International/Regional Institutions (particularly ASEAN), and East Asian/Indo-Pacific security. Previously, he was Japan Scholar at the Wilson Center in 2022; visiting fellow at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in 2017; a Japan-U.S. Partnership Fellow at the Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS), Tokyo, in 2012-2014; Postdoctoral Fellow in the International Studies Program, The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, in 2012-2013; a Vasey Fellow at the Pacific Forum CSIS in 2009–2010; and RSIS-MacArthur visiting associate fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), NTU in 2010. He received his Ph.D. in International Relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He has published on topics that include East Asian/Indo-Pacific security, U.S. and Japanese foreign policies, the U.S.-Japan alliance, and ASEAN.

About the Moderator

Kuniko Ashizawa is a professorial lecturer at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She also teaches international relations at the School of International Service, American University. Her research interests include Japan’s foreign policy, regional institution-building in Asia, and global governance, for which she has published various academic journal articles and book chapters, including in International Studies Review, Pacific Affairs, the Pacific Review, and Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. Her book, Japan, the U.S. and Regional Institution-Building in the New Asia: When Identity Matters (Palgrave McMillan, 2013), received the 2015 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. She received her PhD in international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Sigur Center for Asian Studies at GW