Space Policy and National Security in Japan
May 26, 2011 6:30 PM (finished)
The lecture will be based on Professor Pekkanen's recently published co-authored work with Paul Kallender-Umezu. Below, please find a review on the book.
Saadia Pekkanen
(University of Washington, Seattle (the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professor at the Jackson School of International Studies))
| Date/Time | May 26, 2011 6:30 PM |
|---|---|
| Location | Room 549 5th floor, Akamon Sogo Kenkyuto Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo [map] |
| Abstract | While the commercial and scientific aspects of Japan's space policy have drawn some attention over the postwar period, the military angle has been under the radar. Specifically, little notice has been paid to the use of space for military purposes to support, enable, or conduct defensive, and even offensive, actions. Yet, on these dimensions, Japan ranks high as a military space power. The incremental militarization of Japanese space assets has in fact taken place in plain sight of the public within a steadily advancing civilian space program. This reality leaves little doubt that there is now a paradigmatic shift toward national security in the contents of Japan's space policy - a theme which is at last sanctioned by the legal and policy orientation, and which deserves attention as a military space race in the Asian region heats up. |
| Bio | Saadia Pekkanen, University of Washington, Seattle is the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professor at the Jackson School of International Studies, and Adjunct Professor at the School of Law. She received her Master's from Columbia University and Yale Law School, and her doctorate from Harvard University. In addition to numerous articles, she is the author of Picking Winners? From Technology Catch-up to the Space Race in Japan (Stanford University Press, 2003); Japan's Aggressive Legalism: Law and Foreign Trade Politics Beyond the WTO (Stanford University Press, 2008); co-editor of Japan and China in the World Political Economy (Routledge, 2005); and co-author of In Defense of Japan: From the Market to the Military in Space Policy (Stanford University Press, 2010). Her work has been funded by the Social Science Research Council, the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, the Center for Global Partnership, the Abe Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation. Her areas of research interest include international relations, international law, and the international political economy of Japan and Asia. In 2010, she was selected in a nationwide competition to the First Class of National Asia Research Associates and Fellows for the National Asia Research Program (NARP), launched by the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. |
