IJS 2024 Brad Richardson Memorial Lecture: Saori Katada, "The Indo-Pacific as Japan’s 21st-Century Grand Strategy"

The Institute for Japanese Studies and Brad Richardson Memorial Fund present:

"The Indo-Pacific as Japan’s 21st-Century Grand Strategy"

Saori Katada
University of Southern California

with discussant 

Ji Young Choi
Ohio Wesleyan University

Abstract: The rise of Japan’s Indo-Pacific strategy in the late 2010s crystalizes the configuration of Japan’s 21st century grand strategy. This grand strategy utilizes Japan’s liminal power between the East and the West, and its interchangeable use of economic and security foreign policy instruments with the aim of maintaining rules and standards in regional and global governance. With the evident decline of the US presence in the region, and China’s rising dominance as a global power, Japan now sits in a critical position where it can engage the regional order constructively by enforcing liberal rules constructed under the US hegemony and check China’s unreasonable behavior including the use of economic coercion. I will discuss Japan’s Indo-Pacific grand strategy with the emphasis on how it utilizes the Free and Open Indo-Pacific framework flexibly to create “like-minded” coalitions and advance Tokyo’s interest through rule-setting strategy towards stable regional order. Download the PDF flyer here.

Dr. Saori N. Katada is Professor of International Relations and the director of the Center for International Studies at University of Southern California.  She is the author of Japan’s New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific published from Columbia University Press in 2020, which also came out in Japanese. She has co-authored two recent books: The BRICS and Collective Financial Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Taming Japan’s Deflation: The Debate over Unconventional Monetary Policy (Cornell University Press, 2018).  She also publishes on geoeconomics, international political economy of trade and finance, monetary policy as well as Japan and the Indo-Pacific.  Her Ph.D. is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Political Science), and her B.A. from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo).  Before joining USC, she served as a researcher at the World Bank in Washington D.C., and as International Program officer at the UNDP in Mexico City.

Dr. Ji Young Choi is Director of East Asian Studies and Associate Professor of Government and Politics at Ohio Wesleyan University. He specializes in international relations history and theories, international political economy, foreign policy, and East Asian security and political economy. His research interests are in the rise and fall of nations or great powers, the politics of economic and financial globalization, East Asian regionalism, US-China relations, and Korean politics and economy. He published many articles in peer-reviewed journals including International Politics and Asian Perspective. His new book, Politics of South Korea: A Comprehensive Introduction (Lynne Rienner Publishers) is forthcoming this summer! This book is an updated and well-balanced thematic and comprehensive introduction to Korea with analyses of topics from international and comparative perspectives. It includes a timely subject on the “the rise of the culture industry and the 4th industrial revolution” and covers the new trend of the K-Pop industry.