Full topic: “From Peace Dividend to Legal Contention: The Evolution of Japan’s Article 9 in Postwar Society and International Relations”
I want to solve the dissertation with twofold manner:
1.Part One: I plan to focus on the “peace dividend” brought about by Article 9 in the postwar era, specifically from the 1960s to the 1980s, a period marked by Japan’s rapid economic growth. This section will explore how Article 9 contributed to Japan’s domestic development and international image during these decades.
2.Part Two: I will then examine the anxieties and legal/political controversies surrounding Article 9 that emerged from the 1990s onward. This section will analyze how interpretations and debates around Article 9 evolved in response to changing global and domestic contexts.
The proposal should be concise, usually a brief summary of the main ideas of your research.
• Includes the research topic, question, methods, purpose and expected results, but does not need to go into too much detail.
• Aims to give a quick idea of what you plan to do, usually used in the earlier stages of research or as a briefing.
Sources: Dower JW. Embracing defeat : Japan in the wake of World War II. New York: W.W. Norton & Co./New Press; 2000.
Jansen MB. The making of modern Japan. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 2000.
Itō T. The Japanese economy. Cambridge, Mass: MIT; 1992.
“Postwar Japanese Economy: Lessons of Economic Growth and the Bubble Economy” by Mitsuhiko Iyoda
Takemura, Hitomi. “The Post-War History of Japan: Renouncing War and Adopting International Humanitarian Law.” Chapter. In Asia-Pacific Perspectives on International Humanitarian Law, edited by Suzannah Linton, Tim McCormack, and Sandesh Sivakumaran, 456–72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Jones, Colin P. A., editor. The Annotated Constitution of Japan : A Handbook. 1st ed., Amsterdam University Press, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1515/9789048562022.
Smith, Sheila A. Japan Rearmed : The Politics of Military Power. Harvard University Press, 2019, https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674240599.
Taylor, T. (2018). The Abe Doctrine: Japan’s Proactive Pacifism and Security Strategy. The RUSI Journal, 163(3), 113. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071847.2018.1494923
Oros, Andrew L. Japan’s Security Renaissance: New Policies and Politics for the Twenty-First Century. Columbia University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.7312/oros17260.
You can also refer to news and academic articles from mainstream international and Japanese media such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Japan Times. Or even Japanese news sites like Nikke, nhk, etc. These media have a lot of coverage of discussions on the revision of the Japanese Constitution, especially during the Shinzo Abe and later Yoshihide Suga and Fumio Kishida governments. You can refer to relevant news and comments on the revision of the Nine-Article Constitution and the strengthening of the role of the Self-Defense Forces.