Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Japan is a liminal power, as it straddles contrasting identities in term of its power status (e.g. small power to great power) because of fluctuating material capabilities, international status, and multiple and overlapping identities between the West and Asia, as well as its socioeconomic or geographic affiliation (e.g. as Western, modern, or Asian). A liminal state faces difficulty in defining its consistent strategic objective because of its fluctuating power, status and social role in the international relations. This book engages a historical institutionalist approach to examine the evolution of Japan’s grand strategy as a liminal power from the Meiji period, starting in 1868 to the 2020s. We present four historical and contemporary “critical junctures” as key determinants of Japan’s grand strategies: the Meiji era, the inter-war era between World War I and II, the Cold War era, and the Post-Cold War/Indo–Pacific era. In particular, we focus on the contemporary period during which Japan has constructed its Indo–Pacific grand strategy featuring a “Free and Open Indo–Pacific.” In each period, the strategic environment changed, and thus a window of opportunity opened that offered Japan’s core decision-makers a chance to construct—or reconstruct—the country’s grand strategy. We identify and analyze three sequential processes that have led to each critical juncture: (1) an anticipated or actual change in the global or regional strategic balance; (2) core domestic decision-makers’ perceptions and decisions that contributed to those changes; and (3) the domestic decision-making environment in each period in the form of existence of domestic veto players and institutional constraints.</jats:p>