The Middle East; Hinge of change in Japan’s Foreign Policy From Band wagoning to Independence

The end of WWII and defeating Japan was a turning point in its history. This incident not only paved the way for declining Japan’s hegemony as an international power but prepared the situation for changing foreign policy in Japan from a key power to a bandwagon. Examining the history of Japan after WWII shows the change in the foreign policy direction of this country at different times, all of which are somehow related to the Middle East region. Now the question arises, why should this region become the focal point of changing Japan's foreign policy? It seems that Japan's foreign policy has been influenced by its economic dependency on the oil of the region in the ensuing WWII. In other words, if we consider security and economy as the twin columns of Japan's foreign policy in the period after the Second World War, the former has brought about dependency on the United States due to its defeat in the mentioned war; but as for the former, economy, the specific internal conditions of the country in the post-war period, on the one hand, and the different and sometimes contradictory decisions of American statesmen, on the other hand, have been the basis for Japan's different orientation during the last five decades. This article, with regard to the targeting of Japan's macro domestic policy to achieve economic progress in the post-World War II and its implication on the behavior of Japan in the international milieu, it is tried to analyze the change of Japan’s foreign policy within the last decades in the light of Middle East events behind the realism and institutional liberalism lenses as the theoretical frameworks.