For over a decade, Japan and the UK have identified one another as their most important security partners in Asia and Europe respectively. The two countries currently enjoy a high in bilateral military partnership that has been referred to as a ‘quasi alliance’. Looking back, however, there have been ups and downs since the days of the bilateral alliance over a century ago. Join the authors of a new book that explores how peacetime military relations between Japan and the UK have played out from Bakamatsu to Brexit.

New Perspectives on Peacetime Anglo–Japanese Military Relations: Old Friends, New Partners can be purchased online here: Routledge | New Perspectives on Peacetime Anglo-Japanese Military Relations

About The contributors

Thomas French

Thomas French is a Professor of Modern Japanese History, and a former Vice Dean of the College of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. He is a specialist on the Occupation of Japan and peacetime military interactions between Japan and the West. His broader research interests include U.S.-Japan relations, UK-Japan Relations, the Japanese automotive and arms industries, and the Japanese Self Defense Forces. He is the author of National Police Reserve: The Origin of Japan’s Self Defense Forces (Global Oriental, 2014) and editor of The Economic and Business History of Occupied Japan: New Perspectives (Routledge, 2018). He has previously received major research grants to investigate peacetime UK-Japan military links from the Meiji era to the present and Japan in the Cold War. He is currently heading a major JSPS supported ‘Kakenhi’ Kiban B research project entitled: ‘The British, the Commonwealth, and the Occupied – Re-Examining the International and Domestic Aspects of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force of Japan, 1945 to 1952’.

Dr Philip Shetler-Jones

Dr Philip Shetler-Jones is a Senior Research Fellow in the International Security team at RUSI. His current research is concentrated on Indo-Pacific security. Prior to joining RUSI, Dr Shetler-Jones worked on an EU project for Europe-Asia security cooperation and led the international security program at the World Economic Forum. Previously, Dr Shetler-Jones served as an officer in the UK Royal Marine Commandos, held positions at the United Nations and NATO, the Organisation for Security Cooperation in Europe, the UK Ministry of Defence, and Chatham House. Dr Shetler-Jones holds a PhD, MA, and BA from The University of Sheffield and an MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He has been a visiting fellow at the Council on Geostrategy and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield, and a fellow of the Strategic Communications Education and Research Unit at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo.

Ra Mason

Ra Mason is an internationally recognised specialist in the international relations of the Indo-Pacific, with a specific focus on Japan. His work draws on theories of risk, security, and social construction to understand the complex relations between regional alliances, states, and non-state actors. He is also interested in wider questions about global politics and conflict. Ra’s monograph, Japan’s Relations with North Korea and the Recalibration of Risk, was highly acclaimed by specialists in the field and was followed by co-authorship of two further breakthrough books on Japan’s international relations and foreign policy, Regional Risk and Security in Japan: Whither the Everyday? and Risk State: Japan’s Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty. Ra’s latest book, Okinawa: Great Power Competition and the Keystone of the Pacific, has been hotly debated and is the subject of dedicated events at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, University of Warwick and Lund University.