NEWS

Workshop with Dr. Lionel Fatton
“Japan’s Rush to the Pacific War:
Civil-Military Relations, Threat Perception,
and the 1936 Withdrawal from the Washington System”

Overview

On Monday 16 January, the Meiji University Research Institute for the History of Global Arms Transfer will host a workshop titled, “Japan’s Rush to the Pacific War: Civil-Military Relations, Threat Perception, and the 1936 Withdrawal from the Washington System”.

In this seminar, Dr. Lionel Fatton, Lecturer of International Relations at Webster University Geneva and Research Associate at CERI-Sciences Po Paris, will discuss Japan’s decision to withdraw from the Washington System of naval arms control in 1936. He will first show that in taking this decision the Japanese government overreacted to what was actually a limited American threat. He will then argue that this overreaction was triggered not by the behavior of a warmonger Imperial Japanese Navy, because the latter played properly its role as a defense institution, but by structural flaws in civil-military relations that dated back to the Meiji Restoration era.

*This workshop is hosted by the Meiji University Research Institute for the History of Global Arms Transfer, supported by the Forum for the History of Armaments Industry and Arms Transfer, and is supported by the Forum for the History of Armaments Industry and Arms Transfer. It is partially funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)-supported Program for the Strategic Research Foundation at Private Universities, 2015-2019, JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP16K17075 (Post-Cold War Conventional Arms Control in Historical Context: Towards Collaboration between Security Studies and History), JP16KT0040 (Popular Basis and Technological Basis of Military/Para-Military Conflicts: Causalities and Norms for Dispute-Settlement and Avoidance), and JP25244029 (Comprehensive Historical Study on the Failure of Disarmament and Arms Control: Chain Structure of the Arms Transfer between the Wars).

Date and time

Monday 16 January 2017, 6:30PM-8:30PM (Venue opens at 6.00PM)

Venue

Room 1095, 9th Floor, Meiji University Surugadai Campus Liberty Tower

Map

Entry fee

Free

Seating capacity

maximum 45 seats

Registration

Pre-register before 15 January 2017 at the link below. We will close the registration when the number of applicants reaches the capacity.

  • https://goo.gl/pCVozy

    • Language

    The seminar will be held in English ONLY without translation.

    Panelists

    Main Speaker Dr. Lionel Fatton (Lecturer, Webster University Geneva; Research Associate, CERI-Sciences Po Paris)
    Discussant Dr. Chikako Ueki Kawakatsu (Professor, Waseda University)
    Chair Dr. Tamara Enomoto (Research Fellow, Meiji University Research Institute for the History of Global Arms Transfer)

    Biography of Dr. Lionel Fatton

    Dr. Lionel Fatton is Lecturer of International Relations at Webster University Geneva, Research Associate at the Centre de recherches internationales (CERI-Sciences Po Paris), Visiting Faculty at the Geneva School of Diplomacy & International Relations and Foreign Correspondent to the United Nations in Geneva for the Japanese news agency Kyodo News.
    His research interests include theoretical approaches to civil-military relations and arms control, Japan’s defense policy, security dynamics in East and Southeast Asia, and neoclassical realism. He is visiting Japan for research for the need of a book entitled “US Rebalance to Asia and the Role of the Japanese Navy,” to be published in 2017.
    He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science, specialization International Relations, from Sciences Po Paris, and two Master’s degrees in International Relations from Waseda University and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies of Geneva.