Identity Change, Anxiety and Creativity: How 19th Century Japan Sought to Leave Asia and Become Part of the West/Kimlik Degisimi, Kaygi ve Yaraticilik: 19. Yuzyil Japonyasi Nasil Asya'yi Terk Etmeye ve Bati'nin Bir Parcasi Olmaya Calisti?

• Author: Gustafsson, Karl

Introduction

Identity change is an important phenomenon in international politics. It can radically alter a state's entire outlook on the world and how it orients itself and acts internationally. But how do identities that have long been more or less stable radically change? Some theoretical approaches regard identity change as an epiphenomenal result of changes in the international distribution of power. (1) Others consider international processes such as interaction with other states most consequential. (2) Still others suggest that domestic factors matter most. (3) While these and other existing explanations have pushed the debate on identity change forward, this article argues that incorporating anxiety into our understanding of identity change can help us better understand important aspects of this phenomenon: how the previously dominant identity comes to be doubted and how a radically new identity becomes thinkable and eventually accepted.

This is done by drawing on Rollo May's work on anxiety and creativity. Identity change is enabled, the article suggests, not as a direct result of anxiety, but through its links to creativity. It creates conditions that unsettle old identities and facilitate the construction of and receptivity to new ideas and self-understandings. The article approaches identity in terms of relational constructions of similarity and difference. (4) Identity change thus involves the reconfiguration of identity in relation to a particular other in new ways.

The theoretical argument is illustrated through engagement with the case of 19 (th) century Japan, a case that involved major and radical identity change. For much of its history, Japan had been part of the Sino-centric order and looked up to China as a "teacher in the ways of civilization". (5) However, in the mid- to late 19 (th) century (the late Tokugawa and early Meiji periods), Japan radically redefined its identity in relation to China, and Asia more broadly, and rejected the Sino-centric world view. Whereas it had previously regarded China as "civilized" and the West as "barbaric", these roles were completely reversed. Japan sought to become a "civilized" state similar to the Western countries and different from China and other Asian states. This desire to become "civilized" eventually led Japan down a path toward imperialism. (6)

The next section discusses previous research on identity change in International Relations (IR). The section that then follows develops the article's theoretical account of how anxiety and creativity are implicated in identity change. The penultimate section uses the case of 19 (th) century Japan to illustrate the theoretical points. It focuses in particular on ideas expressed by Fukuzawa Yukichi, often described as the most influential Japanese intellectual in the second half of the 19 (th) century. The concluding section summarizes the article's findings.

Research on Identity Change in International Relations

Existing IR research on identity change has provided different definitions of state identity. Some understand it in terms of how states view themselves in relation to the international order, rather than in relation to particular others. (7) However, this article approaches identity in terms of relational constructions of similarity and difference, (8) and through its case study, it shows that an international order may very well be associated with one or several particular others so that how a state relates to a specific other is directly linked to how it relates to the international order. Such relational construction of similarity and difference can be either spatial or temporal. Understood spatially, self and other are viewed as entities currently existing in two distinct spaces. Temporal othering, by contrast, constructs identity by emphasizing how the self differs from a past other, that is some entity associated with the past. In this logic, one's own past may be treated as other. (9) While they can thus be analytically separated, these two logics are often combined so that one differentiates one's own currently existing self from another entity existing in the present by associating it with the past. Those associated with the past tend to be seen as temporally behind, for example in civilizational development, values or political system. (10)

Existing scholarship also contains different positions on how easily identity changes. Some suggest that identity change might be common since identities are fragile and provisional, (11) while others argue that identity tends to be characterized by continuity. (12) While there may be theoretical reasons for believing that identities do not change easily, such different assessments may be due in part to differences in the particular identities focused on. Some identities may be deeply institutionalized while others are less so. Scholarship emphasizing continuity may have been concerned primarily with the former, while research that has highlighted change may mainly have analysed the latter. (13) The latter by definition change more easily than the former. However, there may also be theoretical reasons for believing that identities do not change easily. Empirical cases of major and radical identity change, such as 19 (th) century Japan, constitute "hard" cases that raise questions about how firmly institutionalized identities are unsettled and new ones become accepted and familiar.

There are also numerous accounts of how identity change occurs. Some theoretical approaches, most notably realism, view identity change as inconsequential and epiphenomenal. For such theories, identity changes as a result of changes in the international distribution of power and security landscape. It is these material changes, not changes in identity, that have explanatory power. (14)

"Thin" constructivist approaches that emphasize the role of norms and culture, by contrast, argue that identity matters, for example by determining interests. However, such approaches, which tend to view identity as relatively resistant to change, often present explanations for identity change that are quite similar to realist accounts as they suggest that if change occurs it is likely to be the result of some kind of external shock, for example a major change in the international system, realignment by an ally or the rise of a new security threat. (15) This is how Japan's identity change in the second half of the 19 (th) century is often understood. Japan, it is believed, faced a new and frightening international environment as the Western powers encroached upon it. It thus feared for its survival as an independent nation and therefore sought to strengthen itself militarily. (16) Even though it is certainly correct that safeguarding independence was a key priority, the Japanese turn to the West in the early Meiji period entailed much more than a mere embrace of modernization to strengthen Japan militarily and ensure its independence. The aim was not just to become militarily strong, indeed this was seen as insufficient. Instead, as outlined below in greater detail, there was a strong desire to adopt cultural elements and to become recognized by the Western powers as one of them.

Other constructivist accounts suggest alternative explanations. Some theorize identity change as occurring through interaction with other states. In such explanations, the ways in which states behave toward each other can influence and change how they view themselves and others. (17) Other theoretical approaches instead emphasize domestic factors, outlining the intricate domestic processes through which identity changes. (18) There are also accounts that combine elements that appear in the above-mentioned approaches.

Jeffrey Legro's explanation is worth discussing in some detail both for theoretical reasons and because he applies it to 19 (th) century Japan. For Legro, established policy ideas and their associated identities can be replaced by new ones when the old understandings no longer lead to desirable and expected consequences. In such a situation, there needs to exist a leading replacement idea, which is able to show its efficacy. Over time, if the new policy idea is successful, it can develop into an identity, (19) as "[s]tates become what they do". (20) However, an old identity can persist for a long time even when it appears to no longer deliver on its promises. For example, as Legro mentions, the Japanese "ideological orthodoxy" in the 19 (th) century persisted for a long time and was so strong that it prevented "true creativity" and "made alternative ways of thinking unimaginable". (21) This raises several questions: How do old ideas come to be doubted? And how do new ideas become imaginable? Even though Legro's theory is in several respects quite convincing, like the other approaches discussed above, it is not entirely obvious what prevents an identity from changing in a situation when it no longer delivers on its promises. If an attachment to an identity can indeed become so strong that it prevents change in such a way, it appears that the attachment must somehow be emotional. In other words, it seems necessary to add a theoretical component that can account for the more emotional aspects of identity and the process of change, a component that helps highlight how ideological orthodoxies come to be doubted, alternative ways of thinking become imaginable and creativity becomes possible.

Some existing approaches to identity do propose that emotions and trauma destabilize and make possible the reconfiguration of identity. (22) The role of emotions in identity change in general has been specified further in work that focuses specifically on ontological security, where anxiety often plays a key role. While ontological security research has been criticized for being concerned more with continuity than change, (23) this might to some extent be because of an empirical focus on continuity, but...