Japan as an Adapter Middle Power: Navigating Ideological and Systemic Divides

Join YCAPS and Kreab, Tokyo to discuss Dr Stephen NAGY’s new book Japan as an Adapter Middle Power: Navigating Ideological and Systemic Divides. The book Japan as an Adapter Middle Power: Navigating Ideological and Systemic Divides offers a reconceptualization of Japanese foreign policy in an era defined by intensifying U.S.-China strategic competition. As the post-Cold War unipolar moment gives way to a fractured, multipolar Indo-Pacific, secondary states face immense pressure to choose sides between Washington and Beijing. Nagy argues that Japan has successfully navigated this dilemma by cultivating a distinctive diplomatic identity: the "adapter middle power." Much like an electrical adapter that enables devices with incompatible plugs and voltages to function together safely, Japan provides the institutional, normative, and diplomatic connective tissue that allows states with divergent political systems, economic models, and strategic orientations to cooperate. Through a pragmatic, non-evangelical approach termed "neo-middle power diplomacy," Japan translates Western strategic objectives into frameworks acceptable to the Global South, preserving a rules-based international order without demanding ideological conformity.

Panelists:

Dr. Stephen R. Nagy, Internatinal Christian University (ICU)

Professor Akiko Fukushima, Tokyo Foundation

Professor Hideshi Tokuchi, President of RIPS

YCAPS is glad to partner with Kreab Tokyo to deliver this opportunity

Kreab is a world-class communications consulting firm founded in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. Since its opening in 1985, Kreab Inc., the Tokyo office, has been providing consulting services to a wide range of clients, making full use of its network that connects 30 countries around the world. Kreab supports communications activities with three core business areas: public relations, government relations, and global risk management. This includes extensive experience helping the Japanese government with its global PR efforts. More information is available at https://kreab.com/tokyo/ja/

Registration is required. To register, please complete this form. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email.

It may take a few days to tally guests and confirm space availability.

*RSVP and confirmation is mandatory for attendance

Schedule :

18:00-18:30 Light refreshments and networking

18:30: Welcoming Remarks

18:35-1905: Moderated panel discussion

19:05: Moderated Q&A with members of the audience

19:40: Wrap up

19:45 All activities finished.

Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2026

Time: 18:00 reception, 18:30 seminar start

Language: English

Venue: Kreab Tokyo: Atago Green Hills MORI Tower 11F, 2-5-1 Atago, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-6211

Google Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/eW37EsN43Kn6zFJh6

Panelists:

Dr. Stephen R. Nagy is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the International Christian University in Tokyo, specializing in Indo-Pacific geopolitics and great power competition. He is a Senior Fellow and China Project Lead at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), a CGO Fellow at the Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA), and a Senior Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. He serves as Director of Policy Studies for the Yokosuka Council of Asia Pacific Studies (YCAPS), leading their Indo-Pacific Policy Dialogue Series. His newest book is Japan as a Middle Power State: Navigating Ideological and Systemic Divides, addresses themes central to middle power strategy in the region. He is also co-author, with Michael Rosenberg, of the forthcoming co-authored book How to Thrive in the New World Order — A Business Blueprint for an Age of Instability (2027), the co-editor for the edited volume Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific Construct (Nova Publications, 2024) with Dr. Indu Saxena, and a monograph on Chinese foreign policy called Asia for Asians or Asia for China? China’s Grand Strategy from Centrality to Authority (2027) which draws extensively on literature and primary sources in Chinese, Japanese, French and English.

Professor Akiko Fukushima is a nonresident senior fellow at the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. She is also a senior fellow at the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research and a member of the International Advisory Board of the Hague Journal of Diplomacy.

Over the course of her career, she served several roles including as professor at the School of Global Studies and Collaboration at Aoyama Gakuin University and as director of policy studies at the National Institute for Research Advancement. She has also been on the Japanese government committees on foreign, defense, and security policies, including the prime minister’s Panel on National Security Strategy and Defense from 2013 to 2014. Her publications include Japanese Foreign Policy: The Emerging Logic of Multilateralism (MacMilan,1999) and “Multilateralism Recalibrated,” in Postwar Japan (CSIS, 2017). She has contributed chapters to edited volumes including “A New Logic of Multilateralism on Demand,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Diplomatic Reform and Innovation (Palgrave, 2023). She has also contributed articles to journals including “Reshaping the United Nations with Concept of Human Security Version 2.0,” published in Strategic Analysis (October 2020); “From the Asia-Pacific to the Indo-Pacific: Its Motives, Aims and Future,” published with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (2021); and “COVID-19: Implications for the Indo-Pacific,” published with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute(2023).

She holds a doctoral degree from Osaka University and MA from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Professor Hideshi Tokuchi has been President of the Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS) since June 2021. He joined the Defense Agency (the predecessor of the Ministry of Defense) of Japan in 1979 as a civilian and retired from the Ministry in October 2015, after completing several senior assignments, including Director-General of the Operations Bureau, of the Personnel and Education Bureau, of the Finance and Equipment Bureau, of the Defense Policy Bureau and most recently the nation's first-ever Vice-Minister of Defense for International Affairs.

Professor Tokuchi holds several positions in academic and research institutions: Visiting Professor at National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Visiting Fellow at the Institute of International Relations of Sophia University, Senior Research Advisor at the Institute for International Policy Studies (IIPS)

Cost: Free of charge

Moderator: Dr. John Bradford, Executive Director, YCAPS.

Format: This event will be off-the-record. Questions are encouraged.

Registration: Required.

Co-Sponsors: Kreab Tokyo