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This article examines contemporary Japan's identity construction through the self/other lens, focusing on USSR/Russia as Japan's `other'. It identifies two main constitutive dimensions, political and socio-cultural, along which Japan's identity vis-a-vis the Soviet Union was constructed during the Cold War years. The origins and the nature of these constructs are examined in the first part of this case study. Unlike the existent Japan-related constructivist scholarship, this article argues that postwar Japan's identity had both domestic and international sources and that certain dimensions of the contemporary identity discourse can be traced to the prewar years. It also argues that the political and the socio-cultural identities, while overlapping in certain parts, led to different constructions of the Japanese `self'. The operation of these constructions in Japan's relations with post-communist Russia is examined in the second part of this article, with special attention paid to the territorial dispute which continues to haunt bilateral relations.

This paper seeks to contribute to the academic debate on the contemporary identity of the Ainu. Ainu, the indigenous people of what today constitutes part of northern Japan, as well as the Russian Kurile Islands and parts of the island of Sakhalin, became the first subjects of modernizing Japan's expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century. In general, the Ainu's history, culture, and the struggle for recognition as indigenous people as well as against discrimination in Japan have been subjected to intense academic scrutiny in both English and Japanese. This article, however, aims to shed a different light on the construction of Ainu identity, by locating it within the broader contemporary discourse on Japan's national identity. It argues that the emergence of Ainu subjectivity in the public discourse in the 1970s can be partially attributed to the domestic struggle between the conservative and the progressive camps over the definition of Japan's identity. The paper analyzes both sides of the discourse and examines the role of the Ainu 'other' within this construction. It proceeds further to examine the challenge that the emergence of Ainu subjectivity has posed to Japan's politics, mainly in the context of the 'Northern Territories' dispute. The concluding part briefly examines the policy responses aimed at addressing these challenges. Ainu within Modernizing Japan's IdentityWhen the geopolitical interests of pre-modern Tokugawa Japan and the Russian Empire collided for the first time in the second half of the eighteenth century, Ainu were in the centre of the dispute. From the Japanese side, the hierarchical understanding of the 'self', the Ainu, and the Russian 'others' has played a central role in the conception of the Russian threat and in the development of policies aimed to counter this threat. Namely, the Russian expansion of influence over the native residents of the border area was seen as an expansion of a superior culture, conducted through enlightenment and amicable policies. These factors were seen by parts of the Japanese elite as containing the dangerous

This paper joins the debate on Japan's territorial dispute with South Korea over the Dokdo/Takeshima islets. Informed by the ontological security framework of analysis, this paper seeks to explain the decision to adopt the 'Takeshima Day' ordinance by the Shimane Prefectural Assembly and the subsequent ascendance of 'Takeshima' to the fore of Japan's identity construction vis-a-vis the Korean 'other'. In this paper, I distinguish between two processes: one that led to the adoption of the ordinance and another that resulted in the entrenchment of 'Takeshima' in Japan's identity construction vis-a-vis the Korean 'other'. The paper argues that the former process should be understood within the context of Shimane Prefecture's distinct identity construction vis-a-vis Tokyo, while the latter can be attributed to recent changes in JapanÀKorea relations unrelated to the territorial dispute per se.

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