The increase of new complex security challenges and the heightening significance of a diverse array of actors has simultaneously posed a challenge to traditional perspectives on international relations and foreign policy and created an opportunity for new concepts to be applied. Conventional explanations of Japan's foreign policy have provided us with theoretically predetermined understandings and fallacious predictions. Reformulating risk in its application to the study of international relations and foreign policy, this volume promises new insights into the analysis of contemporary foreign policy in East Asia and Japan's post-Cold War international relations in particular. 'This impressive volume covers a wide range of topics central to Japan's foreign policy. It is unified both by a concern with policy change and an analytical perspective centring on the social construction of risk. Risk State is a must-read for everyone concerned with contemporary Japan, but will also interest students and scholars of risk society more broadly.' Linus Hagström, Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Sweden 'Japanese leaders today must determine the level of risk they are willing to face - from potential military escalation with China to consequences of restarting potentially unsafe nuclear power reactors. This book explains how Japan's government and society calibrate risk in making foreign policy decisions central to Japan's survival, challenging many conventional notions of threat and interests seen in existing scholarship.' Andrew L. Oros, Washington College, USA