Changing perception of peace in post-war Japan

The thesis aims to illustrate the changing perception of peace in Japan. The development of Japan after the World War II has been an interesting object of study in the field of international relations. The main theme of Japan's foreign and security policy during the postwar period has been its pacifist identity. However, it is possible to observe changing attitude of Japanese towards peace and pacifist identity. What aspects contribute to changing identity of a state? What caused the changing perception of peace in Japan? The work examines approaches of conventional constructivism and poststructuralism. It will be shown, that these approaches are not able to sufficiently explain the identity formation. Therefore, thesis introduces theory of sedimentation of identity layers, which combines aforementioned approaches and adds another feature - the operation of identity entrepreneurs. It will be shown that these actors play a significant role in the changing perception of peace in Japan. Keywords Japan, pacifism, peace, identit