What do we talk about when we talk about prestige? An examination of conceptions of national prestige in Japanese parliamentary discourse

This thesis examines the concept of national prestige through a mixed-method discourse analysis of Japanese parliamentary discourse from 1989-2017. Focusing on three cases, the thesis interrogates how concepts of national honour, pride, prestige and dignity have featured in parliamentary debates concerning Japanese territorial disputes with China, the ‘comfort women’ issue and Japan’s campaign for a permanent UN security council seat. The project has uncovered that prestige-related discourses are mobilized along broad ideological lines, with different political groupings drawing on different ideas about sources of prestige depending on their ideological convictions. We also see that there is a higher propensity among conservative, nationalist politicians to frame foreign challenges as prestige-related. This challenges notions in the contemporary IR literature that status-concerns form around universally salient topics, but rather that the prestige motive itself is subject to the political concerns of groups within the national political elite. The thesis enforces and clarifies the concept of multiple status-hierarchies in international politics, and that political actors will construct issues as issues of prestige when there is a clear connection with a status-threat and the political actor’s policy priorities. The thesis also raises questions as to the ubiquity of status-concerns, even in highly publicised issues of foreign policy, and whether the invocation of national prestige should reflect a real perception of potential status-altering, or as an emotional rhetorical strategy to be employed by specific political actors to strengthen the salience of their ideological and policy positions within the domestic political arena.