Constructed Threats : Analyzing how China and North Korea are securitized in Japanese conservative newspapers in relation to the topics of Japan’s constitutional amendment

Abstract: Achieving constitutional amendment has been a goal for the Japanese conservatives for a long time, especially after the Cold War, because Japan’s peace identity has been perceived increasingly “abnormal” by the conservative elites in Japan. It thus engendered the heated debates surrounding whether Japan should change its peace identity via controversial constitutional amendment, which conflicts against established the norm of peace. The conservative elites have tried various methods to push forward the agenda of constitutional revision. Existing research revealed that, on the level of Japanese government, securitization of China and North Korea was a common method to influence public attitudes toward constitutional amendment. However, since the general public usually relies on mass-media for the news, instead of analyzing the government documents, this thesis explored how Japanese conservative newspapers shaped this issue in the general public. Based on social constructivism in International Relation (IR), this thesis adopted securitization theory to analyze the contents of the newspapers. The aim was to reveal whether the conservative newspapers also used securitization strategy when reporting relevant issues. Which themes are commonly used by the newspapers when portraying foreign threats? The result indicated that the conservative newspapers indeed adopted securitization to change people’s attitudes toward constitutional revision.