In 2013 Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announced their readiness to renew the dialogue on the Kuril Islands – the disputed territory that kept the Japan-Russia bilateral relationship frozen for almost 70 years. Due to the territorial dispute, the Japan-Russia economic and diplomatic cooperation remained relatively underdeveloped, which provided a great opportunity for both to benefit from the improved bilateral cooperation. However, the breakthrough has never happened, since the Japan-Russia relationship deteriorated after Japan joined US sanctions against Russia due to Russian involvement in the Ukrainian Crisis. Conventional explanations cite that the United States pressured Japan into imposing sanctions against its national interest. In this paper I provide an analysis of Japanese sanctions against Russia to answer the question of whether US pressure on Japan resulted in reactive Japan’s foreign policy sanctions against Russia. Therefore this paper will put forward a case to answer the question of whether Japan’s foreign policy was influenced by it being a reactive state. For the purpose of this research, I analysed the three rounds of sanctions from March 2014 to July 2016 by using a process tracing method combined with attributed influence and preference attainment to identify and measure US pressure on Japan. Drawing the concept of a reactive state model I will demonstrate how the United States pressured Japan against Japanese national interest. By focusing on the extent of Japanese sanctions, I put forward the case that Japan was able to implement low-key yet independent policy in case of sanctions.
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