Japan is waking up. For two decades, the island nation has been relatively removed from both regional and global affairs. Now it is in the earliest stages of a push to re-establish itself as a leading power in the Pacific Rim, a role that will require it to make some significant internal adjustments. Over the past 150 years, Japan's political order has undergone three such overhauls. Each came as a reaction to profound changes in the international system: the entrance of European powers into East Asia, the rise of fascism in Europe and the beginning of the Cold War. As the Cold War ended, Japan began to stagnate. Previously, Japan had managed to thrive by modeling its internal order to adapt to regional geopolitics. This time, however, no coherent order emerged in the Pacific Rim, so Tokyo maintained its Cold War status quo.