Japan’s Aid Diplomacy: Economic, Political or Strategic?

Abstract

In recent years Japan’s foreign aid has often been raised both as a domestic and as an international political issue. Domestically, for example, the propriety of aid to the Philippines became the subject of debate in the National Diet in 1986, and this legislative discussion led to serious questioning of the nation’s foreign aid policy. On the international level, meanwhile, the United States has been seeking increases in Japanese aid, mainly as a way to share the cost of promoting international security. For example, the increase in Japan’s official development assistance to the countries of the South Pacific in recent years is said to be partly in response to the increasing presence of the Soviet Union in this region.