Abstract
This chapter highlights Japan’s struggle to establish a philosophy to underpin its official development assistance (ODA) policies. For decades, the country has made considerable efforts to search for normative rationales for the provision of foreign aid. Since the 1990s, Japan has produced three charters establishing an ODA philosophy and promoted several policy concepts linking everyday aid-related practices to this philosophy. Tracing the history of Japan’s ODA policies, this chapter argues that the international environment, including external pressure, has played a critical role in persuading the country to reshape its aid policy and to search for philosophical foundations. It explores Japan’s representative policy concepts on foreign aid: human security, the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). With such exploration, it shows that Japan has used these concepts flexibly, as per its diplomatic priorities. The way these concepts have been used in practice reveals the pragmatic nature of diplomacy in Japan. Although pragmatism may be a necessary choice in Japanese diplomacy, it does not answer the question of why the country should provide ODA. The Japanese will continue to seek inherent reasons for providing foreign aid.
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Notes
- 1.
Treaty of Peace with Japan, Article 14, (a) 1. Although the U.S. had initially made strict demands for reparations immediately after World War II, its policies toward Japan softened as the Cold War intensified. As a result, Japan’s obligation to make reparations was considerably reduced and the wording, “payment through the ‘services of the Japanese people’” was officially introduced into the Peace Treaty. Following the rapid recovery of its industries, Japan preferred to pay other countries by contributing products (Shimomura, 2020, 40–46).
- 2.
- 3.
In 1960, Japan was invited to join the Development Assistance Group (DAG), which turned into DAC in 1961 when the OECD was officially founded. Japan became a member of the OECD in 1964.
- 4.
After publication, this critical book was immediately translated into Japanese by the Economic Cooperation Bureau of the MOFA. This showed that the government was quite sensitive to criticism from abroad.
- 5.
As there is no English version of MOFA (1981), the quoted passage was translated by the author.
- 6.
Due to Japan’s devastating experiences during World War II, as well as serious reflections on that war, this sentiment continues to be very strong among the Japanese people.
- 7.
The constitution of Japan stipulates that, “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained” (Article 9). This is why the official name of the country’s security forces is the “Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF).” There are regularly fierce debates over JSDF’s participation in international peacekeeping operations. The adoption of the “five-point principle on PKO participation” (see below) is one result of these debates.
- 8.
Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War, Japan was placed under strong international (particularly, U.S.) pressure to contribute to the Coalition forces. Although Japan made a huge financial contribution of 13 billion dollars, countries like the U.S. and Kuwait appreciated this much less than expected.
- 9.
The first major ODA scandal, revealed in 1977, involved the Yen loan project to construct the Seoul subway system. After the downfall of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, the prosecution conducted an extensive investigation of ODA projects in the Philippines, on suspicion of bribery. During this period, when the volume of ODA was rapidly increasing, the image of aid was somewhat tarnished in Japanese society. Against this backdrop, the opposition parties brought ODA bills before the parliament several times during the 1980s.
- 10.
In the guidelines, the Japanese government clarified four issues that had to be considered when providing ODA. Three of the four issues dealt with military matters: military expenditure, the development of the weapons of mass destruction, and arms trading. Japan declared that it would limit development assistance to countries engaged in these activities. As positive factors, Japan considered the advance of democratization and a market-oriented economy when allocating ODA.
- 11.
A Japanese diplomat (the former ambassador to Vietnam) reported that Japan took the overall lead in discussions about drafting DAC (1996), which built the foundation for the MDGs (Hattori 2003). Although his statement may have been an exaggeration, it would make sense for Japan, as the top donor country, to have had significant influence in the DAC at that time.
- 12.
Amid high tensions with China, the National Security Strategy was drafted in 2013.
- 13.
As examples of national interests, the charter lists the following: “maintaining its peace and security, achieving further prosperity, realizing an international environment that provides stability, transparency and predictability, and maintaining and protecting an international order based on universal values” (Government of Japan, 2015, 3).
- 14.
Currently, Japanese ODA is evaluated from a “development perspective” and a “diplomatic perspective.” The former is based on the DAC principle, and the latter on the national interest (MOFA 2020).
- 15.
See also (Kurusu & Kersten, 2011). For instance, JICA defines its mission as follows: “JICA, in accordance with the Development Cooperation Charter, will work on human security and quality growth” (https://www.jica.go.jp/english/about/mission/index.html, accessed on March 21, 2021 ).
- 16.
UNDP 1994. Later, the third pillar, the “freedom to live in dignity” was added (UN, 2010).
- 17.
The idea of “freedom from want” was (and is) very familiar to Japan’s ODA community. In addition to its original focus on economic cooperation, Japan has offered cooperation in the fields of education and public health since the 1960s. Even before the Japanese government officially adopted the idea of human security, its ODA began to emphasize human development.
- 18.
The report states, “(h)uman security and human development are thus two sides of the same coin” (UN, 2010, para 15).
- 19.
This section is based on Shirato (2020).
- 20.
The volume of total ODA funds for African countries declined after the end of the Cold War and stagnated during the 1990s.
- 21.
TICAD-style summits with Africa have been organized by various countries, including China, India, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, and the UK. The main purpose of all these summits has been to promote business.
- 22.
Abe’s speech to the Indian parliament in August 2007 is often referred to as the origin of FOIP (Suzuki 2017, 133). It was delivered during an official visit, just before he resigned the position of prime minister in September 2007.
- 23.
The concept has been mentioned and emphasized by Mr. Suga on various occasions, including his first general policy speech in October 2020, his New Year’s policy speech in January 2021, and a US-Japan joint leaders’ statement in April 2021.
- 24.
The principle was incorporated into the 1992 law on the PKO (Act on Cooperation with United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and Other Operations); no substantial revisions have been made since then.
- 25.
Fukuda-Parr and Shiga (2016) is one such attempt for searching normative rationale of Japan’s ODA.
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Takeuchi, S. (2022). Policy Concepts and Normative Rationales in Japan’s Foreign Aid: Human Security, TICAD, and Free and Open Indo-Pacific. In: Kwon, Hj., Yamagata, T., Kim, E., Kondoh, H. (eds) International Development Cooperation of Japan and South Korea. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4601-0_1
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