Instead of asking the usual questions about Japanese aid — Why is Japanese aid so different from that of other donors? Is Japanese aid effective? — this collection takes it as axiomatic that Japanese aid actors are now working in a contentious environment affected by changing global norms of aid. Japanese Aid and the Construction of Global Development analyses the changing political contexts, both at home and abroad, within which Japanese aid officials develop their programs. It tracks the tensions facing aid officials as they seek to negotiate between a long-term organizational bias in the Japanese government of promoting "growth-oriented" policies, and new demands for Japan to engage a broader array of "human security" concerns. In the third section, contributors provide case studies of new policies designed to cope with transnational human security issues, particularly involving environmental protection, gender equality, and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Finally, the book turns its lens back to Japan with chapters on how changing aid relationships alter Japan’s ability to cope with transnational problems like refugee flows, sex trafficking, and terrorism. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the politics and culture of global development, Japanese politics and foreign policy, international relations and international law.

SCOTT (Copy 1): From the John Holmes Library Collection.

Paradoxically, Japan provides massive amounts of development aid to China, despite Japan's clear perception of China as a prime competitor in the Asia-Pacific region. This clearly written and comprehensive volume provides an overview of the way Japan's aid to China has developed since 1979. It explains the shifts that have taken place in Japan's China policy in the 1990s against the background of international changes and domestic changes in both countries, and offers new insights into the way Japanese aid policy making functions, thereby providing an alternative view of Japanese policy making that might be applied to other areas. Through a series of case studies, it shows Japan’s increasing willingness to use development aid to China for strategic goals and explains a significant shift of priority project areas of Japan’s China aid in the 1990s, from industrial infrastructure to socio-environmental infrastructure. The book argues that, contrary to the widely held view that Japan's aid to China is given for reasons of commercial self-interest, the objectives are much more complex and dynamic. Using original material, Takamine shows how policy making power within the Japanese government has shifted in recent years away from officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to politicians in the Liberal Democratic Party.

The world order as we know it is currently undergoing profound changes, and in its wake, so is foreign aid. Donors of foreign aid, development assistance or development cooperation around the world are already facing new challenges in the changing development architecture. This is an architecture that globally seems to become increasingly forgiving of foreign aid as a win-win concept that also meets the donors’ own national interests—something that has been an unofficial Japanese trademark for many years. This book examines Japan’s development assistance as it transitions away from Official Development Assistance and towards Development Cooperation. In this transition, the strong and reciprocal relationships between Japanese development policy and comprehensive security, diplomacy, foreign, domestic and economic policies are likely to become even more consolidated and integrated. The utilization of, and changes within, Japanese development policy therefore affects not only recipients of foreign aid but also the relationships Japan enjoys with its allies and strategic partners, as well as the relations to competing donors and rivals in the region and around the world. Japanese foreign aid as such provides an extremely interesting case from where regional and even global changes can be understood. Written by a multidisciplinary team of contributors from the fields of political science, international relations, development, economics, public opinion and Japan studies, the book sets out to be innovative in capturing the essence of the changing patterns of development cooperation, and more importantly, Japan’s role in within it, in an era of great change. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese Politics, Foreign Policy and International Relations.

Japan's emergence as a world economic power is second only to the end of the Cold War in its significance for the world's political economy. While volumes have been written profiling Japan's behavior in trade and finance, less has been written about a third facet of its economic personality - its foreign aid program. In this important new book, Margee M. Ensign shows that contrary to stated claims, Japanese aid is inextricably linked to Japanese business interests. In Doing Good or Doing Well?, Ensign explores one of the most controversial issues pervading the volatile U.S.-Japan relationship: the practice of aid "tying". In a masterful piece of research, Ensign shows how Japanese foreign aid to the developing world is often tied to purchases from Japan, and contradicts official Japanese statistics stating that American firms have won an increasing share of Japan's loan-financed aid projects. She reveals that the loan component of Japanese aid is effectively tied to purchases from Japan, making this portion of the aid program essentially one of private foreign assistance. Ensign also discloses how economic aid from Japan which is used to build infrastructure can lay the groundwork for lucrative business ventures by Japanese firms. Overall, Tokyo's policy enables Japanese capital to establish a foothold in the developing world, with potentially devastating consequences for countries battling poverty and environmental ruin. Doing Good or Doing Well? has wide-ranging implications for U.S.-Japanese relations, for Third World development, and for U.S. foreign aid policy. Some in the West will conclude that the U.S. should restructure its aid policies to mimic the Japanese model. One dominantargument in Congress is that U.S. aid should be used to support U.S. exports. Ensign convincingly shows that it is in the best interest of the U.S. and the Third World that foreign assistance be used to support broad-based economic growth and development. Finally, her findings - that Japan's aid focus is a narrow one - suggest that Japan does not yet have the kind of global vision that helped to reshape the world after World War II. For the U.S., these results are a reminder that economic nationalism must be countered by a global blueprint if the international economic system is to remain open and cooperative.

In the twentieth century Japan emerged as one of the world’s leading economic powers: rising from wartime destruction to a leading economic engine in world markets. Japan’s economic aid policy, beginning with war reparations following its defeat in World War II, became a vehicle to help achieve this economic success. As the country continued to flourish, economic aid also became a means of expanding the country’s influence in an era of increasing globalization, providing an alternative strategy for helping developing nations escape the traps of poverty: a strategy drawn from its own experience of reemergence. And as we stand at the beginning of a new century, Japanese aid policy may also serve as a potential model for other nations who are on the cusp of entering high-income status and the group of elite world donors: a model that in many ways lies in contrast to policies espoused by other advanced Western nations. The book Japan’s Aid examines the strengths and weaknesses of Japanese aid policy in all of these dimensions: in fostering economic growth in both its own economic success story and in the numerous countries to which it has served as the single largest bilateral donor over many years; and as a policy that other nations might emulate. Through a combination of insightful case studies and rigorous econometric investigation, the book presents a comprehensive examination of the pros and cons of Japan’s aid.

The Web of Power illustrates the central importance of international development policy to national economic and strategic security. Kozo Kato's meticulous analysis of Japanese and German international cooperation policy overturns the myth of Japan and Germany's convergent development strategies, revealing that each state's policy for fostering interdependence has been shaped by markedly different domestic political agendas. Japanese development policy moved to embrace international cooperation as a means of pursuing national interests while Germany--fearing the economic risks and political costs of a global-scope approach--restricted its development strategy to Europe. This work will be of great interest to political scientists, economists, and scholars of international relations who wish to better understand, using Japanese multinationalism and German regionalism as case studies, the fluctuating dynamics of modern economic forces.