Japan has consistently been pursuing the goal of a permanent UN Security Council seat for 30 years. The book investigates the motives for this ambition, and how it has been pursued domestically and internationally. It is therefore a study of the inner workings of the Japanese Foreign Ministry as well as of the country's underdeveloped multinational diplomacy.

Japan has consistently been pursuing the goal of a permanent UN Security Council seat for 30 years. This book investigates the motives for this ambition, and how it has been pursued domestically and internationally. It is therefore a study of the interior workings of the Japanese Foreign Ministry as well as of the country's underdeveloped multilateral diplomacy.

This edited collection analyzes the innovative changes in Japan’s foreign policy. Pursuing new relationships with South Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, Japanese initiatives include regional peace-building and human security activities, Asian multilateralism, and the Indo-Pacific concept. This collection focuses on these evolving international relationships through Japan’s unique approach to political change and continuity.

This book places the discussion on reform of the Security Council membership in the context of its primary responsibility at the helm of the UN collective security system.

The United Nations is in need of reform. There has always been widespread agreement that this is the case – indeed throughout the 60-year history of the Organization. Differences over the best cure reflect the political confrontation between its 191 member states. The institution has been criticized to lack legitimacy, to need accountability and to be inefficient with a bloated bureaucracy. Recently, allegations of mismanagement and corruption in the Oil-for-Food Program have led to a crisis of confidence. The public debate followed reform initiatives for enlarging the Security Council, achieving the Millennium Development Goals, and establishing new collective mechanisms to protect human rights, counter terrorism and respond to crimes against humanity. Strengthening oversight, governance and management practices aimed at introducing fundamental institutional changes. The publication describes the reform process leading to the United Nations Summit in September 2005. The achievements remain disappointing with the failure to approve a grand bargain. A number of recommendations are put forward to facilitate the reform process in the United Nations, realising, however, that this will remain cumbersome and a lengthy step-by-step effort.

Japan joined the League of Nations in 1920 as a charter member and one of four permanent members of the League Council. Until conflict arose between Japan and the organization over the 1931 Manchurian Incident, the League was a centerpiece of Japan’s policy to maintain accommodation with the Western powers. The picture of Japan as a positive contributor to international comity, however, is not the conventional view of the country in the early and mid-twentieth century. Rather, this period is usually depicted in Japan and abroad as a history of incremental imperialism and intensifying militarism, culminating in war in China and the Pacific. Even the empire’s interface with the League of Nations is typically addressed only at nodes of confrontation: the 1919 debates over racial equality as the Covenant was drafted and the 1931–1933 League challenge to Japan’s seizure of northeast China. This volume fills in the space before, between, and after these nodes and gives the League relationship the legitimate place it deserves in Japanese international history of the 1920s and 1930s. It also argues that the Japanese cooperative international stance in the decades since the Pacific War bears noteworthy continuity with the mainstream international accommodationism of the League years. Thomas Burkman sheds new light on the meaning and content of internationalism in an era typically seen as a showcase for diplomatic autonomy and isolation. Well into the 1930s, the vestiges of international accommodationism among diplomats and intellectuals are clearly evident. The League project ushered those it affected into world citizenship and inspired them to build bridges across boundaries and cultures. Burkman’s cogent analysis of Japan’s international role is enhanced and enlivened by his descriptions of the personalities and initiatives of Makino Nobuaki, Ishii Kikujirô, Nitobe Inazô, Matsuoka Yôsuke, and others in their Geneva roles.