Japan as an Active Agent for Global Norms: The Political Dynamism Behind the Acceptance and Promotion of “Human Security”

Japan has shaped a distinct human security policy based on evolving policy preferences of successive domestic political leaders and the gradual assimilation of external norms into its own foreign policy. Independent experts have played a particularly significant role in advising Japanese policy elites on how human security could be used by Japan to become an “intellectual leader” within the United Nations and other relevant institutions. This article explores those processes that occurred in the early phase of norm acceptance on the part of key Japanese policy actors and change agents in Japan from the late 1990s through 2003. It argues that human security has served as an effective approach for Japan to establish itself as a more independent foreign policy actor in contemporary international politics.     

The social imperative of pacifism in postwar Japan: Shimizu Ikutarō and the Uchinada movement

Abstract

Postwar Japanese history is often analyzed from the perspective of peace and democracy. Both ideas represented an interpretation of the war experience on the part of postwar progressive thinkers that saw postwar pacifist activism assume an anti-State character. But another important part of this intellectual context was its pro-society inclination. Social agency and autonomy became the main objectives of postwar progressive thinking, and it was this that drove the intellectual activism and advocacy of postwar pacifist movements. But how did intellectuals conceptualize society, and what were the consequences of this conceptualization for the actual development of pacifist movements? Through examining the intellectual leadership of postwar pacifist movements we can begin to appreciate how the peace-democ-racy paradigm actually worked. A pioneering thinker in this respect was Shimizu Ikutarō, who was a central figure in Japanese pacifism in the 1950s, and a leading activist in the first anti-base movement at the village of Uchinada in 1953–54. It was in the context of this movement that Shimizu developed and articulated his ideas about society and peace. In the process, he revealed the dissonance in his thinking concerning “commoners,” and commenced his own intellectual disintegration as a progressive thinker. The consequences of the Uchinada protest for postwar popular and intellectual movements for peace would be formative, eventually leading to the cataclysm of the failed anti-security treaty movement of 1960.     

Police Powers and Accountability in a Democratic Society: Introductory Report

This article by general rapporteur Joachim Kersten introduces the reports which were presented at the Twelfth Criminological Colloquium, organised by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, from 24-26 November 1999. Europe is undergoing a phase of rapid change. This affects the conditions of policing in each country and on the European continent as a whole. It is actually the legal, political and cultural context of policing that is undergoing rapid change. This colloquium and earlier ones carried out by the Council of Europe served a crucial purpose: they are an assessment in the European context of what is happening in relation to the police, police ethics and human rights in democratic societies.