ABSTRACT
A review of current writings on Japan's foreign policy reveals that its policy towards Europe has received little attention. During the postwar period, Japanese-European relations have been influenced overwhelmingly by the primacy of the critical relationship with the United States in Japan's foreign and security policies. In their world views, the Japanese have not placed Europe in the same category as the United States and Asia. From Tokyo's perspective, there are several factors as to why relations between Japan and Europe have been the weakest within the trilateral framework ofJapan, Europe and the United States. For Tokyo's policy-makers Europe is remote, not only geographically but also psychologically. Moreover, Japan and the countries of Western Europe have had different regional interests, and Japan and Europe have paid little attention to their relations. Instead, they have concentrated on the maintenance and strengthening of their respective alliance relationships with the United States (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1991: 21).1 Because of the centrality of the United States to Japan in the postwar period, Japanese policy-makers have tended to view specific foreign-policy issues through the prism of the dominant bilateral relationship with the United States (Iwanaga, 1996). With the end of the cold war, Japan came to recognize that it must pursue an assertive foreign policy commensurate with its economic clout, a process that requires it to move beyond its preoccupation with dominant bilateral relations with the United States and to develop closer and broader relationships with Europe.
