ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the reasons advanced for Japan’s permanent Security Council membership and see what they might tell about Japan’s willingness and ability to enhance its multilateral diplomacy. Multilateral diplomacy offers, for example, many ministries and agencies of the Japanese government opportunities to enhance or maintain their prestige and budgetary allocations, an important consideration in times of budgetary restraint and economic crisis. A general consensus was formed around a policy which would reinforce Charter revisionist tendencies among the UN membership, promote in various ways Japan as a major UN member and strengthen the UN function of keeping world peace. The policy was also flexible enough to allow variable momentum or the pursuit of only some of the implementory policies at a given time, depending on external circumstances or even on the enthusiasm of individual policy-makers. In December 1992 the General Assembly passed resolution 47/62 asking the Secretary-General to invite member-states to submit written comments on Council reform by June 1993.
