ABSTRACT
Japan’s hosting of the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Osaka in June 2019 offers it an important opportunity to secure needed international support for its “New Meiji” transformation currently underway. It has previously done so through its hosting of the summits of the Group of Seven (G7) major democratic powers and its participation in those of the G20 systemically significant states. They have enabled Japan to learn from, contribute to and work with leading international powers in coping with their new environmental, economic and security openness and vulnerability in a globalizing world. In the G7, Japan as host pioneered the world’s first climate change control regime in 1979, advanced Asian and global security in 1986, and catalyzed multilateral trade liberalization in 1993. It pioneered G7 outreach with civil society in 2000, produced a new regime to control climate change in 2006 and countered security threats in 2016. In the G20, it always provided rather than required international financial support and increased Asian influence in the core international financial institutions. It must now counter protectionist and populist threats from the US and elsewhere and foster the openness in immigration that its aging, shrinking population needs.
