ABSTRACT
In the Post-Cold War period, Japan actively campaigned for a permanent seat at the United Nations’ Security Council (UNSC). Japan’s diplomacy toward the reform of the United Nations in the 1990s and 2000 shows an aspect of how Japan tried to adjust its foreign policy to the changing international environment, in order to better project its power. Although Japan’s campaign for a permanent seat at the UNSC has not been successful so far, Japan’s experiences in the 1990s and 2000s left critical lessons, which Japan needs to consider in coping with and in participating in a game of shaping global governance or a liberal international order; namely, the importance of holding agenda-setting power, better coordination of bilateral and multilateral diplomacies, and the necessity to seek consensus at home as a power base.
