ABSTRACT
This chapter connects the summitry of the 1970s, Japan's trade conflict, and the Tokyo Round of the GATT, with the aim of explaining the historical development of summitry and its continuation through the 'Japan problem' between Japan, the US, and, in particular, the European Community (EC) member state. It looks into Japan's post-war reconstruction in the 1950s and 1960s. The chapter focuses on the Japan-US Textile Agreement and shows how Europe's suspicion regarding Japan brought negotiations concerning the EC's common foreign trade policy to a halt. It explores the impact of the first oil crisis, and how economic stagnation turned trade imbalance into trade conflict, will be explored. The chapter finally looks into the Tokyo Summit of 1979, and examines how Japan, as the sole Asian country involved in summitry, struggled and managed its first chairmanship. Japan's self-awareness of its responsibilities as the second largest world economy had gradually emerged during the first summits in the late 1970s.
