Introduction

The 1990s witnessed a number of so-called humanitarian crises. Our moral senses were touched by the cases in Bosnia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cambodia, Kosovo and East Timor. Japan’s involvement in international humanitarian crises in the 1990s was widely acknowledged, especially through its participation in the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations (PKOs). Japan sent its Self-Defence Force (SDF) to Cambodia, Mozambique, El Salvador, the Golan Heights and elsewhere for humanitarian purposes as a part of UN PKOs in the 1990s. This came despite longstanding debates on the constitutional merits of such dispatches. While the public is deeply divided over dispatching the SDF, Japanese humanitarian involvement in international crisis situations have been commonly seen in the 1990s.