ABSTRACT
The Japanese state and its people have renounced the military option of solving global human problems and have stressed instead the economic contribution they can make. Thus it would be natural to expect that Japan has played a role in global financial institutions commensurate with its global economic standing. The indicators which were cited in Chapter 1 of Japan’s importance in the international political economy demonstrate in raw, quantitative terms, the undeniable importance of Japan in the global political economy. However, aspersions have been cast over the quality of, and ambitions behind, Japan’s leadership in the economic dimension of its international relations. The US has been compared to the Tokugawa-period samurai who, although allowed to bear arms, was impoverished. Japan is equated to the merchants (chōnin) who possessed no political power, yet accumulated vast fortunes. During the Meiji restoration, modern government was built upon leadership provided by the lower-class samurai, whilst the merchants supplied financial resources but provided no leadership (Hamada 1994:144). In the light of this metaphor, a common belief emerged in the major industrialized powers in the immediate post-Cold War period that Japan had ‘displayed an inexplicable inability to discern its own national interest’ (Johnson 1993:54). Moreover, ‘Japan must overcome a widespread feeling at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that despite its ambitions it has no real set of policies it wants to carry out at the two institutions’ (The Japan Times, 4 October 1989). Thus, Japan’s normative commitment to the creation and articulation of multilateral solutions to human problems has been questioned.
