ABSTRACT
In this overview, Carol Lancaster sets the stage for the volume’s explorations of transnational flows in Japanese aid practices by examining the changing political context for ODA. Focusing in particular on 2001-5, key years in the transformation of Japan’s aid apparatus, Lancaster is sensitive both to the complex organizational politics that have long marked Japanese development assistance as well as to the foreign pressure (gaiatsu) that has often set the contours for Japanese aid practices. By drawing out the difficulties facing the often institutionally weak prime minister, a foreign ministry only partly in control of aid efforts, and the NGOs that have only recently become more important players in aid politics, Lancaster identifies local tensions that have long shaped the way in which transnational aid debates work in Tokyo.
