Restructuring World Society : a Japanese Road to 'World Citizenship'

Abstract

World soiety has been drastically restructurized since the Cold War was ended in 1989. The American hegemony has been salient in terms of military control and pressing diplomacy backed up by the United Nations' resolutions especially in and after the Gulf War. The Japanese government has taken no efficient leadership because of the lack of its own world view and political philosophy. To overcome this defect, Japan should develop a series of new world policy based on the reformulated core values for human community-liberty, equality, harmony, and fraternity. Harmony between humankind and nature, having been an organizing principle of Japanese and Asian cultures, should provide a new perspective not only for world peace but for ecological renaissance that should be made a basis of human survival. Our contemporary world has been renewed and developed by three major dialectical processes of capitalist factory system (producing organized workers), imperialist colonial system(yielding national liberation movements)and nuclear armenent system (provoking anti-war peace movements), and now it is facing a new predicament of global environmental disruption. New dialectial thinking can be developed in order to cope with this crisis if we make ingenious use of Asian's traditional way of life which has been inherently pacifist and ecologist. Japan has the Constitution that beautifully fits this new perspective.