日本の援助の源流に関する歴史比較制度分析

抄録

The objective of this article is to give a fresh insight into the origin of Japan's aid. More specifically, it attempts to analyze why Japan intended to start aid giving in the early post-war era, in spite of its devastated economy and very low per capita GNP, which was much lower than Malaya. While existing literatures argue that Japan's aid began out of joining the Colombo Plan or war reparations, this article stresses the role of widely shared policy thinking as the engine of the pursuit of aid giving; the policy makers in those days put emphasis on trade and development cooperation with South East Asia. The article attempts to explore the reason why this policy thinking was prevalent among the policy makers in those days, using Avner Greif's theory of comparative and historical institutional analysis. It was found that the widely shared cognition model was closely related to their experiences during the war era. The emphasis on the trade with South East Asia was inherited from the past, as the natural resources of South East Asia was crucial in the war era; a typical case of path dependence is observed. On the other hand, the idea of development cooperation, paying due attention to job creation and raising living standard was new, as the war-time policy objective had been narrowly scoped and concentrated on securing resources. The article confirms that a lot of policy makers had regarded it neither advisable nor sustainable, and they introduced a new approach when they got the drivers' seets; this is the case of Greif's endogenous institutional change. The case of Japan implies that the motive of a new donor is embedded in their own socio-economic system.