Abstract
In the past decade, interest in international social work^2 has been heightened in Japan. In the remaining years of the 20^<th> century and in the first few decades of the 21^<st> century, the interest will increase further. International social work seems to have been accepted as a field of social work, but what international social work actually is has not yet been agreed upon at all. This paper aims at contributing to the construction of an internationally acceptable concept of international social work through a review of recent discussion in Japan on this topic. In Section 1, we review practice and research being conducted under the name of international social work. In Section 2, we argue that this current work is not necessarily international social work and present an alternative definition of the concept. In Section 3, we discuss where we are now in the development of international social work, and turn the definition into a working definition which fits today's developmental stage. And in the last section, we call readers' attention to the future direction of international social work using Japan's involvement in Asia as an example.
