Assessing Japan’s Aid Philosophy of Self-help and Some Reflections on Its Human Security Approach

Abstract

After 60 years of the history of Japan’s official development assistance (ODA), two approaches stand out as the main philosophy of Japan’s foreign aid – aid for developing nations’ self-help and human security, as recently expressed in the Development Cooperation Charter of 2015. While ‘self-help’ was much emphasized around the 1990s, when Japan emerged as a top donor, ‘human security’ has been regarded as more important element since the early 21st century.

This essay argues that the relationship between self-help and human security has been ambiguous in Japan’s aid policy. While self-help is one of the key concepts in the analysis of the realist approach (such as Kenneth Waltz) in the theory of international politics, human security is in the more liberal or humanitarian tradition. Furthermore, it does not clear who makes ‘self-help’ efforts in economic development. Japan’s aid philosophy assumes that the developing state (or government) makes efforts toward development, but in reality, the government of developing states may not work for the interests of its peoples. In this case, the self-help efforts of individuals may end up with no returns for them. It is pointed out that Japan, relatively homogeneous, regards nation’s self-help as natural and normal, but the introduction of two level analysis – state level and person level – makes clear that many developing states have divisions within the state, and self-help efforts by all sectors of the state rarely happen.

In recent years, Japan has more emphasized the importance of ‘human level’ in development, by adopting human security in its development aid. However, there is no coherent explanation or examination how this notion of human security relates to self-help efforts. Human security has become more important in recent years, because the state itself can become the source of threat to peoples, or the state cannot protect its peoples from the various threats, such as infectious diseases, financial crisis, terrorism, and refugees. Despite the fact that Japan introduced human security in its aid policy in the late 1990s, Japan’s contributions to human security area has not been adequately recognized, because the majority of Japan’s aid money is still spent for the establishment of economic infrastructure, and given in the form of yen loan.

Emerging donors, including China, often take a similar approach to international aid, emphasizing the respect for recipient countries’ right to independently select their own path of development. It seems odd for Japan to stick to the aid principle similar to that of undemocratic emerging donors, particularly with regard to the fact that Japan’s political relations with China, which received substantial amount of Japanese aid, have been more tensional in recent years.