In many developing countries, economic development has failed to eradicate poverty because the fruits of economic development are distributed unequally among the people. But, Japan was able to distribute the fruits of her rapid economic growth among the people to a considerable degree. This is partly because the social development initiatives called “rural livelihood improvement movement” had prepared its groundwork during the 1950s.

After the Second World War, Japan faced with almost the entire array of problems many developing countries face today; such as food shortage, malnutrition, health deterioration and poor sanitary conditions. In 1948 rural livelihood improvement program started under the Ministry of Agriculture. Livelihood extension workers (women) were engaged in the livelihood improvement activities mainly targeting the rural women, while agricultural extension workers (men) worked in the activities for production increase. The livelihood extension workers were expected to play the role of facilitators in enabling women to become aware of numerous problems in daily life and guiding them to solve the problems by themselves. Awakening self-reliance in the moral realm and economic self-sustenance in the economic realm were their slogans along with the democratization in the political realm.

Although the Ministry of Agriculture initiated livelihood improvement program (LIP), it grew into Livelihood Improvement Movement (LIM) involving a wide range of sectors like health, education, water and sanitation etc. The sole objective of this nation wide movement was “to escape from the poverty.” LIM was unintentional multi-sector social development experience, where every actor played its role without prior coordination, but local people merged those vertical programs into a (de facto) integrated rural development program with modifications to their own circumstances. This became possible through peoples' organization and with the help of dedicated frontline government extension workers such as livelihood extension workers, public health nurses, teachers in primary schools, etc.

This Japan's experience may suggest many lessons to developing countries today, although further empirical study is needed.

This paper offers the role of agricultural cooperatives in agricultural development and life improvement of farm household in Japan, focusing on a decade over 1960s', experienced high economic growth rates. Through reviewing the experience in the agricultural cooperatives in Japan, it can be expected that the useful lessons on doing the process of agricultural and rural development efficiently in the developing countries will be pulled out, from the viewpoint of figuring out the importance of farmer's union.

The contents of this paper are as follows. Section 2 overviews some important functions and roles having undertaken by agricultural cooperatives after second world war, on promoting the agricultural development and improving the rural life. Section 3 examines the specific experiences performed by the vigorous agricultural cooperatives, taking some activities as examples. Section 4 refers to the valuable implications pulled out from the activities in agricultural cooperatives of Japan, for agricultural and rural development in the developing countries.

The functions played by agricultural cooperatives, in terms of agricultural development, are composed of some items as follows: extending the new farm technology to farmers, purchasing agricultural inputs such as chemical fertilizer, improved seeds, feed grain for livestock and agricultural machinery at the cheaper prices and distributing them to farmers, assembling agricultural products harvested by farmers and transporting them to the local wholesale market and selling at the higher prices, in order to maximize farmer's profits.

Due to the combination of important functions performed by the agricultural cooperatives in the past periods, it should be noted that agricultural development and rural life improvement were done successfully, which made up the basis of economic development in Japan.

Japan has a long history of Rural Life Improvement Movements (R-LIMs). In this paper, we focus on the prewar and postwar R-LIMs with a special emphasis on agricultural extension systems through which development policy message is transmitted from the state to the grassroots people. There were four major R-LIMs in the prewar period and they were always introduced at the time of agricultural crisis in order to save the rural economy by means of various compulsory belt-tightening campaigns with a result that upliftment of the levels of rural living standard was largely neglected. The postwar Rural Life Improvement Program (R-LIP) started in 1948 with the new agricultural extention systems which have totally different characteristics from those of the prewar period; farmwives were actively involved in small group activities for the improvement of everyday life in the farming community. Female extensionists responsible for home improvement advisory services played a vital role of organizing groups of the female members of farming families. The innovative methods of problem-solving and empowering these group members were invented by those female extensionists and they had far-reaching effects with a result that the female participants in the R-LIP have become independent farm women as well as rural female entrepreneurs. They are the main actors of today's village revitalization projects in Japan's countryside. In addition to the R-LIP, various social development programs including nutritional improvement campaigns, national mosquito-and-fly eradication campaign, and adult education promotion through rural public hall activities were also implemented in the countryside. Among them, the nutritional improvement campaigns and the national mosquito-and-fly eradication campaign sponsored by the Health Ministry were most positively accepted and carrtied out in a village-all-inclusive manner with very successful results. However, these projcts were largely dependent on traditional, existing local organizations, such as housewives associations and rural youth associations, so that the campaigns easily became less enthusiastic once the original purposes were fulfilled. Based on the experiences of Japan's R-LIMs, some implications to today's rural development in the devloping countries are pointed out. First, the importance of simultaneous implimentation of R-LIPs and techno-economic improvements should be emphasized. Second, the R-LIPs is essencially multi-sectoral, so that harmonious relations and coordination among the implementing agencies involved are highly required. Third, successful rural development projects depend on effective development communication channels in order not only to deliver central policy message to the locals, but also to translate the policy message into acceptable forms according to the local socio-cultural conditions.

In postwar rural Japan a community organization played an important role for promotion of the ’Life Improvement Movement’ that was regarded as rural development. The community organization synthetically organized a recipient organization and executing organizations in a rural community. This paper analyzes the role of community organization in the movement.

Two characteristics of the movement are pointed out from the viewpoint of functions of the community organization. First, the recipient organization and executing organizations were mutually connected to implement integrated and sector-wide rural development in a rural community. Second, the community organization promoted the improvement of living condition as well as agricultural production synthetically using functions of the recipient organization and executing organizations.

Experiences and lessons of the ’Life Improvement Movement’ in postwar rural Japan are possible to apply to rural development in the developing countries. Implications for rural development in the developing countries are pointed out to prepare a recipient organization, to prepare executing organizations and to consider development process based on this paper.

Japan has showed a remarkable improvement of health status after the Second World War. Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) in Japan has constantly decreased to 3.2 per 1,000 live births in 2000, reaching the lowest in the world. The author focused on discussion on maternal and child health (MCH) in Japan. A joint Japanese and American research team investigated the reasons why IMR in Japan was low. The team reached five possible explanations for Japan's low IMR: narrow socio-economic distribution, national health insurance covering the whole population, MCH Handbook, population-based screening and health check-ups, high value placed on childbearing.

I showed three examples: MCH handbook, Aiiku activities of community participation and community development in Sawauchi Village. In 1948, Handbook for mothers and children ”Boshi Techo” was firstly distributed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Japan. The content consisted of registration, maternal care and deliveries, health checkup and growth of a child, and a ration for food. Now, MCH handbooks are distributed by municipalities, towns or villages. It consists of 72 pages as a national version, and the local governments can add local information by their own needs.

Japan's experience is very different from that of many developing countries, but I argue that a basic health care delivery system and community awareness are just as important to fight infectious diseases and reduce the mortality rate.

Under the world's investment liberalization trend, developing countries have been countering various international pressures to compel their respective domestic law reforms affecting investment policies. However, a careful review of major international law sources would tell that there is only limited consensus on the legal design of global common rules, which reflects the undeniable gaps of policy stance on the ultimate aim of liberalization. Such a mal-consensus seems creating increasing difficulties for developing countries in focusing their policies to govern law reforms.

This article reexamines the legal texts of “investment rules” in major international agreement, either multilateral, regional or bilateral, for the purpose of studying significant gaps of policy stance behind the difference of legal wordings. One of the important findings from the reexamination is a serious conflict among the liberalization promoters: the deregulationists vs. the strict liberalists. The last part of the article upholds the latter stance to be chosen by developing countries, with a view to evade arbitrary intervention but to develop clear and stable rules especially needed for long-term direct investors such as Japanese FDI in Asia.

The ODA charter was enacted in 1992. This document provided a fundamental view of the Japanese ODA policy. The factors which led to this charter's enactment are various. However, the influence of the deliberations on ODA, especially in the House of Councilors, was large. The research committee of the House of Councilors is a committee for investigating. The results of the activities of this committee were summarized in a report, and, as a result, the resolution was passed. Moreover, considerable legislation was also proposed by the members of the House of Councilors about ODA in the meantime. The establishment of the ODA charter can be regarded as a response by the administration to these activities. Thus, it is thought that the activities of the Diet greatly influenced the establishment of the ODA charter. Such activities of the Diet will become a model case for policy making by the Diet. It also became easy for the Diet to control Japanese ODA policy by having made the charter.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the value of tourism resources around Luang Prabang using conjoint analysis and to predict the tourists' responses to tourism development.

First, we briefly explained about the method of environmental valuation, and showed what our study is different from previous studies. Second, we described the history, current situation, and proposed tourism development policies in Luang Prabang. It is famous for not only a World Heritage Site, but also for the scenery of delightful mountain around the town and multi-ethnic groups. However, there is not any well-organized ecotourism tour and visiting a minority village tour. It implies that it would be potential tourism resources unless making use of these tourism resources more efficiently and developing new tourism resources. Third, we used travel mode, six existing tourism resources, and two new tourism resources as attributes, and applied orthogonal main effect design as a profile design. Then, we introduced the random utility model as economic model, and showed how to calculate the Marginal Willingness to Pay. Fourth, we estimated the value of these attributes using conditional logit model. Based on the estimation results, we also calculated marginal willingness to pay for each resource.

The result of our survey showed that Pak Ou Cave and Sae Falls are the highest values of all existing resources. We also included respondents' characteristics such as their nationality and age in our estimation model to examine these influence for site choice. It showed that under-20s had lower value for an artisan village than over-30s. It also found that Asian have higher value for Sae Falls, Ban Sang Hai, Ban Chang, trekking, and an artisan village than other nationalities.

Tanzania has been a model country of PRSP and HIPCs initiatives. Tanzanian PRSP processes indicate that the bilateral, especially the northern Europran donors play an important role in public sector reforms and combine with IFIs to promote PRSP to help Governments focus their resources and to make them accountable for their actions. Therfore, most reforms developed in PRSP depend heavily on the principle of partnership. Traditinal conditionality, which has been infamous for coercive imposition of development agenda on the developing countries by IFIs, has been gradually being replaced by “post-conditionality” bench mark. While it should be emphasized that adjustment lending policy has been basically unchanged, many PRSP/HIPCs conditions have proven to be soft, poverty-forcused and process-oriented in providing a sense of partnership to the recipient Government.

New partnership guides people engaged in various public sector reforms such as Public Expenditure Management and Public Sector Reform Programme by uniting vigor of bilaterals, IFIs and the Goverment. The PRSP tools such as PER/MTEF and its relationship with Sector Programmes have various tasks and deficiencies, but they have matched well with the effects of these reforms. Uganda, the leading neighbor, provides more successful examples. While the merit of PRSP is to set significant development targets in rural poverty, observing targets seem technically and thematically difficult.

Though the public sector reforms have been progressed, the reformer President, B. Mkapa is not so satisfied with donor relationship because of European donors' intervention into domestic affairs. The voices of donors sometimes become intolerable to him since they pressurize the goverment to accept critical claims while providing budget support to the same body. PRSP processes concentrate on the administrative executives in the Ministries and tend to disregard parliamentarians. In near future, the close link with legislature and civil society is very important for PRSP to consolidate the support base in the country to continue the reform processes.

This article reviews the important reports and studies related to Capacity Development and Capacity Development in Environment (CDE) in order to develop an appropriate direction of environmental cooperation especially for environmental management in the future. This article adopts, in the final section, new institutional economics approach for the theoretical and practical framework of CDE.

The main findings of this article are as follows.

First, from the history of capacity development approach of United Nations Development Programme, the concept of capacity development distinguishes the actors by level such as system, institution, organization, individual, and aims to grasp the actors' performance (outputs and outcomes) within the overall framework which includes institutional development and organizational development. This concept is, however, quite ambiguous in practice.

Second, from the review of the reports and documents, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development has attempted to give donors good theoretical and practical CDE guidelines in the international cooperation of environmental management. The discussions, however, have not made clear the differences between capacity development and CDE, or, the elements of environment in CDE. CDE should be given a new approach that takes these into consideration, including the issue of critical minimum from the viewpoint of human health and ecosystem protection.

Third and more theoretically, new institutional economics and comparative institutional analysis, which deal with various actors in the social system, can suggest a theoretical and practical framework for capacity development and CDE. A bundle of institutions in enviromental managemant can be recognized as a social environmental management system (SEMS).

Developing countries are under increasing pressure to deal with a variety of environmental problems. These include industrial pollution, urban environmental issues, the deterioration of ecosystems, and global warming. At the same time, the countries are expected to achieve high economic growth. Therefore, developing countries urgently need to put maximum effort into their policies for improving environmental management and technology in order to overcome environmental difficulties.

This study focuses on the case of China, a typical example of a county facing environmental difficulties under high economic growth. It examines the income-environment relationship and environmental policy effects. Specifically, the two main questions are these: whether the environmental Kuznets curve (EK curve: in the course of economic development, the environment first gets worse, and then begins to get better) has been validated in China in such typical fields as air and water pollution, and to what extent China's environmental policies on pollution control have contributed to environmental improvements. The study's main findings are as follows: (1) a meaningful EK curve was verified for sulfur dioxide emission; and (2) environmental policy effects were identified in the sense that public resources, such as facilities for environmental treatment and manpower for environmental agencies, have an impact in reducing the relative level of sulfur emission against real income.

This article analyses the speeches of Japanese prime ministers during the Cold War period to clarify their ideas on foreign aid, including ODA. During this period no single document existed to provide a definitive policy on foreign aid, whereas in the post-Cold War period the ODA Charter of 1992 plays such a role. In light of this, some have argued that there existed no clear doctrine in Japanese foreign assistance during the period. After examining the prime ministers' speeches the author set up a hypothesis regarding the ideas on foreign aid held by each prime minister. This article is an attempt to explain policy-makers' doctrines on foreign aid on the basis of primary sources. The author concentrates his attention on the ideas which clarify the primary motives concerning foreign aid for each prime minister.

The conclusions of this article are as follows. It is possible to identify key words or phrases for each prime minister which represent his ideas on foreign aid, such as Asia, trade, free world, international society, responsibility, contribution, comprehensive security and interdependence. As an attempt to understand better the mutual relations of such key words or phrases, three coordinate axes may be established. The first axis has Asian solidarity on one end and cooperation with Europe and America on the other. The second axis has external economic interests on one end and national security on the other. The third axis is extended upward from the intersection point of the first and second axes and indicates the degree of comprehensiveness. Each prime minister's ideas on foreign aid can be positioned within such a coordinate system by considering mainly the key words and phrases described above.

The goal of the Japanese Government's Foreign Student Support Policy can be divided into two perspectives: 1) to contribute to the human resources development in recipient countries, 2) to deepen mutual understanding and friendship with those countries by fostering pro-Japanese people. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate its impact toward Indonesia from the first perspective.

A total of 6,630 Indonesians studied in Japan from 1933 to 2000: Japanese government sponsored students (36.0%), Indonesian Government sponsored students (28.5%), and private or no scholarship students (31.9%). As the result of name list analysis of alumni who were sponsored either by the Japanese or the Indonesian government, it became clear that those who were dispatched before 1965 took important posts in the government or private sector during the time when the higher education opportunities were less available; after 1966 when the Japanese government restarted providing scholarships, scholarship recipients mostly became academic staff of university or government officers. Their majors were mainly science, technology and agriculture.

In the comparative questionnaire survey, both Japanese and USA alumni utilize and disseminate knowledge and skill they acquired abroad in their working place in spite of insufficient budget and facility. Japanese alumni showed more eagerness to introduce a Japanese style of discipline than USA alumni; this Japanese discipline seems to have strengthened the centripetal force of each organization and raised the evaluation of Japanese alumni.

Although the number of Japanese alumni is much smaller than that of USA alumni, they have contributed to the development of Indonesia in much needed fields like science and technology. In this view, the Japanese government's foreign student support policy was successful in Indonesia. For a sustainable human resources development, it is necessary to consider measures to promote their networking and technical support.

Attempts have been made particularly in South Asia to delineate new approaches with focus on action-oriented, interactive processes in environmental improvement, in contrast to conventional planning paradigm as represented by a long-term, comprehensive blueprint plan formulation.

The paper first reviews theoretically the evolution and scope of “process approach” to development. The concept of action planning was developed in the 1960s, in place of master planning, for metropolitan management faced with extremely dynamic transformation of urban settings. A pioneering case in point was the Basic Plan for Calcutta. The concept further evolved into planning for activating community members in low-income settlements. An emphasis was placed, however, in some circumstances with Gandhian philosophy, not on mobilizing people to attain predetermined ends, but on supporting organizational growth through working together. Meanwhile, some practitioners became aware that action-oriented planning should be meant to provide an interactive space where both outsiders and local people undergo transformation of respective roles and functions, so that new relationships are borne out. Thus David Korten formulated the concept of learning process approach to development. Indeed, one may observe in metropolitan regions in South Asia that incremental settlement development without any blueprints seems to offer a viable option to encourage people's ownership of and satisfaction with their community building.

The paper then examines, with special reference to urbanizing process of Karachi, such new thinking relative to open-ended, process-focussed development, as evident in the work of the Orangi Pilot Project since 1980. Low-income residents in Orangi, an informal settlement of one million people, have built and maintained a self-financed, self-managed shallow sewer network, without any overall plan. Yet, this has led to more equal partnership between people and local authorities, and to new decision making dynamism at the city-wide level: an essential quality in the learning process approach.

Cambodian villages, especially the remote and neglected face acute declines in food supplies below minimum survival requirements. The nature of contemporary food insecurity in the country as a whole is much more one of inadequacy of households' access to food rather than food availability, and the key problems of food access are a result of exposure to risks and crises such as drought, floods, and pest and disease infestations; changes in the levels of cash income from household enterprises (productive and financial assets); low productivity and consumption levels; and several other underlying socioeconomic factors, which significantly reduce their ability to cope. This paper summarizes the overall food security situation in rural Cambodia, mainly considering the preliminary research findings in Kampong Speu and Kampong Chhnang with respect to the provincial and district perspectives, food security matrix ranking, and problem analyses in the four villages studied. The paper also takes into account suggested strategies for policy responses to priority needs of the villagers in effort to improve the food insecurity situations among village households in Cambodia.

This study shows that the Ayta, the indigenous people in the Philippines, choose their own strategy of survival and decide by themselves whether they should become literate or remain illiterate. So the policy makers of literacy projects need to understand and respect their decision.

This study is based on limited data by interviews, personal observation and the case study on the Ayta people living around Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines. The Aytas have been forced to face a radical change in their lifestyle since Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991. The author focuses on several aspects of the history of the literacy education among the Ayta; Who conducted the literacy programs for the Ayta even though they had lived their lives without literacy? When and why were the programs applied? And how did the Ayta respond to the programs?

Before the eruption, some Christian missionaries, public schools, and NGO tried to teach reading and writing to the Ayta who lived in the east of Botolan, Zambales. Their purposes were to enlighten them in regard to Christianity, patriotism, civilization, and their development. However, the Ayta people didn't feel like they learned to read or to write because they had few chances to read or write in their daily lives. Moreover, they loved freedom, that is, being free from outsiders. Therefore, it was not an easy task to make many people totally literate. After the eruption, most of the Ayta living around the area moved into Loob-bunga Resettlement, established by the Philippine government, where public schools were built and NGO implemented the literacy programs until 1997.

The survey shows two interesting findings as to the literacy situation in Belbel which is one of the eleven villages in the resettlement. First, even though DSWD (The Department of Social Welfare and Development) says that the rate of illiteracy is 8.3%, 37.1% of the residents never got the literacy education at all or had some difficulties with reading and writing. Second, the illiterate people tended to move back to their old village or other resettlements supported by NGO for the sake of keeping their traditional lifestyle, while the literate people wanted to adapt to the lowlanders' culture.

The Ayta's culture has been changing rapidly. Some of the Ayta like to adopt a new lifestyle. Others try to keep their original way of life. Thus, their literacy abilities depend on their choice from these two strategies for their survival. It is not outsiders but the Ayta people themselves that decide to become literate or not.

Drug Revolving Fund (DRF) is one of the most well-known community financing systems, especially in rural areas of developing countries. Despite many evaluations on their financial management, little attention has been given to the participation of community people.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate how local community and government participation relate to the sustainability of DRF programs. This report targeted three types of DRF programs that were previously implemented in the Philippines: Botica sa Barangay, Botica Binhi, and Botica ng Barangay. Botica Binhi, which was established as a project of the Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA) Mother and Children Health Team in Tarlac and Zambales provinces, was investigated in detail.

This analysis focuses on the roles of three organizations in DRF programs: the local community, local government, and NGOs or foreign agencies. Interviews were conducted with community collaborative pharmacy workers regarding the relation of sustainability and community involvement. The main results can be summarized as follows: 1. DRF programs were characterized by many roles and responsibilities, so sustainability of programs depends on how the roles are shared among related organizations. 2. The community pharmacies were profitable, but easy access to the drugs such as antibiotics brought about no benefit or even harm to buyers unless rational use.

In this study, I suggest that the purpose of DRF programs include the promotion of Primary Health Care, so donors must make common understanding of PHC with counterparts. To sustain DRF programs, it is important to first promote them to local communities and governments to encourage the positive participation of residents.