The Japan Association of International Relations, which was established in 1956, considers one of its main objectives to contribute to the progress of the study of the history of international relations, in paticular to research into the history of Japanese diplomacy. Japan's Road to the Pacific War is a representative example of what can be done by the joint endeavour of this association.
We would like to point out, as a specific characteristics of recent research on the history of international relations, firstly, a tendency to remove the limitations which are encountered by a study of so called “diplomatic history” in isolation from everything else.
We would like to examine the change from the move traditional approaches, which have emphasized only bilateral or multilateral relations between states, to the more modern, original approaches. The interest of researchers will be to cover a wide area of historical phenomena, such as the political decision-making process, public opinion, economic pressure groups and the process of communication amongst other things.
The second characteristic has been the flowering of collaborative reserch between Japanese and foreign scholars, and we are now receiving the excellent results of their labours. For instance, the conference at Lake Kawaguchi in 1969, the result of which was, “The history of Japanese-American Relations, 1931-41” is a representative example of this trend. However, it is regrettable that the participants in these collaborative research projects have been mainly limited to Japanese and American scholars. It is to be hoped that, in future, there will be further opportunities for collaborative research and conferences not only with American scholars, but also with scholars from China, England, Korea, the Soviet Union and South East Asia.
We hope the future tendency of research will be for the themes of the role and limitation of the individual in international affairs, as well as the problem of individual responsibility, to become the common interest of scholars.
We hope that, in future, the increasing variety of scholarship will not become merely scattered and diffused.

抄録全体を表示

This Part contains six papers by ten writers which trace the development of area studies in post-war Japan: East Asia, South-East Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the USSR and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the Americas. With Japan's economic and political comeback to the world scene during the after the post-war reconstruction for ten years, area studies began to make progress in this country to reach a new stage some ten years later. The strong influence of the past overseas trends in this field of study, especially of the orthodox Marxism and the American approach, started waning, while Japanese researchers came to find their own methods of study and produce many dependable works. According to some contributors to this Part, a new generation of area studies researchers, who have a good command of the languages of the areas to study, have published a number of excellent works. Today researches in this field in Japan are beginning to take on an original character based on the new research methods and produce works which on the whole are creative. But the current disciplinary situation is not free from shortcomings or unbalance. There remains a need for more systematic or organizational researches.

抄録全体を表示

International Relations Theories in Japan have been imported mainly from the United States. It is based on this characteristics that innovative and original research activities for the theory development could not become main currents in academic circles of Japan. Until recently, the Japan Association of International Relations was not exceptional for such import-oriented character of the discipline except some cases such as those related to the studies of Japan and Asia.
International Relations Theories have three different aspects: semantic, syntactic and pragmatic. Along the line of international relations theory, semantic revolution should have developed in the first stage, provided that post-war Japan has been born as disarmed nation-state. However, it is ironical that non-academic intellectual magazines and journals were rather enthusiastic only for semantic innovation of theory in which a very few international relations theory-builders participated as one of generalists independent of his academic discipline.
In the fields of syntactic revolution, it was quite recently that younger generation has become, step by step, innovative for theory development activities. Young scholars who could get Ph. D. in the U. S. gradually became not content of importing parochial theory of international relations mostly produced by American schloars.
As far as pragmatic revolution is concerned, 10 years time-lag of soft-ware development of computers compared with those in the U. S. is still strong obstacle for innovative research activities in Japan. Of course, in this field, a few mathematically well trained political scientists tried to use computers for the application of new statistics such as multivariate statistical methods to the analysis of international relations data already in the 1960's. However, most of progress by them was made outside universities because use of computers within universities was very backward till recently. Data bank construction was also very difficult particularly in the fields of international relations and, as a result, aggregate data analysis did not develop except a very few cases which government sink-tank supported financially and technically.
Integration of theory development and empirical analysis also has not been successful because of poor organization of empirical research in Japan. In spite of limitations explained above, there is a hopeful symptom that characteristics of post-war Japan as a disarmed nation-state would provide rich potentiality in the future.

抄録全体を表示

The Introductory Notes are divided into three parts: A) Historical Studies, B) Area Studies, C) Theoretical Studies.
A) Historical Studies
The following conditions can be mentioned in accounting for the development in the Post-War Japan of the studies of its diplomatic history. I) Expansion of academic freedom in touching upon external activities of the government. II) Accessibility of diplomatic, as well as military, records. III) Application of analitical framework as developed in political science to the study of diplomatic history.
Several joint works were undertaken in this field. Among them, was the most distinguished one: Japan's Road to the Pacific war, 8 vols., ed. by the study group of the Japan Association of International Relations.
B) Area Studies
Area studies, which had chiefly focused on East Asia in prewar days, have been developed in bringing new regions in the object of the studies and in introducing new research methods. There are even theoretical attempts to generalize the political and social phenomena occuring in certain area.
C) Theoretical Studies
Theoretical studies in Post-War Japan have been developed under the impact of international studies in the United States. The impact of realistic school represented by H. Morgenthau was remarkably pronounced during the first period (1945-54). During the second period (1955-64), the intellectual stimulus of behavioristic approach of international studies in the United States was so distinct as to make our scholars put their strong efforts in introducing and digesting the new approaches. The third period (1965-74) witnessed new efforts on the part of our scholars to bring an innovation in some fields: I) To identify Japanese characteristics in foreign policy-making process, negotiation pattern, and communication behavior. II) To promote peace studies. III) To make an attempt coward elaborating research techniques, such as content analysis and simulation. A new trend in the fourth period (1975-) can be summarized as follows: I) Increased interest, in particular among young scholars, in the study of international political economy, regional integration and transnational relations. Promising works, which may make some contribution to the development of international studies throughout the world, could be found in the above areas and in mathematical analyses of international politico-economic phenomena.

抄録全体を表示