The Peace Studies Association of Japan, formed in the 1970s, has contributed to the theorizing of the experience of the Hiroshima Nagasaki atomic bomb disasters, establishing a critical view of the vertical relationship between Japan and the countries of Southeast Asia that have developed through massive investment from Japan. Further, this Association promotes the private efforts of the reconciliation between Japan and its East Asian neighboring countries through active exchange while the rivalries of these countries have become intensified in the age of globalization. However, in recent decades, at the same time, social and economic gaps between the center/dominant groups and peripheries, including Okinawa and the northeastern part of Japan, on the one hand, and the formal labor sector and the informal/peripheral sectors on the other, have been widening. This phenomenon can be considered to be a second wave of colonization; this time, it is internal colonization. How can peace studies, whose major concern has been international relationships, treat this new dimension of peace research? To tackle a new research agenda of de-recolonization, this article proposes to trace the historical development of peace research in Japan, which has its root in the colonial policy of the imperialist age and which was institutionalized in the post-WWII period, following the peace research of the Occident in the age of the Cold War. These historical traits give Japanese peace research both its universal character and its imported one. In order to tackle new issues born in the age of globalization, Japanese peace research should reconsider its methodology and made an effort to examine both the domestic and international situations of non-peace: this should constitute the de-colonization task of peace studies in this country.

In the dominant legal discourse in the West (including Japan), human rights are described as a final truth, admitting of no fundamental critique. Standard textbooks on Constitutional and International Law present a single historiography of linear progress, delineating a series of epoch-making events solely within the boundaries of Europe. Human rights are considered to be the best because they are a product of the “Modern”, a historic era of human emancipation. However, colonialism is embedded in the Modern era as an expressive form of Modern Imperialism. Indeed, from a non-European viewpoint, it is colonial domination that may properly be posited as the origin of human rights and international law. Further, human rights and international law were born not in Westphalian Europe but within the global context of the “Conquest of New World” beginning in the fifteenth century, as described by vibrant recent academic work critiquing a geopolitics of knowledge and aimed at decolonizing legal discourse. Inspired by this discussion, this essay brings to the foreground non-European perspectives that have been made invisible in the dominant historiography of human rights and international law and thus helps to construct an alternative path for relativizing the dominant Euro-centric narrative celebrating linear progress. It also critically portrays the contemporary interplay of colonialism and human rights/international law in global and internal contexts. By doing so, this essay joins, in the words of leading Third World international lawyers Anthony Anghie and B.S. Chimni, a project fundamentally seeking to transform human rights and international law from being a language of oppression to a language of emancipation: a body of rules and practices that reflect and embody the struggle and aspirations of peoples and which, thereby, promote global justice truly.

Germany is well known for its proactive reconciliation diplomacy and Vergangenheitsbewältigung (overcoming its past) particularly that aspect of it related to National Socialism and its atrocities during WWII, ending in the Holocaust. On the other hand, its colonial past has been long swept away into oblivion. The gap between the war and colonial memory has characterized the post-war German culture and politics of memory. The racist theory, which gave ideological backing to National Socialist injustices, was developed in the context of colonialism. Genocide, concentration camps, and forced labor, which are usually associated with the Holocaust, were already practiced in the former African colonies during the German Empire. For the fundamental overcoming of the Holocaust as well, confrontation with the colonial past is indispensable. The purpose of this paper is to examine how people in contemporary Germany are dealing with their colonial past and promoting postcolonial reconciliation, i.e., the restoration of the relationship with Others from Germany’ s former colonies. Empirically, the case of the repatriation of human remains derived from German Southwest Africa by a German medical school is described and analyzed in detail. In 2011 in Berlin, 20 skulls were handed over to a delegation from Namibia. They were victims of the so called Herero-Nama War of 1904- 1908. The Herero and Nama peoples revolted against German colonial rule. German troops thoroughly destroyed the indigenous resistance and the surviving people were driven into concentration camps. Historians consider these atrocities the first genocide of the 20th century. In those days, an unknown number of dead bodies were sent to German universities as anthropological “samples” for racial studies. The recently restituted 20 skulls were part of them. Anthropological research in Germany at that time was premised on the dichotomy of Naturvölker / Kulturvölker (nature-people / culture-people). The former meant people in colonies and the latter European, “civilized” people. The members of the Namibian delegation wanted not only to receive their ancestral human remains but to negotiate with the German government on the issues of structural dialogue and reparation for genocide. However, their hope was not fulfilled because of the avoidant attitude of the German government. Thus, the gap between post-war and postcolonial reconciliation is maintained. How can this asymmetrical relationship be decolonized and reconciled? Some clues can be found in this process of repatriation: compassion and listening to Colonial Others. The reason for postcolonial amnesia must be reexamined in a further study. This may call the very notion of “civilization” into question and reconnect the divided relationship between nature (-people) and culture (-people).

Arguments and analysis on Japanese colonialism in Japan have mainly focused on East Asian states colonized (Korean Peninsula, Taiwan) or invaded and occupied (China, South-East Asian states) by Japan, and the Micronesia ex-mandates. Okinawa/Ryukyu and Hokkaido are also focal points for discussion in the context of colonization.

I analyze Japanese colonialism from a new point of view: the deeply rooted influence of colonialism on Japanese diplomacy. By passing new security laws in 2015, Japan opened the door to full-scale overseas military activities. In this situation, the “colonialism” of Japanese diplomacy must be strictly examined and confronted. This paper focuses on the Japanese foreign policy in Africa from this point of view.

I show the continuation of “colonialism” in Japanese foreign policy on Africa through the discussion and analysis of the following questions: (1) the long and close Japanese relationship with the White colonial ruling regime in South Africa from 1910 to 1994. As a colonial power and one of the victorious nations in World War I, Japanese was recognized as an “Honorary White” country in 1930, and it missed the chance to relinquish this dishonorable title by itself at the end of the Apartheid regime. This means that Japan missed its chance to eradicate the mentality of the “Colonial Empire” in its relations with Africa; (2) the cooperation with South Africa for the redistribution of ex-German colonies after World War I, and the illegal importation of Namibian natural resources, especially uranium, under the occupation by Apartheid regime; (3) the colonialist perception of international law and negative attitude toward national liberation movements. I examine Japanese policy with regard to the Guinea-Bissau and Western Sahara liberation movements as examples; and (4) the colonialist-style “Status of Forces Agreement” with Djibouti for anti-piracy operations, and the establishment of the first overseas base of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces in Djibouti.

The “comfort women” survivors have demanded an official apology and national compensation from the Japanese government for damages resulting from forced sexual slavery associated with the Imperial Japanese Army from the 1990s. The Japanese government established the Asian Women’ s Fund (AWF), which is based on donations from Japanese citizens rather than compensation from the government. Most survivors stated that the AWF would not restore their dignity. A total of 364 “comfort women,” however, accepted the project. Why?

The purpose of this study is to analyze the various approaches that were adopted to resolve this issue, as well as the survivors’ responses to the AWF. The study finds that the decision whether or not to receive the fund depended on each survivor=s situation, which varied by country, society, family relations, and actual damage. That is to say, not all decisions were purely based on individual will. The results of this study show that not only the survivors but also their families suffer the aftereffects of the survivors’ experiences as “comfort women.” The survivors cannot by themselves eliminate their struggles that stemmed from this experience. This is one reason why the survivors have demanded an official apology from the Japanese government. Based on these findings, this study suggests that an atonement to reestablish social relations surrounding these women by restoring their honor is necessary, rather than trivializing the issue of the “comfort women” as simply personal.

In 2005, the UN Member States agreed on the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in their effort to reconcile the tension between the normative principles of the human rights protection and of non-intervention into the matters of domestic jurisdiction. The 2005 World Summit Outcome states that the international community must be “prepared to take collective action (…), through the Security Council (…), should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations’ from the prescribed atrocities [A/60/L.1, 15 September 2005, para.139].” Nonetheless, the international reaction to the Syrian crisis since 2011 has shown that there are no shared expectations in the international community regarding exactly what conditions constitute the manifest failure of a state to protect its people. As contrasted with the Libyan crisis in 2011, where the Security Council authorized its member states to take all the necessary measures to protect civilians under the threat of attack, it failed to do the same in the case for Syria due to international disputes over the ability and willingness of the Syrian authorities to fulfill the responsibility to protect its people.

This article examines international negotiation within the UN Security Council facing the Syrian crisis, and points out two limitations of the R2P-based approach toward civilian protections. Firstly, the R2P-based justification for interventions requires the international community to reach a common understanding of the ability and willingness of the intervened state to protect its people before everything: without this common understanding, the principle of R2P does not function to resolve normative tension on its own. Under such circumstance, international inaction is more likely to be observed. Secondly, intervening states could justify their interventions not by the controversial R2P principle but by the less controversial normative principles of the proscription against chemical weapons and of self-defense. But their intervention, thus realized, would not achieve the original goal of the protecting people in the intervened-in state, as has been witnessed in the Syrian case.

In recent years, public opinion against the Henoko relocation has spread outside Okinawa Prefecture. A movement has come together to rethink the base maintain fiscal policy, which has been maintained for many years by the Japanese government. This movement centers on donations to the Henoko fund and the hometown tax in the Nago town in Okinawa prefecture. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the significance of the donations to opposition to the Henoko relocation.

Since a mayor of Nago and a governor of Okinawa Prefecture opposed to base relocation won election, the hometown tax has been growing rapidly. The reaction to the Henoko fund was greater than expected. This fund has collected a donation of 350 million yen in just two months. The policy of Okinawa has been promoted by the government, although individuals would have difficulty expressing an opinion about national security. However, individuals have the power to change the current status by expressing their intentions through donations.

There are some issues with the hometown tax and the Henoko fund initiatives. However, they are important in that they present a new form of contact with money. They have given a valuable suggestion to other local governments that constrained by fiscal policy to maintain military bases or nuclear plants. The Henoko fund and the hometown tax are important from the perspective of peace studies in their confrontation of structural violence.

The Peace Studies Association of Japan, formed in the 1970s, has contributed to the theorizing of the experience of the Hiroshima Nagasaki atomic bomb disasters, establishing a critical view of the vertical relationship between Japan and the countries of Southeast Asia that have developed through massive investment from Japan. Further, this Association promotes the private efforts of the reconciliation between Japan and its East Asian neighboring countries through active exchange while the rivalries of these countries have become intensified in the age of globalization. However, in recent decades, at the same time, social and economic gaps between the center/dominant groups and peripheries, including Okinawa and the northeastern part of Japan, on the one hand, and the formal labor sector and the informal/peripheral sectors on the other, have been widening. This phenomenon can be considered to be a second wave of colonization; this time, it is internal colonization. How can peace studies, whose major concern has been international relationships, treat this new dimension of peace research? To tackle a new research agenda of de-recolonization, this article proposes to trace the historical development of peace research in Japan, which has its root in the colonial policy of the imperialist age and which was institutionalized in the post-WWII period, following the peace research of the Occident in the age of the Cold War. These historical traits give Japanese peace research both its universal character and its imported one. In order to tackle new issues born in the age of globalization, Japanese peace research should reconsider its methodology and made an effort to examine both the domestic and international situations of non-peace: this should constitute the de-colonization task of peace studies in this country.

In the dominant legal discourse in the West (including Japan), human rights are described as a final truth, admitting of no fundamental critique. Standard textbooks on Constitutional and International Law present a single historiography of linear progress, delineating a series of epoch-making events solely within the boundaries of Europe. Human rights are considered to be the best because they are a product of the “Modern”, a historic era of human emancipation. However, colonialism is embedded in the Modern era as an expressive form of Modern Imperialism. Indeed, from a non-European viewpoint, it is colonial domination that may properly be posited as the origin of human rights and international law. Further, human rights and international law were born not in Westphalian Europe but within the global context of the “Conquest of New World” beginning in the fifteenth century, as described by vibrant recent academic work critiquing a geopolitics of knowledge and aimed at decolonizing legal discourse. Inspired by this discussion, this essay brings to the foreground non-European perspectives that have been made invisible in the dominant historiography of human rights and international law and thus helps to construct an alternative path for relativizing the dominant Euro-centric narrative celebrating linear progress. It also critically portrays the contemporary interplay of colonialism and human rights/international law in global and internal contexts. By doing so, this essay joins, in the words of leading Third World international lawyers Anthony Anghie and B.S. Chimni, a project fundamentally seeking to transform human rights and international law from being a language of oppression to a language of emancipation: a body of rules and practices that reflect and embody the struggle and aspirations of peoples and which, thereby, promote global justice truly.

Germany is well known for its proactive reconciliation diplomacy and Vergangenheitsbewältigung (overcoming its past) particularly that aspect of it related to National Socialism and its atrocities during WWII, ending in the Holocaust. On the other hand, its colonial past has been long swept away into oblivion. The gap between the war and colonial memory has characterized the post-war German culture and politics of memory. The racist theory, which gave ideological backing to National Socialist injustices, was developed in the context of colonialism. Genocide, concentration camps, and forced labor, which are usually associated with the Holocaust, were already practiced in the former African colonies during the German Empire. For the fundamental overcoming of the Holocaust as well, confrontation with the colonial past is indispensable. The purpose of this paper is to examine how people in contemporary Germany are dealing with their colonial past and promoting postcolonial reconciliation, i.e., the restoration of the relationship with Others from Germany’ s former colonies. Empirically, the case of the repatriation of human remains derived from German Southwest Africa by a German medical school is described and analyzed in detail. In 2011 in Berlin, 20 skulls were handed over to a delegation from Namibia. They were victims of the so called Herero-Nama War of 1904- 1908. The Herero and Nama peoples revolted against German colonial rule. German troops thoroughly destroyed the indigenous resistance and the surviving people were driven into concentration camps. Historians consider these atrocities the first genocide of the 20th century. In those days, an unknown number of dead bodies were sent to German universities as anthropological “samples” for racial studies. The recently restituted 20 skulls were part of them. Anthropological research in Germany at that time was premised on the dichotomy of Naturvölker / Kulturvölker (nature-people / culture-people). The former meant people in colonies and the latter European, “civilized” people. The members of the Namibian delegation wanted not only to receive their ancestral human remains but to negotiate with the German government on the issues of structural dialogue and reparation for genocide. However, their hope was not fulfilled because of the avoidant attitude of the German government. Thus, the gap between post-war and postcolonial reconciliation is maintained. How can this asymmetrical relationship be decolonized and reconciled? Some clues can be found in this process of repatriation: compassion and listening to Colonial Others. The reason for postcolonial amnesia must be reexamined in a further study. This may call the very notion of “civilization” into question and reconnect the divided relationship between nature (-people) and culture (-people).

Arguments and analysis on Japanese colonialism in Japan have mainly focused on East Asian states colonized (Korean Peninsula, Taiwan) or invaded and occupied (China, South-East Asian states) by Japan, and the Micronesia ex-mandates. Okinawa/Ryukyu and Hokkaido are also focal points for discussion in the context of colonization.

I analyze Japanese colonialism from a new point of view: the deeply rooted influence of colonialism on Japanese diplomacy. By passing new security laws in 2015, Japan opened the door to full-scale overseas military activities. In this situation, the “colonialism” of Japanese diplomacy must be strictly examined and confronted. This paper focuses on the Japanese foreign policy in Africa from this point of view.

I show the continuation of “colonialism” in Japanese foreign policy on Africa through the discussion and analysis of the following questions: (1) the long and close Japanese relationship with the White colonial ruling regime in South Africa from 1910 to 1994. As a colonial power and one of the victorious nations in World War I, Japanese was recognized as an “Honorary White” country in 1930, and it missed the chance to relinquish this dishonorable title by itself at the end of the Apartheid regime. This means that Japan missed its chance to eradicate the mentality of the “Colonial Empire” in its relations with Africa; (2) the cooperation with South Africa for the redistribution of ex-German colonies after World War I, and the illegal importation of Namibian natural resources, especially uranium, under the occupation by Apartheid regime; (3) the colonialist perception of international law and negative attitude toward national liberation movements. I examine Japanese policy with regard to the Guinea-Bissau and Western Sahara liberation movements as examples; and (4) the colonialist-style “Status of Forces Agreement” with Djibouti for anti-piracy operations, and the establishment of the first overseas base of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces in Djibouti.

The “comfort women” survivors have demanded an official apology and national compensation from the Japanese government for damages resulting from forced sexual slavery associated with the Imperial Japanese Army from the 1990s. The Japanese government established the Asian Women’ s Fund (AWF), which is based on donations from Japanese citizens rather than compensation from the government. Most survivors stated that the AWF would not restore their dignity. A total of 364 “comfort women,” however, accepted the project. Why?

The purpose of this study is to analyze the various approaches that were adopted to resolve this issue, as well as the survivors’ responses to the AWF. The study finds that the decision whether or not to receive the fund depended on each survivor=s situation, which varied by country, society, family relations, and actual damage. That is to say, not all decisions were purely based on individual will. The results of this study show that not only the survivors but also their families suffer the aftereffects of the survivors’ experiences as “comfort women.” The survivors cannot by themselves eliminate their struggles that stemmed from this experience. This is one reason why the survivors have demanded an official apology from the Japanese government. Based on these findings, this study suggests that an atonement to reestablish social relations surrounding these women by restoring their honor is necessary, rather than trivializing the issue of the “comfort women” as simply personal.

In 2005, the UN Member States agreed on the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in their effort to reconcile the tension between the normative principles of the human rights protection and of non-intervention into the matters of domestic jurisdiction. The 2005 World Summit Outcome states that the international community must be “prepared to take collective action (…), through the Security Council (…), should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations’ from the prescribed atrocities [A/60/L.1, 15 September 2005, para.139].” Nonetheless, the international reaction to the Syrian crisis since 2011 has shown that there are no shared expectations in the international community regarding exactly what conditions constitute the manifest failure of a state to protect its people. As contrasted with the Libyan crisis in 2011, where the Security Council authorized its member states to take all the necessary measures to protect civilians under the threat of attack, it failed to do the same in the case for Syria due to international disputes over the ability and willingness of the Syrian authorities to fulfill the responsibility to protect its people.

This article examines international negotiation within the UN Security Council facing the Syrian crisis, and points out two limitations of the R2P-based approach toward civilian protections. Firstly, the R2P-based justification for interventions requires the international community to reach a common understanding of the ability and willingness of the intervened state to protect its people before everything: without this common understanding, the principle of R2P does not function to resolve normative tension on its own. Under such circumstance, international inaction is more likely to be observed. Secondly, intervening states could justify their interventions not by the controversial R2P principle but by the less controversial normative principles of the proscription against chemical weapons and of self-defense. But their intervention, thus realized, would not achieve the original goal of the protecting people in the intervened-in state, as has been witnessed in the Syrian case.

In recent years, public opinion against the Henoko relocation has spread outside Okinawa Prefecture. A movement has come together to rethink the base maintain fiscal policy, which has been maintained for many years by the Japanese government. This movement centers on donations to the Henoko fund and the hometown tax in the Nago town in Okinawa prefecture. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the significance of the donations to opposition to the Henoko relocation.

Since a mayor of Nago and a governor of Okinawa Prefecture opposed to base relocation won election, the hometown tax has been growing rapidly. The reaction to the Henoko fund was greater than expected. This fund has collected a donation of 350 million yen in just two months. The policy of Okinawa has been promoted by the government, although individuals would have difficulty expressing an opinion about national security. However, individuals have the power to change the current status by expressing their intentions through donations.

There are some issues with the hometown tax and the Henoko fund initiatives. However, they are important in that they present a new form of contact with money. They have given a valuable suggestion to other local governments that constrained by fiscal policy to maintain military bases or nuclear plants. The Henoko fund and the hometown tax are important from the perspective of peace studies in their confrontation of structural violence.