Japan in 1991: Uncertain Quest for a Global Role

Abstract

As the second largest economy in the world, with high productivity, a powerful currency, and state of the art technology across a broadening range of industries, Japan has loomed intermittently for the past two decades and more as a prospective world power.1 Yet for many years it lay paradoxically inert and inarticulate. Even at home there was remarkably little consideration of just where Japan's own interest in international affairs truly lay. As 1991 dawned, the issue of Japan's global role had at last thrust to the heart of Japanese political and social dialogue, driven by the deepening U.S.-Iraqi confrontation in the Persian Gulf. Japan's response to that point had been piecemeal and picayune: US$2 billion each to the Allied forces and to the front-line states confronting Iraq, contributed two months after the crisis began. Legislation to permit the dispatch of noncombatant peacekeeping forces offshore under United Nations auspices had been shelved without a vote in the Diet during October, amidst fierce domestic controversy. Yet the anguished internal debate on a global role for Japan set off by the early Gulf crisis deepened and broadened to historic proportions in 1991-so dominating Japan's political and social processes as to be a central, defining characteristic of the year as a whole. The year began with resolution: the preparations for the allied air strike against Iraq, launched on January 17. It ended in turbulence, with the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev and formal dissolution of the Soviet Union (December 25). World affairs in 1991 were volatile and dramatic throughout, impinging