The Prestige Factor in International Affairs*

Abstract

W HEN Sir Daniel Stevenson made his endowments for chairs in international relations, he did so with a purpose wider than that of simply promoting scholarship. He also wanted scholarship to improve the world. It therefore behoves those who lecture in his honour to deliver something in the nature of an improving message. I myself have never been averse to moralising, but it so happened that when I began to think about this lecture I was not exactly burning with a message that had to be delivered. I had only puzzles, questions, and a certain expectation that if one could only explore one's way through those questions, something important in the way of a message would be discovered. Let me begin by saying what those puzzles were. Most of my life has been spent in the study of Japanese society. One thing that has frequently impressed me is the importance, for explaining a variety of internal developments in Japanese society as well as the direction of Japanese foreign policy over the last hundred years, of a shared national concern with Japan's standing in the international community. The origins of this concern are clear enough in that period of the late 19th century when the dominant objective of Japan's policy was to force revision of what were universally called the 'unequal treaties,' to remove the humiliation of foreign extra-territorial rights in Japanese ports. But why should the Japanese still be so particularly concerned about their country's external image? Why should it be, for instance, that even a government official attending an international expert group meeting supposedly in his individual expert capacity, is not only obliged to submit a position paper to an interdepartmental group chaired by the foreign office, but may well expect to have to redraft it four or five times before he is allowed to go? And what, really, is meant by 'standing in' or 'a position of equality in' the international community? Why is it that most Japanese still feel that despite their great economic power they somehow have not achieved a ' standing' commensurate with it? And why should they appear to be