ABSTRACT
Peacebuilding has become one of Japan’s key foreign policy tools in over the last decade. This chapter explores characteristics of Japan’s peacebuilding. It consists of three tiers: international, national and local. The international approach to peacebuilding puts effort on taking a diplomatic lead in international forums such as the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission and the Tokyo International Conferences on African Development. The national level approach is its second-tier approach, which focuses on providing Japan’s foreign aid and participating in multilateral peacekeeping operations on the ground. The third-tier approach to Japanese peacebuilding is human resource development of civilian peacebuilders. This approach is “local”-level support in the sense that Japan focuses on training civilians from Japan. While this chapter also makes some critical observations regarding Japan’s approach to peacebuilding in a more recent context, this chapter highlights the comprehensive nature of Japan’s peacebuilding. It concludes that peacebuilding fits Japan’s security strategies to play a greater role and assume higher expectations in international affairs when it concentrates on a non-military-oriented form of peacebuilding.
