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A New Japanese Approach to Nation Building 211 9 A New Japanese Approach to Nation Building: People-Centred Human Security Kaoru Ishikawa 211 1. Introduction The last decade of the twentieth century was characterized by the demise of communist illusion and a massive embracing of democratic values. It was most typically illustrated in the Charter of Paris, issued in 1990 by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) nations summit. American and European leaders, including President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the United States George Bush and President of France Francois Miterrand, gathered there to celebrate democracy. They declared in the Charter of Paris that democracy was the only system of government for CSCE nations and that an abiding adherence to shared values and their common heritage are the ties which bind North American and European states together. A year and a half later, the Soviet Union collapsed and people learnt after more than seven decades that communism did not produce freedom nor a happy life. Thus, the collapse also meant the end of a world divided into two opposite values: communism or democracy. Yet to many people’s regret, contrary to the expectation for peace, after the cold war ended, armed conflicts increased and economic growth did not bring its dividend to all nations. Though the reasons must be multifaceted, we must note that the end of an era of two opposing values gave birth to a world where multitudes of values mushroomed. It is a difficult situation for people who can no longer justify their positions only by accusing those who belong to the other side as wrong. Indeed, in each society, every person now needs to think for himself to justify his way of life and the way their community/society is governed. This is the difficult side of the coin in a world community where ‘ready made’ values do not tell you what to do. During the last decade of the twentieth century, when people began to cope with diversifying values, another important phenomenon changed 212 Asian Development Experience, Vol. 1 the world: very rapid deepening of globalization promoted by new technologies, such as the introduction and rapid advancement of new information and communication technology (ICT). New ICT gave birth to many new business models and made a strong impact on cultural diversity on the one hand, but at the same time, it allowed criminals to engage in new dimensions of crime. Economic crises took on new forms, such as the sudden downturn shown in the Asian financial crisis in 1997. Not only did the crisis affect the global economy, moving well beyond country borders, but also highlighted the different measures that the Thai and Malaysian authorities introduced to fight back the crisis, reminding us that in an economic dimension, the notion of the nation state had become obsolete. But is it obsolete only in an economic dimension? The time has come to reflect on what we all learnt in school: Peace of Westphalia in 1648 changed the Western world, then the whole world, from a medieval system to a new system where nation states became the sole playing units in international relations. But the reality was, in many regions of the world, that such a notion was not true. The most typical and tragic example is sub-Saharan Africa,1 where highly developed civilized kingdoms were invaded and destroyed by Europeans since the sixteenth century. To make the situation worse, Europeans unilaterally drew subSaharan African borders at the Berlin Conference in 1884–85, neither consulting with the Africans nor taking into consideration the political, social and ethnic situation in Africa. Thus, the notion of nation building based on nation state became unrealistic in sub-Saharan Africa. In many sub-Saharan African states, people have been obliged to ask themselves whether they should identify with their cousins across the border or be loyal to their president whose mother tongue is different. All these elements lead us to think about the importance of the role of rule making in light of a newly emerging situation in the world, as well as that of a people-centred approach to build communities, and the role of communities in nation building. This is why some highly industrialized countries such as Japan started to seek a new way of employing development assistance. In this chapter, the first part will deal with an overview of global issues in the post-cold war era. The second part will...

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